Byzantine News

The Suda Lexikon, a great source for the study of Classics and of the Byzantine literary culture, dating from the 10th c., the golden age of the Byzantine Empire, is very close to having a complete online English version. Click here to visit the project webpage

The venerable collection of classical authors will have a digital version in a few months. Founded by James Loeb in 1911, the mission of Loeb Classical Library® has always been to make Classical Greek and Latin literature accessible to the broadest range of readers. The Digital Loeb Classical Library extends this mission into the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press is honored to renew James Loeb’s vision of accessibility, and presents an interconnected, fully searchable, perpetually growing, virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. Epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; those Church Fathers who made particular use of pagan culture—in short, our entire Greek and Latin Classical heritage is represented here with up-to-date texts and accurate English translations. More than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek, and English texts are available in a modern and el...

The Classical Review publishes informative reviews from leading scholars on new work covering the literatures and civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. Publishing over 150 high quality reviews and 50 brief notes every year, The Classical Review is an indispensable reference tool, essential for keeping abreast with current classical scholarship.  --> We are pleased to offer you complimentary access to ten of the most popular reviews from the last five volumes of The Classical Review, free of charge until the 31st March 2013.  Access the reviews here: http://journals.cambridge.org/crpopular2013 http://journals.cambridge.org/crpopular2013 Read outgoing Editor Dr Neil Hopkinson's Blog post: http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2013/01/thoughts-of-an-outgoing-reviews-editor/

--> Dear Librarian, We are pleased to inform you that   L’Année Philologique , the definitive bibliographic source of scholarly works relating to all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, is now available on the powerful EBSCO host platform.  This database includes more than 810,000 records, with over 15,000 new records added every year, and indexes more than 1,000 journals—making it essential for providing comprehensive coverage of classical scholarship throughout the world. Records include abstracts for articles, reviews for monographs, and lists of content for edited volumes. Request a free trial here Accessing   L’Année Philologique   through EBSCO host   makes finding the content even easier and advanced search capabilities provide only the most relevant search results. Clearly labeled citation fields in the record The ability to cross reference search on authors, subjects, titles, etc. Display information: Language of article...

'Greek Literary Epigram: From the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Era' An international conference to be held at University College London, 11 - 13 September 2013. Recent scholarship has witnessed an escalating interest in the study of Greek literary epigram, which was given further momentum by the discovery and publication of the New Milan Papyrus, attributed to Posidippus of Pella. Considerable progress has been made in our appreciation of the development and features of the genre and its exponents in the Hellenistic period. However, intense scholarly focus on Hellenistic epigram has led to an under-appreciation of the later epigrammatic material, from the Roman to the Byzantine period. The aim of this international conference is to investigate the changes that literary epigram underwent over the centuries, its interrelationship with other Greek literary genres and with the visual arts, as well as the factors which influenced its development across time. In this...

THIS INVESTIGATION is an attempt to substantiate a flash of recognition between a passage in Xenophon’s Hellenica and a corresponding passage in Procopius of Caesarea’s Wars—a place where one ought not to expect it. Although Procopius has long been acknowledged to have been a reader and imitator of Thucydides and Herodotus, among other canonical authors, so far as the works of Xenophon are concerned he has been believed until recently to have used only the Cyropaedia.It comes as a bolt from the blue, therefore, to be reading the Hellenica and to be reminded of the Wars. Yet recovery of the intertextual dimension of Procopius’ work in this instance is vital because it enables that historian to speak, in a work intended for public consumption at a time when the principals were still alive and therefore in a manner that is necessarily oblique, to the allegiances and motivations of a prominent person at a moment of high political intrigue. Read the rest here.

BMCR Review of The Homer Encyclopedia, Three Volume Set As the general editor Margalit Finkelberg explains in the Introduction, this Homeric Encyclopedia contains 1300 entries divided into three categories: the first one includes approximately 900 entries on personal or geographical names. Both groups cover a wide span of references, the former stretching from the two most important heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey (Achilles is masterfully presented by Seth Schein in a five-column entry— Odysseus receives an equally tight but outstanding treatment by Richard B. Rutherford) to the so-called minor warriors (around 220 Trojans and Achaeans), who enjoy only a passing reference in the epics as victims of the first- rank heroes, and the latter from Odysseus’ fatherland Ithaca and the debate concerning its identification to (the still picturesque) Oitylos in Laconia, as well as the other hapax legomena included in the Catalogue of Ships. The rest of the entries (i.e. the second and the third...

As seen on listserv Last Friday an email from a member of the Senior Managament team at Royal Holloway University of London findally confirmed, eight and a half months after the dissolution of the Classics Department was proposed, that there would be NO REDUNDANCIES WHATSOEVER in Classics. Thanks to everyone who supported this campaign. Meanwhile, proof has arrived of the potency of our subject. One of my PhD students, Katie Billotte, sent a copy of a scholarly book I published as a sedate OUP monograph in 1989, "Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy", to her penpal currently housed in a Colorado gaol. This is the letter she has just received from the Wardens's Office--Crowley Correctional Facility (pictured here): 'We are returning to you this shipment made to Inmate #90704 currently held in the Colorado Department of Corrections. We have determined that Inventing the Barbarians by Edith Hall constitutes contraband under the State...

From BMCR Classical Review: M. E. Stone, Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Review by Juan Carlos Ossandón, Pontificia Università della Santa Croce: In the field of ancient Jewish literature, few authors can display such an impressive list of publications as Michael Edward Stone.1 Despite the title his latest book is not an overall presentation of Second Temple Judaism but rather a collection of specialized studies, with some relationship to each other. Read more

Digressus is a fully refereed online journal publishing reviews and articles related to Classical Studies, Archaeology and Byzantine Studies. Click here to access Digressus online issues

The Cyrus Cylinder: The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several fragments, on which is written a declaration in Akkadian cuneiform script[3] in the name of the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great. It dates from the 6th century BC and was discovered in the ruins of Babylon in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in 1879.[3] It is currently in the possession of the British Museum, which sponsored the expedition that discovered the cylinder. It was created and used as a foundation deposit following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was invaded by Cyrus and incorporated into his Persian Empire. The text on the Cylinder praises Cyrus the Great, sets out his genealogy and portrays him as a king from a line of kings. The Babylonian king Nabonidus (see earlier Cylinder of Nabonidus), who was defeated and deposed by Cyrus, is denounced as an impious oppressor of the people of Babylonia and his low-born origins are implicitly contrasted to...

Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 1 Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 2 Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 3 Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 4 Journal of Hellenic Studies, no. 5

The goal of the digital iteration of Loeb, say several academics involved with the project, is to allow students, scholars, and others to draw out themes from ancient literature even if they don’t know where to look and don’t speak the languages. A religion scholar who wants to learn more about Greek and Roman conceptions of the soul would be able to search the entire body of ancient literature for soul references, says Thomas. The scholar could also refine a search for references to the soul by specific authors or time periods, he says. Being able to search within the confines of the ancient canon will give users more breadth than searching digitized versions of individual texts while allowing them to avoid the detritus that tends to accumulate in searches of less well-defined vaults, says Thomas. A general Web search of “Homer” and “soul” might turn up some relevant material, he says, but “I would probably get Homer Simpson and soul music.” Google Book Search, meanwhile, turns up a...