Episode 81: In which Vulcan and Venus try to square Pompeii’s new ticketing restrictions with its new high-speed train, and get confused. This episode of Real Housewives of Mt. Olympus brought to you by the latest archaeological news on CNN.com – and by CLAS-C 419 Art and Archaeology of Pompeii. VULCAN, GOD OF METALWORKING AND …
Read More
Fun fact about the past: I am old enough to remember hearing about this new company, which would send you rental DVDs in the mail, and you could keep them as long as you wanted without late fees; then, when you sent the DVD back, they sent you the next movie on your “queue.” Fast …
Read More
Want to enhance your growth as a citizen of the world? Ask timeless big-picture questions while learning marketable skills? Expand and unlearn what you thought you knew about Ancient Greece and Rome? Draw connections to the past in your field of study? Whether you are minoring in Classical Studies, or taking courses to expand your view …
Read More
Wow. As our loyal readers know, a few months back the trailer for Gladiator II dropped, and I blogged about how it was sorta confusing and all over the place. Apparently, the promotion machine for the movie read that post and said “Hold my non-diluted-wine-we-aren’t-wimpy-Greeks-here.” Because a new trailer for Gladiator II has just been …
Read More
Episode 78: In which the Underworld Club for Architects gets seriously distracted by Spartacus and his gladiator rebellion adventures. As should we all. This episode of Real Housewives of Hades (a Mt. Olympus spin-off) brought to you by the latest archaeological news on SmithsonianMagazine.com – and by CLAS-C 361 Ancient Roman Revolutions. [SETTING: Underworld Club …
Read More
Oedipus the King, Episode 1: In which Thebes suffers from a plague, and King Oedipus suffers from a wildly inflated sense of his own self-importance. Let’s face it: reading Ancient Greek tragedies is difficult and depressing (although totally worth it). So we’ve launched The Editing Sciptorium, a series where we present an abridged version of …
Read More
Looking for the film adaptation of The Odyssey that stays truest to the spirit of Homer’s original epic poem? No, it’s not that Kirk Douglas monstrosity Ulysses, where the only thing more cheesy and frightening than the Cyclops is Douglas’ Odysseus hitting on a way-too-young-looking Princess Nausicaa. No, it’s not the French film The Odyssey, …
Read More
Making the ancient myth of Hercules into a kid’s movie was always going to take some adjusting. Case in point: in making their 1997 movie Hercules, Disney revamped the goddess Hera from “insulted wife desperately trying to kill husband’s bastard child” into “loving mom who mostly just stands there smiling” (presumably she’s also not her …
Read More
Before there was Troy, or 300, or somehow two Hercules movies in 2014, or whatever that Jon Snow Pompeii movie was, there was Gladiator. In an age where 1960s movies about Ancient Greece and Rome had become synonymous with incoherent scripts and short-short tunics, Ridley Scott and Russel Crowe delivered a sophisticated film that used Imperial …
Read More
Ever wonder what it would look like if time-traveling Ancient Greeks made a movie? Forget Brad Pitt in Troy or Dwayne Johnson in Hercules: nothing captures the machismo, misogyny, and sculpted men found in Homer and Herodotus quite like 300. Kings who shout about freedom while treating everyone around them like dirt? Check. Illogically breaking …
Read More
