Found in Antiquity

Author: Carla Hurt

  • List of Epigraphical Resource Abbreviations

    Collections of inscriptions are very useful but a little intimidating for budding Classicists to get their teeth into. These collections are almost always referred to by their acronym, which appear as a meaningless series of letters to the uninitiated. And since epigraphy is a somewhat arcane topic, it is surprisingly difficult to find the full…

  • Is Amphiaraus a god?

    It’s not every day that you hear of a legal dispute about whether a certain divinity is or isn’t a god. This may be because our states – at least, Australia, the UK and the US – have no formal obligations towards gods, and will generally refuse to comment on the true divinity of a…

  • On the merits of learning German

    Happy news! I’ve just started learning German! I signed up for a super-intensive course (with the Goethe Institute, Melbourne) that runs all day each day from Monday to Friday this week. There are so many good reasons to learn German if you like Classics. Perhaps you’ve realised everyone is citing German academics. Name any topic…

  • Saint Nicholas through the Ages

    How did a Saint from Western Turkey become an elf-Lord driving reindeer around the North Pole? The journey of St. Nicholas through time, space and cultures has transformed this pious bishop of Myra into Santa: a secular, round-bellied, cheerful caricature of modern consumerism. How, exactly, did he get from there to here? And does anything…

  • Moving words: which languages have the closest word order to Ancient Greek?

    There’s an art to translation. It involves moving concepts from one language into another while trying to refit the same thought into a different set of grammar rules. In this study I’d like to look at one obvious part of the translation process: word order change. In studying this, I don’t mean to suggest that…

  • Textception

    You know what’s my pet peeve? Scholars who cite fragmentary sources by their fragment numbers only.

  • The Melitan Miniature Dog: The most popular lapdog in antiquity

    There is something so disarming, so human, about reading that the ancient Greeks and Romans kept dogs as pets – not just as hunting hounds, but also as tiny companions. The Melitan, while it is not the only kind of miniature dog mentioned in surviving texts (a “Gallic miniature dog” was named once in Martial’s…

  • Changing site name, address, and domain purchase

    My dearest subscribers, Fished Up Classics will soon be known under a new name, Found in Antiquity. It was a difficult decision to make, but I believe the long term gain will be worth today’s hassle. It feels scary, in a way, like I might be starting all over again. Has it only really been…

  • Orpheus and the Can-can

    How on earth could the Can-can dance have anything to do with the myth of Orpheus? I’m sure you’ve heard and seen the Can-can before, but just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 150 years, here’s a demonstration: The Can-can was a type of bawdy Parisian dance popular in the…

  • The Weasel in Antiquity: Pet or Pest?

    It’s a nice time for a light-hearted piece, and I’ve been dying to write this article for a while. It’s about pet weasels in antiquity. A surprising amount of respectable scholarship all the way from 1718 to 1997 has claimed that the Greeks and Romans kept tame weasels as household pets. At the very least,…