A Red Letter Way: Color, Writing, and Reading in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Within most medieval books of hours, there were ecclesiastical calendars that had important holy days printed in red. This was a type of textual highlighting used to call attention to important...
View ArticleNefertiti and Digital Colonialism: A Short Bibliography
I am not an Egyptologist. My specialities are digital humanities, epigraphy, and the laws of the late Roman Empire. The beauty of academia and of journalism is that far more brilliant people than you...
View ArticleFollowing the Stylus Manual: Roman everyday writing equipment
‘I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me. I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give) as generously as the way is long (and) as...
View ArticleCurious about the Beginning and End of the Olympics?
By Sarah E. Bond and Joel Christensen This post is cross-posted with Sententiae Antiquae. The 2020 Olympics, postponed because of COVID19, are due to start this week in Japan. They might be cancelled...
View ArticleIntroducing Pasts Imperfect: New Spaces for Public Scholarship
Theseus escapes King Minos’ labyrinth on Crete (it is a metaphor), opus vermiculatum mosaic, Roman, 200-250 CE, Carthage (Image taken by Sarah E. Bond at the Penn Museum; CC0). Pasts Imperfect is a...
View ArticleOn Auctoritas and Antiquity
Post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt. After that time, I exceeded all persons in auctoritas;...
View ArticlePretty as a Pictor: Painters in the Roman Mediterranean
Σαβεῖνοςζωγράφος ἐτῶνκϛʹ.εὐψύχως Sabinus, a painter, 26 years old, good luck! Fayoum 1:40=PHI 215881, Aueris (Hawāra) — Rom. Imp. period — SB 1.682. On a red marble epitaph from Hawara now in the Cairo...
View ArticleTeaching Gladiators, Slavery, and the Lure of the Arena
My latest for Hyperallergic looks at the new, alleged gladiator cemetery found near the amphitheater in the town of Anazarbus. I have written on gladiators quite a bit over the years, since my PhD...
View ArticleCaging the She-Wolf: Power, Place, and Digital Humanities in Ancient Rome
tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis; ut non sine causa ex iis memoriae ducta sit disciplina. “Places have so great a power of suggestion that the technical art of memory is with good reason based...
View ArticleUnpacking the Greco-Roman Mythology in John Wick: Chapter 4
Over at Hyperallergic this week, I have a review of the latest chapter of the John Wick movies. Like its predecessors, John Wick: Chapter IV relies heavily on Greco-Roman mythology, classical allusion,...
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