New at LacusCurtius and Livius.Org

[Jona Lendering]

Bill appears to be suffering from an attack of zest for work: he's now put online Plutarch's Spartan Customs and (in the Antiquary's Shoebox) an article on the Chronology of the Jughurtan War.

I am, in the meantime, replacing old photos (here's a photo of a Judaea Capta coin that shows many fine details), updating several old articles (e.g., Rubico), and adding some fact files (e.g., Lucilla). The reason for all this is that I just bought some additional memory storage, and need to transfer my old backups to this new apparatus; I seize the opportunity to rearrange several things.

[Jona Lendering]

Bill has put online Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes, which he finds "disjointed, anecdotic, confused, prurient" and which I find, Plutarch always being a Greek in the first place, unusually kind towards "the barbarian". In other words, it is too bad and to philobarbaros to be a real treatise by Plutarch. :wink: Still, I find it an interesting text, and this will certainly get a follow-up.

And here is the follow-up: my own version of the text, with many hyperlinks.

Bill continues what appears to be an attempt to have all Plutarch's biographies online before April 30: here are the Lycurgus and the Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa.

[Bill Thayer]

Umm, no way; for one thing, I have a large (only very marginally related) item going in the background, that I want to put up within the next coupla days. But eventually, yes, I do expect to have all the Lives up. Oddly, no site seems to have the complete set yet.

B

[Jona Lendering]

Although Bill officially denies that he tries to put Plutarch's biographies online faster than the Chaeronean Sage could write them, this denial increasingly lacks credibility. :wink: Here are the Solon and the Comparison of Solon and Publicola. I think I am not the only one who is very happy. All in all, there are 50 bios; at the moment, 35 are available here.

[Bill Thayer]

And one more down the hatch – Themistocles. All the merest donkey work, frankly, the chief virtue of which (considering especially how many Parallel Lives are online already) is that mine have local links.

B

[Jona Lendering]

the chief virtue of which (considering especially how many Parallel Lives are online already) is that mine have local links.

Too modest, too modest. The LacusCurtius lifes are also complete (cf. the Internet Classics Archive's incomplete Alexander), annotated, and pretty carefully proofread. That, dear Bill, is more than other copiists can claim.

[Jona Lendering]

Here are the Aristides and the Comparison of Aristides and Cato the Elder.

[Jona Lendering]

... and here are the Cimon and the Comparison of Cimon and Lucullus.

[Jona Lendering]

Tirelessly, Bill continues his series of Plutarch's biographies. Today, he announced the Pericles and the Comparison of Pericles and Fabius Maximus, and the Nicias and the Comparison of Nicias and Crassus.

Meanwhile, I am putting online all ancient texts on the Great Flood, but it will take some time. Still, the story by Berossus is already available. There are striking similarities with the Biblical account. The comparative table is not without interest; however, there's still a lot to do.

The photos I've inserted are from a remarkable project in a Dutch town called Schagen, where a devote man has, single-handedly, rebuilt the Ark. Here is his own website (in Dutch) and here is a satellite photo. I've visited it about six weeks ago; Mr. Huybers is a kind man who is obviously driven by something that is bigger than himself. I am digressing on it because his Ark will be in Nijmegen during the RAT-meeting.

[Jona Lendering]

Bill has added five brief items on Athenian festivals to Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities: Adonia, Amphidromia, Boedromia, Munychia, and Thargelia.

[Jona Lendering]

Bill put online Plutarch's Alcibiades and the Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus. There's also a set of learned letters on the Eclipse of Pericles.

Bill also continues his series of items on Greek festivals (part of his online Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities): Agraulia, Anthesphoria, Apaturia, Elaphebolia, Gymnopaedia, Hyacinthia, and Plynteria.

Enjoy!

[Jona Lendering]

Bill surprised me with a text I had never heard of before, the Invective against Cicero, a rhetorical exercise that is attributed to Sallust.

[Jona Lendering]

I've put online a Babylonian text known as the Epic of Atrahasis. At the end of this text, the anonymous author (seventeenth century BC) deals with the Great Flood, but it is the long prologue that is interesting: the gods are tired of all their labor, digging rivers and erecting mountains, so they create Mankind to do the job. However, the humans are making a lot of noise, so they send a flood to silence them. It ends on a very grim note: as a measure to keep humankind quiet, the gods create childbirth and infancy mortality.

The name of the hero of the Flood, Atrahasis is pronounced with a "hard h", or very smooth g, like in Scottish loch, hence the underlined h in Atrahasis.

[Bill Thayer]

The Invective against Sallust (turnabout is fair play) is even more entertaining, if still nowhere up to the level of hilarity achieved by Apuleius in his de Magia; although as spurious as the Invective against Cicero, it's worth reading as a peek into common Roman attitudes of the time.

Also added – Jona tells me I must finish Mr. Plutarch – is the Life of Lysander and the Comparison of Lysander and Sulla.

And Jona's opinions matter, of course: not knowing Trier, where else would I have gotten the beautiful photos that now adorn Roman Trier (CJ 29:3-12)?

B.

[Jona Lendering]

I've finally finished my set of five pages on ancient Flood narratives. Making them, I gradually discovered that it is impossible to treat them without the Creation stories: in Sumer, in Babylonia, in Judah, and in Greece, the Creator has some troubles with his first creatures, and uses the Flood as some sort of new start.

I've also put online the texts themselves:
* The Eridu Genesis (a Sumerian Creation + Deluge story)
* The Epic of Atrahasis (the Babylonian equivalent)
* Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh (retelling in the first person, a powerful text)
* The story by Berossus (Hellenistic)
* The account from the Bible, and an attempt to reconstruct the original wording
* Both stories from the Quran, which can only partly be based on the Bible and contains an intrigueing Babylonian parallel
* Greek and Roman texts: Apollodorus, Hyginus, Ovid
* And a word on the archaeology of the Flood