I meant to post this early. However, I've seen nothing about it recently, so perhaps it's not too late: I spent years as a Classics teacher telling children that Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79. Wrong it seems: In October the news broke that it had actually disappeared in October! 

All of this is well explained on this excellent site: The (well-named) Petrified Muse! Click the link to read more.

The graffito in question has been interpreted as follows:

A translation of the above might go something like this: 'On the 16th day before the Kalends of November [i. e. on October 17th] s/he gave free rein to her/his hunger to the max.' (Translation: Peter Kruschwitz). Whether or not this means that the Cambridge Latin Course has got to rewritten, is a matter for discussion. As far as I know (and that could be very wrong), nobody has commented on the actual Latinity of the written of this. Apart from the fact that there doesn't seem to be a good parallel for pro masumis meaning 'to the maximum,' esuritio meaning 'hunger, appetite' is a very rare and literary word. It occurs first in two of Catullus' more scabrous poems: 23.14 and 21.1, where the context makes it clear that the 'hunger' and 'appetite' under discussion may be for more than food! Such an interpretation would put the scribble directly in the tradition of Pompeian graffiti that show the population of Pompeii had a more than passing knowledge of contemporary literature. Was Catullus dining that night in Pompeii?

​Peter Hulse

Given that the best film ever made about a Greek myth will probably be on the T.V. at Christmas: Jason and the Argonauts, you might be interested in investigating this site (and its preposed activity), if things get a bit desperate round about Boxing day: Click on the image to learn more. Happy' Argonauting'. Be careful in the Black Sea, if you decide to set sail in your Argo: 

I think these methods have also been applied to the Odyssey: it opens very exciting possibilities:
Peter Hulse

Professor Hillner writes: 
We are delighted to welcome to Sheffield Profs Ana Bazzan, Silvio Dahmen and Sandra Prado (University of Porto Alegre, Brazil). Ana, Silvio and Sandra are Physicists who have extensively worked on developing network algorithms to understand narrative patterns in both fictional and non-fictional literature (including Alice in Wonderland, the Chanson de Roland, Viking Sagas, and documents pertaining to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederik II). 

They will come to Sheffield from 5-8 November to collaborate with the Leverhulme project 'Gendered Networks in Early Medieval Narratives' based in the History Department, but have also kindly agreed to give a 'masterclass' on 6 November for anyone interested in learning more about mathematical applications of Social Network Analysis (which is currently emerging as a method in Humanities scholarship also).

This is a unique opportunity to hear Physicists speak about their work with historical and literary sources and discuss the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary collaborations between Humanities scholars and Network Scientists. A flyer is attached. Please register your interest by 26 October.

N.B. no mathematical knowledge needed at all to participate in this! Ana, Silvio and Sandra will provide the maths.

To start off a new season of posts, here's a big bang! It's an old photograph, dating back, I suppose, to March 1944, and I'm afraid I can't acknowledge it properly but it's particularly topical because of the recent new excavations at Pompeii that have uncovered some wonderful things. Including the new graffito. That and the new finds are a topic to which I will undoubtedly return. As always, comments below would be welcome.
Peter Hulse 

 
Sheffield Classical Association
Events 2018-19


Classical Association AGM
Wednesday 8 May 2019
3:15pm
Humanities Research Institute, Seminar Room
Classical Association Invited Speakers
Wednesday 13 March 2019
4:15pm, Humanities Research Institute
Owen Hodkinson (Leeds) – “She’s not deadly. She’s beautiful.” Reclaiming Medusa for Millennial Tween and Teen Girls?
 
Wednesday 8 May 2019
4:15pm, Humanities Research Institute
Ian Haynes (Newcastle): Recent research on Hadrian’s Wall

Tuesday 16 October, 1pm
Prof Ergün Lafli (Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir): Archaeology and history of Lydia from the early Lydian period to late antiquity (8th century B.C.-6th century A.D.
 
Tuesday 19 February 2019, 1pm
Anna Moles (UCL and British School at Athens Ambassador): Human health and diet at Knossos, Crete: changes from the Hellenistic to Late Antique periods
 
Venue details will be posted here: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/archaeology/events/lunchtime-lectures

Other Talks of Interest
 
 Medieval and Ancient Research Seminars
Humanities Research Institute (unless otherwise specified)
4:15pm paper begins
5 December 2018 – Jessop West G03
Ulriika Vihervalli (Hist), ‘Gender-based violence and royal women in late Roman Italy’
 
13 February 2019
Chris Mowat (Hist), ‘Neither priest nor priestess: Interpreting the Galli priesthood of ancient Rome through queer and non-binary gender perspective(s)’


27 February 2019
Paul Johnson (Arch): ‘Conceptual geographies: exploring the articulation of social space in Roman Lusitania’
 
27 March 2019 – PGR Session
Sarah Poniros (Arch) – ‘Experiencing Migration and Diversity in Roman Britain: A Multidisciplinary Approach’
Lewis Dagnall (Hist) – ‘Tribute in Late Antiquity’
 
You can find the full MARS programme here:
http://marcus.group.shef.ac.uk/events/mars/

​All talks begin at 4.15pm, in the HRI, unless otherwise indicated.

