Search found 259 matches

by sean_m
Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:03 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: The Date of Alexander's Birth
Replies: 55
Views: 444762

Re: The Date of Alexander's Birth

Synchronizations and Plut. Vit. Al. 3.5-9 ... there are a lot of them in Greek historical writing (eg. Herodotus has matched pairs of land battles and sea battles on the same day, most of us suspect that they were really 'within a month or so of one another'). Its always a good idea to be careful wh...
by sean_m
Thu Sep 26, 2019 2:23 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: A Fourth Calgary Dissertation
Replies: 0
Views: 6068

A Fourth Calgary Dissertation

Back in 2015 I blogged about three Calgary dissertations related to Alexander, ancient Macedonia, or ancient horse culture. The fourth of this group is now finished: Dr. Megan Falconer Ward, East Looking West: the Relationship between the Western Satraps and the Greeks (2018) http://hdl.handle.net/1...
by sean_m
Wed Sep 18, 2019 11:15 am
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: The Date of Alexander's Birth
Replies: 55
Views: 444762

Re: The Date of Alexander's Birth

Yes, if its one of the events in his life recorded in Babylonian sources, you can just pop the date into MesoCalc http://baptiste.meles.free.fr/site/mesocalc.html but Greek calendars are complicated and late writers like Plutarch may have already tried to convert between systems and changed the data...
by sean_m
Tue Sep 10, 2019 8:23 pm
Forum: Art and Culture
Topic: The Derveni Gorget/Help with Modern Greek
Replies: 3
Views: 6482

Re: The Derveni Gorget/Help with Modern Greek

Thank you! Maybe the reason I could not find it in dictionaries is that it is a compound word?

Professor Themelis has made his book free to download on academia dot etu
by sean_m
Sun Sep 08, 2019 11:52 am
Forum: Art and Culture
Topic: The Derveni Gorget/Help with Modern Greek
Replies: 3
Views: 6482

The Derveni Gorget/Help with Modern Greek

Plutarch tells us that Alexander, like many North Aegean warriors, wore an iron gorget . The best preserved one is from tomb B at Derveni and is covered in bronze scales. Petros Themelis describes it as follows in his 1997 book ΟΙ ΤΑΦΟΙ ΤΟΥ ΔΕΡΒΕΝΙΟΥ pages 84 and 85: Β46. Μηνοειδές περιτραχήλιον (Πί...
by sean_m
Wed Aug 07, 2019 9:08 am
Forum: 'Off-topic' forum
Topic: Huge anchor
Replies: 2
Views: 5409

Re: Huge anchor

Humh, from the age of Sostratos of Aegina
by sean_m
Sat Aug 03, 2019 8:52 am
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: Hunting and archery
Replies: 8
Views: 4478

Re: Hunting and archery

If you want to learn about the way Alexander would have hunted as he grew up, the best start is Xenophon on hunting.

I would expect that Alexander trained with a bow, a sling, a knife, and any weapon that existed in 4th century Macedonia but bow hunting was not very fashionable.
by sean_m
Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:04 pm
Forum: Book reviews
Topic: Historical inaccuracies
Replies: 10
Views: 12699

Re: Historical inaccuracies

I can't comment on the novel (have not read it yet) but the specialists in Old Iranian think that it was full of diminutives including people like Xenophon's Ariaios. Onomastics is a big field with intimidating jargon and I am not the Greek scholar I would like to be. Babylonians liked nicknames and...
by sean_m
Fri Jul 12, 2019 5:31 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: Power causes Brain Damage?
Replies: 6
Views: 3860

Re: Power causes Brain Damage?

I would expect that losing, killing, or having to send away so many friends unsettled Alexander, and so did going from a boy who might or might not become king to king of a small kingdom to King of the World with rituals and flunkies to keep others from getting close or saying impolitic things. The ...
by sean_m
Fri Jul 12, 2019 3:35 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: Power causes Brain Damage?
Replies: 6
Views: 3860

Re: Power causes Brain Damage?

As an ordinary person who has lived his whole life in small countries next to large countries with powerful people, I can't comment on this thread without getting political, except to say that they seem to be describing a truism in medicalized language which someone from another culture could descri...
by sean_m
Thu Jun 13, 2019 11:47 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: Kathleen Toohey on the Pinarus River
Replies: 1
Views: 2415

Kathleen Toohey on the Pinarus River

https://www.academia.edu/38915045/Battl ... arus_River

She has a series of articles, I think they are based on an old MA or PhD thesis which she is revising.

This used to be a 'session' but I can't find that now.
by sean_m
Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:36 pm
Forum: Comments, help, suggestions etc
Topic: phpBB updated
Replies: 14
Views: 23653

Re: phpBB updated

For my own site I am looking into static site generators like Hugo. They seem a way better choice than Wordpress if you don't want comments and like buttons and the ability to edit your site from the beach and all that other rubbish which creates security holes and creates the possibility of a datab...
by sean_m
Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:43 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: ATG Geography: WHERE IS NORA? + FORCED MARCHES
Replies: 80
Views: 40252

Re: ATG Geography: WHERE IS NORA? + FORCED MARCHES

This is a very good thread, the digressions are all 'good digressions' and I agree that the rules of thumb people suggest are trustworthy rules of thumb. I found a Robert Rollinger footnote on the location of Thapsacus, from Robert Rollinger, "Griechische Spezialisten im alten Vorderasien, oder...
by sean_m
Thu Jun 13, 2019 11:22 am
Forum: Comments, help, suggestions etc
Topic: phpBB updated
Replies: 14
Views: 23653

Re: phpBB updated

Thanks Thomas. Keeping all of these threads available is important, there are some good discussions and people put in a lot of work.
by sean_m
Wed Jun 12, 2019 4:16 pm
Forum: Discuss Alexander the Great
Topic: ATG Geography: WHERE IS NORA? + FORCED MARCHES
Replies: 80
Views: 40252

Re: ATG Geography: WHERE IS NORA? + FORCED MARCHES

Also, I agree with Xenophon that the location of Thapsacus is very much unknown. That is another area which won't be safe for scholarly ramblers for a good long time, but at least until the site is found nobody can loot it into a crater-field. As Agesilaos said, maps, even in scholarly books by univ...