Duncan MacRae

Classical Quarterly has just published a new article by me on Suetonius’ Life of Titus and the allusive representation of that emperor’s relationship with the Herodian Berenice. You can find the article here.

I didn’t get the chance to properly acknowledge those who helped with this paper: Kathleen Coleman, Richard Thomas, Lauren Ginsberg and Daniel Markovic. I hope that the topic – at the intersection of Jewish history, Latin literature, translation – might have been to the taste of my friend Isaac Meyers, may his memory be a blessing.

My reading this week has been Jo Guldi and David Armitage’s The History Manifesto, an appropriately polemic case for a certain form of historical practice in the twenty-first century. The short book, available for free under a Creative Commons license and published last Fall, has already been subject of serious debate among modern historians. See here for an impressive list of reviews and discussion of the book.

I’m currently teaching Livy and have been writing over the last couple of years about the history of antiquarianism and of historiography, so I found myself thinking about The History Manifesto in a long (longue-durée?) tradition of justifications for writing history and claims about the form that should take.

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A couple of friends posted this incredible video to Facebook this morning. Yesterday Sen. Ted Cruz spoke on the Senate floor against President Obama’s executive action on immigration and decided that Cicero had said it best, back in 63 BCE. In an re-worked version of the First Catilinarian, the Senator from Texas played Cicero. For the Romanist, it’s a must-watch.

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This post has a local origin, but is a global story – one that, I think, raises interesting questions about the role of Greek and Roman religion in shaping the interpretation of non-Western cultures. Inspired by an excellent book that I read a little while ago – Jason Ananda Josephson’s The Invention of Religion in Japan – I became interested in reading a little about Shinto. Then I put together a local connection: some time ago, Jack Davis, a fellow Irish citizen, introduced me to another Irish person who had come to Cincinnati – Lafcadio Hearn, a famous Victorian writer on Japan. I had not heard of this figure, who could be fairly described as Twain crossed with Poe crossed with Yeats crossed with the Brothers Grimm.

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I’ve been thinking and writing about Roman curses a lot lately and this is a quick thought about a recently published curse tablet from the fons Annae Perennae in Rome. In Gordon and Simón (eds.) Magical Practice in the Roman West (Leiden, 2010), J.Blänsdorf publishes 8 curse tablets from the fountain of Anna Perenna on the Campus Martius (p.215-244). Continue reading →

I intend to use this space to ‘think out loud’ about my work and to engage in some of the lively online debate that the ancient world provokes.

 

I’m expecting posting to be occasional and I’ll be aiming to keep the posts short and readable.