A guest post by William Moulton One Saturday in July I arrived at the British Museum about 11:30, just in time for the free tour of the Nereid Monument. I always thought it was a nymphaeum—a shrine to the Nereids—but it isn’t. I discovered that it was the tomb of Arbinas the dynast of Lycia—a sort of a sub-king to the Persian king. For those who don’t know, after Alexander… Read more
Strange place Malta. At times, you feel in Greece, at times in Muslim North Africa, or even the Levant. These islands have been inhabited for millennia. In 5200 BCE they were organized in villages and by 3600 BCE, they already had megalith temples, that is 1000 years before the Egyptian pyramids were built. And 2000 years before the Mycenae Palace of Agamemnon. It seems to me that its history has… Read more
“A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece, 700 BC–200 AD” Onassis Cultural Center New York Onassis Foundation USA, 645 5th Ave., New York Through June 24, 2017 A guest post by David A. Beardsley Much of my own ongoing fascination with the ancient Greeks is in that theirs is the first culture with which I can readily connect, and this is largely because of the way they display their emotions. The… Read more
A guest post by Bill Moulton On a recent trip to New York, I discovered representations of the ancient Greek gods, some in unexpected places, and couldn’t resist photographing them! I spotted what appear to be the Muses reigning over the Great Dionysia where all the famous Ancient Greek tragedies were performed—more specifically in this case the Radio City Music Hall and its Christmas Spectacular. Hildreth Meière: Drama, 1932 Here… Read more
A guest post by Anne Spendiff It seemed that when I watched TV programmes about Rome they featured gruesome death, sex, or communal toilets. Now I know that death, sex and toilets are part of life, but I did not want my first cruise to the Western Mediterranean, and my first trips to Rome and Pompeii, to focus on them. In preparation, I read Mary Beard’s Pompeii[1], and researched various… Read more