Category Archives: Technology

  • ROMARCH: Linked Ancient World Data Institute

    5 February, 2013

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    NEH-FUNDED LINKED ANCIENT WORLD DATA INSTITUTE (LAWDI): Applications due Monday, February, 18, 2013.

    Drew University and New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) will host the Linked Ancient World Data Institute (LAWDI) from May 30st to June 1st, 2013. The venue will be the Drew University campus in New Jersey. “Linked Open Data” is an approach to the creation of digital resources that emphasizes connections between diverse information on the basis of published and stable web addresses (URIs) that identify common concepts and individual items. LAWDI, funded by the Office of Digital Humanities of the National Endowment for Humanities, will bring together an international faculty of practitioners working in the field of Linked Data with twenty attendees who are implementing or planning the creation of digital resources. LAWDI’s intellectual scope is the Ancient Mediterranean and Ancient Near East, two fields in which a large and increasing number of digital resources is available, with rich coverage of the archaeology, literature and history of these regions. Continue reading »

  • Translating Pliny’s letters about Vesuvius, pt. 5. The Hero Embarks

    12 December, 2012

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    Misenum2VesuviusGoogleE2

    Relative location of Vesuvius compared to the naval base at Misenum (inner and outer harbors visible at lower center). Based on GoogleEarth.

    6.16.7-10: The Hero Embarks

    The Younger Pliny has just unfolded a detailed description of the volcanic cloud that was first spotted by his mother around noon. (Note that this just provides a terminus ante quem for the initial explosion, but because of the explosive nature of ‘Plinian eruptions’, it is unlikely to have begun too long before Plinia noticed it.) Pliny is working from three sources: his memory, notes he took shortly after the event, and conversations with other people after the eruption (as he says later in section 22 of this letter).

    As the crater of Vesuvius is about 30 km. away from Misenum by direct line of sight, the Elder Pliny, his curiosity alight, decides to have a closer look. It is perhaps 2 or 3 in the afternoon (we don’t know how long Pliny took with his bath, his lunch, and his climb to a vantage point). There was as yet no sense of urgency, but that was about to change. Continue reading »