PSA the legality of the acquisition of large parts of the Parthenon frieze is dubious, as shown in St Clair's book on Elgin: the Ottoman document allowed Elgin to draw, take mouldings, and excavate to look for inscriptions, and take "a few pieces with inscriptions or figures" 1/ The formulation makes clear that this is a minor part of the permission, and that these would be the result of the digging and rooting around the Akropolis. The Turkish authorities were alarmed when Elgin's team started taking the frieze and metopes, and bribed into silence 2/

Incidentally, if interested in post-bac / masters / doctoral study at @Columbia to work with me on anc history, I'd be glad to talk. (But am on leave & travelling a bit so be patient for an answer). This message is inspired by a few emails I received from prospectives. I am honoured that they should ask if I was "accepting doctoral students". Of course; always. But the decision is naturally not mine, but the Dept's. Nonetheless, it's worth, in yr letter, being specific about

Some Achaimenid articles, on issues of power, identity, empire. THREAD
M C Benvenuto on the use of Aramaic by Achaimenid elites in Phrygia

researchgate.net/publication/30… A classic piece:
Benveniste, E. 1954. ‘Éléments perses en araméen d’Égypte’, JA 242, 297–310.

More thoughts on Millar, Emperor in the Roman World (1977). THREAD Hopkins' review (rehashed in a recent essay in the TLS) wished for another book, of "new" social history. Millar's gambit was that documentality, institutions and ideology were tightly bound, and produced... a totalizing history of the state in action, i.e. government-- through documentality (i.e. the performative nature of language), culture (the specificity of institutions, which "good" i.e. non simplificatory positivism got at), identity (constructivism) and geography...

I argue that in 167-4 BC the Seleukid colony in Judaea was refounded and Jerusalem (including Temple) was assigned to it; that this was reversed upon petition by local elites. These would be the events behind Hanukkah. The arguments are technical
marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/re-examining-h… More here:
academia.edu/11446845/Argum…

Reread R. Dussaud, L'oeuvre scientifique d'Ernest Renan (1951), bought in 2000 for 100 FF, at Geuthner. Too much summary and biography, not enough intellectual history, but full of good things. Have not read N. Richard's 2015 book "La vie de Jésus" as C19th best-seller Renan as historical philologist of Semitic languages: Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic and Arabic are the four pillars (aware of Ethiopic but Assyriological stuff not part of purview). Meillet in 1923 still thought his historical essay (ed 3) valuable though obsolete in details.

Rereading Thuc 1, so looked at Philippson, Die gr. Landschaften. II.2 on "W. Central Greece and the W. islands", section on "Kerkyra (Korfù). A few things stood out. 1. Fertility and prosperity of E side, because of rainfall & geology, opposed to "dead" W side (Wildseite); 2. Complexity and articulation of the island, in several subunits; its peraia; 3. once given over to wine growing, then olive culture forcibly imposed by Venitians; terrible decline. 4. Disconnected from Aegean; once necessary stage on way to W. Med; decline after steamboats.

@CUDeptClassics Friday, October 19: morning (Columbia University, Schermerhorn Hall 612)
1. Weapons, Good to Think With (9:30-11 am) @CUDeptClassics Christine Mauduit (ENS), “Around the Sword: Some Thoughts about Ajax’s Suicide”
- Deborah Steiner (Columbia), "Arms and the Symposion”