Term 1, 2018-19.
10 September, 5pm, Diamond Lecture Theatre 8 – co-sponsored with SCEMS
Barbara Rosenwein (Loyola University Chicago), ‘What is the history of emotions?’
26 September (week 1) [38 Mappin Street Workroom 2]
Sarah Greer (St Andrews): ‘Hrotsvitha the historian: rewriting the past in the Primordia Gandeshemensis‘
17 October (week 4)
Paul Oldfield (Manchester): ‘Remembering innovation: Laity and Urban Commune in Twelfth-Century Southern Italy’
24 October (week 5) – venue TBC
Francisco Diaz Marcilla (Lisbon), ‘The Church and the Crown in Late Medieval Iberian Context: Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and Sources’
14 November (week 8) – PGR Session [HRI Seminar room] 
Richard Gilbert (Hist) – ‘Late medieval and early modern South Yorkshire’
Emma Hook (Arch) – ‘Oblates and the disadvantaged: quasi-monastic care in later medieval society’
28 November (week 10)
Linne Mooney (York), ‘More Light on Thomas Hoccleve, Clerk of the Privy Seal, Londoner, and Friend of Chaucer’
5 December (week 11) – Jessop West G03
Ulriika Vihervalli (Hist), ‘Gender-based violence and royal women in late Roman Italy’
12 December (week 12)
Mattia Chiriatti (Alcalá/Sheffield): ‘Visual Display and the Construction of Memory in Gregory of Nyssa’s Hagiographic Homilies’

Term 2
13 February (week 2)
Chris Mowat (Hist), ‘Neither priest nor priestess: Interpreting the Galli priesthood of ancient Rome through queer and non-binary gender perspective(s)’
27 February (week 4) – Hunter Society Session
Paul Johnson (Arch): ‘Conceptual geographies: exploring the articulation of social space in Roman Lusitania’
13 March (week 6) – Classical Association Session
Owen Hodkinson (Leeds) – ‘”She’s not deadly. She’s beautiful.” Reclaiming Medusa for Millennial Tween and Teen Girls?’
27 March (week 8) – PGR Session
Sarah Poniros (Arch) – ‘Experiencing Migration and Diversity in Roman Britain: A Multidisciplinary Approach’
Lewis Dagnall (Hist) – ‘Tribute in Late Antiquity’
1 May (week 9) [venue tbc]
Brigitte Resl – ‘Thinking about Noah’s ark in the Middle Ages’
8 May (week 11) – Classical Association Session
Ian Haynes (Newcastle): ‘Recent research on Hadrian’s Wall’

Delivered by Professor Pelling at the Swansea meeting of Advocating Classics Education. It's brilliant: 'I just found I couldn't give it up! Exactly!

​WHY CLASSICS?
 
Prynhawn da. It is especially good to be in Swansea, even for a Cardiff boy (sorry about that – nobody’s perfect): some of the happiest days of my childhood were spent here, sometimes at the Gower or at Rhossili Bay and rather more often along the road at St Helen’s. There can’t be many of us left now who were there when Glamorgan beat the Australians not once but twice, in 1964 and 1968, and those were the days when those fixtures were taken seriously by both sides. Thinking about what Classics has meant to me over the years has meant quite a bit of looking back over fifty years, so sorry about that too: 1968 will indeed come back at the end of what I’m going to say, so when you hear that number you’ll know that the end is in sight. But I’ll leave it vague for the moment what that will be about. Will it be that that it was the year that Tom Jones recorded Delilah, with a revelation of a wannabe aspiration of mine that never came true? Wait and see.
            So – what got me into Classics in the first place? Many in this business might say ‘a trip to the British Museum with my parents’ or ‘I really loved Greek myths’, the sort of thing that Ersin Hussein and Catherine Rozier have been talking about earlier today: or, these days much more often than then, seeing someone like Mary Beard on television, or just a family holiday in Greece or Italy. I can’t say the same, though I wish I could. It wasn’t even the attraction of the way I was taught myself, which was very language based – the delight of getting the Latin endings right, though I did quite like that and I was very well taught, even in Cardiff. It’s no coincidence that several of the first people to be really big in computers – the head of IBM, the head of Hewlett Packard – were classicists: if you could get those endings right, chances were that you could get your computer programming right too. No: I’m afraid it was more basic than that. I wanted to be a lawyer, doubtless because of whatever courtroom series was on TV at the time (Perry Mason?), and someone had told me that Latin was really good for law: I could just see myself mouthing habeas corpus and nolle prosequiwith the best of them, and becoming very very rich. That went well, then. And, for that matter, whoever told me that wasn’t wrong: in later life I ended up teaching a lot of people who went on to be lawyers, and (a) none of them regretted having done Classics first and (b) they did become very rich. In my university we discovered that the wealthiest alums were, you’ve guessed it, those who had read Law – and the second wealthiest were the Classicists (and not only those who went on to be lawyers), so don’t let people tell you that a classical education isn’t a good investment in career terms.
            So that’s how I got into it, but not why I stayed: I just found I couldn’t give it up.