A reassuring thought

[Jona Lendering]

Yesterday, I received some old books, all written by the great Altertumswissenschaftler of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. And there it was: August Wuensche, "Der Kuss in Bibel, Talmud und Midrasch" (1911) - a small book on all aspects of kissing, in the Bible, in the Rabbinical literature and the anecdotal literature. Chapter division: the kiss on the cheek, feet, and so on. Somehow, I find this very reassuring.

[caiusbeerquitius]

[Jona Lendering]

There seems to be a book on the use of roof tiles in ancient street fights. I've never found it, but it's good to know that it exists.

[caiusbeerquitius]

This made me giggle all morning...

[Phaichtos]

There seems to be a book on the use of roof tiles in ancient street fights. I've never found it, but it's good to know that it exists.

:lol: :mrgreen:

[D B Campbell]

There seems to be a book on the use of roof tiles in ancient street fights.

Interesting. W.D. Barry, "Roof Tiles and Urban Violence in the Ancient World", GRBS 37.1 (1996) 55-74, doesn't reference any German literature.

[hoplite14gr]

well three sources are
Platean women - roof tiles vs Thebans (Thukidides)
Argive mother - roof tile vs Pyrros (Plutarch)
Spartan women -roof tiles vs Romans (Polyvios)

No this gentle man probably found staff about rioting in Alexandria

Hmmm interesting!

Kind regards

[Jona Lendering]

There seems to be a book on the use of roof tiles in ancient street fights.

Interesting. W.D. Barry, "Roof Tiles and Urban Violence in the Ancient World", GRBS 37.1 (1996) 55-74, doesn't reference any German literature.

Maybe I was told about this article, and believed it was a book. (I did not remember it as a German book; in my memory, it was English.)

It's amazing - perhaps shocking, perhaps comforting - that people devote a substantial part of their life to articles about "The Price of Woman's Hair in the Third Century" or "Subsistence Farming in Roman Lusitania". Or kissing in the Talmud. It doesn't mean that it's useless; I think Walter Eder's Das Vorsullanische Repetundenverfahren is excellent. What does worry me, though, is that the average Ph.D. thesis seems to be about increasingly narrow themes. What we need is a new Mommsen or Beloch, who can write a new synthesis.

[D B Campbell]

It's amazing - perhaps shocking, perhaps comforting - that people devote a substantial part of their life to articles about "The Price of Woman's Hair in the Third Century" or "Subsistence Farming in Roman Lusitania". Or kissing in the Talmud.

I think such studies perform two valuable functions, besides teaching us about Romano-Hispanic agriculture. First, they train the individual to build a coherent argument based on the assembling of relevant evidence; and second, they give the individual the opportunity (not always taken) to develop a writing style. However, I concede that I have read PhD theses which were neither logically argued nor elegantly written! :roll: