Sean Manning

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Philippus Arabs

Emperor Maximilian’s memorial at the Hofkirche is one of the most impressive monuments of Innsbruck. Being an early modern aristocrat, he made extravagant plans which could not be fully carried out after his death. A number of bronze busts of Roman emperors, which my guidebook tells me were meant to be part of a set of 34, are... Continue reading: Philippus Arabs

An unusually forthright statement

“The University of Calgary is a significant business … a $1.2-billion (a year) business. The space, specifically for the president, that the board of governors worked out of was embarrassing.” Mr. Bob Ellard, VP Facilities Development, University of Calgary, quoted by Mark McClure, Calgary Herald, 18 November 2013. Ellard was explaining why he and his... Continue reading: An unusually forthright statement

An Ajax or a Socrates?

A bust of Themistocles from the Roman empire, presumably based on a much earlier original. C/o Jona Lendering under a CC0 1.0 Universal license (original post: https://www.livius.org/pictures/italy/ostia/ostia-museum-pieces/ostia-themistocles/) My estimable colleague Jona Lendering recently expressed dismay that historians of the Macedonian Kingdom of Bactria tried to read kings’ personalities in their portraits on coins (here). Since no literature from... Continue reading: An Ajax or a Socrates?

Mesopotamia in the Ancient World

I just returned from a most excellent conference, the seventh Melammu symposium. Unlike many academic conferences, which exist to either bring scholars in different cities together or to address a specific problem, the Melammu symposia have a broad general mission: to better understand and better publicize the influence of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations on... Continue reading: Mesopotamia in the Ancient World

One Of Our Years Is Missing

In the course of my Master’s studies, I discovered a number of curious and unsettling details which are well known to specialists but not by the interested public. One of these is that we know very little about what happened for a year of the Peloponnesian War, and that we are not sure where to... Continue reading: One Of Our Years Is Missing

Funding Canadian Universities

Alex Usher of the Higher Education Strategy Associates has posted a series of comments on the operating budgets of Canadian colleges and universities since 1992 (first second third fourth and fifth). In a comment he explains that his source is the Financial Information for Universities and Colleges survey by Statistics Canada (here). I have some... Continue reading: Funding Canadian Universities

Who writes the history books?

Michael Ignatieff, former head of the Liberal Party of Canada, has been musing about why he lost the election of 2011 (see eg. this excerpt from his book in the Toronto Star). One of his consolations is that successful political thinkers often fail as practical politicians, because theory and practice are different arts and require different virtues. Canadian readers... Continue reading: Who writes the history books?

The Monuments of the Sertorii

In the early Roman Empire, it was fashionable for wealthy soldiers to put up a stone with an inscription and their portrait at their tomb. Two such soldiers were Quintus and Lucius Sertorius, who erected their monuments at Cisolino (about 10 miles east of Verona) sometime in the late first century CE. Full-sized image at... Continue reading: The Monuments of the Sertorii

Two Views on Punching in Late Medieval Italy

This image illustrates drunkenness (Lat. ebrietas) in a Tacuinum Sanitatis from Italy in the 1390s (Bibliotheque Nationale du France, Paris MS. Nouvelle acquisition latine 1673 folio 88v: for this and other images see their Mandragore website http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp). The Tacuinum is a Latin translation of an Arabic book on the medical implications of various foods, activities, winds, and kinds of clothing. The man without a dagger stands ready to punch. Is he grabbing his opponent at the neck, or trying to catch his opponent’s dagger hand? The artist does not make it clear.

The Race to the End of the Earth

I recently visited the Royal British Columbia Museum for their exhibit on the British and Norwegian South Pole expeditions of 1911/1912 (no permanent URL: temporary one at http://explore.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/ ). The basic story is well known in Canada: how two expeditions both arrived in Antarctica in hope of being the first to the South Pole, how... Continue reading: The Race to the End of the Earth