Hey people! I’m on trip this week, so that you’ll have to attend until subsequent week to get the subsequent installment of “Life, Work, Dying and the Peasant.”
Nevertheless, in case you are searching for some ACOUP content material to fill your Friday, I’ve a number of recommendations! First, if you need a few of my writing particularly, try this piece I wrote not too long ago for Battle on the Rocks on “The Significance of the Battle of Cannae,” a 3,000 phrase take a look at the battle, its context and significance, free to learn and out there to the general public (as far as I do know):
The digital annihilation of an enormous Roman pressure at Cannae constituted Hannibal’s biggest victory. Polybius stories 70,000 Roman useless and solely 3,000 survivors however, as Lazenby notes, Polybius has overlooked a considerable camp guard, prisoners, and fairly a number of escaping troopers from his tally of survivors. Livy’s casualty figures for the Romans are extra dependable: 47,700 Roman troopers killed, one other 19,300 taken prisoner, and 14,550 escaped. However given the size of the slaughter and completeness of Hannibal’s victory, probably the most surprising factor in regards to the battle is that it wasn’t sufficient.
Alternately, if you need a deep dive on historical tradition just like what we do right here, let me recommend Spencer McDaniel’s 2019 “What Did Historical Greek Music Sound Like?” at A Story of Occasions Forgotten. The title is pretty self-explanatory and the article goes by what we expect historical Greek music seemed like and the way we all know that – a number of of the hyperlinks to precise performances are useless, however most of them appear to nonetheless be reside.
Lastly for extra common Classics curiosity, there was a brand new Pasts Imperfect publication this month, which incorporates, amongst different issues, a neat quick essay by historical historian and Thucydides skilled Jennifer T. Roberts on how the ‘Thucydides entice’ is a false impression. That’s a subject I’ve been that means to jot down about as properly – you possibly can inform studying the Hearth on realism and the older “A Journey By way of Thucydides” that I believe lots of the frequent IR readings of Thucydides fail to totally embrace the complexity and class of his narrative.
And hopefully that is sufficient to preserve you till I’m again subsequent week!
