By Patrick Hunt Jean A. D. Ingres (1780-1867) painted Dante’s story of Paolo and Francesca as an ekphrasis in similar settings multiple times, beginning in 1819 and through at least to 1856. (1) This article summarizes Ingres’ Paolo and Francesca (48 cm x 39 cm), 1819, Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts. According […]
Author: patrick
The Muse of History
By Staff What intellectual “postcard” should we choose to send ourselves from any great repository of history? Several of our Electrum Magazine staff-members (Patrick Hunt, A.C. Williams, P.F. Sommerfeldt and Melissa Guertin) were at the British Museum this past week (late March 2011) – and some of us for five […]
Mary Harrsch’s Classical Photo Essay
by Mary Harrsch Mary Harrsch has a love for Classics going back several decades, which she juxtaposes with her work as a professional photographer and media wizard. The images in this photo essay span at least a decade, but Mary’s presence, alongside her sharp eyes and keen eye provide many […]
Archaeology in the Petén: The Early Classic Maya Site of Holmul in Guatemala
by Brianna Rego Although I was born in Guatemala, I moved to Idaho when I was 5. My early-childhood memories are filled with larger than life books of Maya pyramids, dog-eared copies of Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, and parental controlled expeditions with my brothers through the vines and jungles surrounding […]
Mapping History: The Abbey Library of St. Gall
by A. C. Williams The Abbey Library of Saint Gall, known as the Stiftsbibliothek of St. Gallen, is one of the oldest and most illustrious libraries in the world. The Stiftsbibliothek and surrounding St. Gall Abbey precinct have together served for centuries as one of the leading cultural centers in […]
Edges of Empire – the new excavations at Binchester Roman town, UK
by Gary Devore and Michael Shanks The new excavations of Binchester Roman town in the north of England, running since 2009, are seeking new answers to old questions about the Roman empire and its administration, about the character of military occupation, the life and experiences of locals and the soldiers […]
Cultural Heritage Imaging: Digital Pioneers in Archaeological Preservation
by Patrick Hunt While photography of archaeological artifacts for recording stretches back over a century plus, the needs to visually preserve a record of materials has only multiplied exponentially since the mid-19th century. In fact, archaeology was one of the first disciplines to employ the nascent medium of photography for […]
Thinking in planetary time scales: How modern technology helps us understand ancient episodes of climate change
by James Geary When did human beings start changing the environment? It’s a difficult question, since the further back in time you go the less reliable the evidence becomes. But thanks to new technologies and a new breed of innovative archeologist, the answers are becoming a little clearer. The emerging […]
Shakespeare and the Classics: Plutarch, Ovid and Inspiration
by Andrew Phillips and Patrick Hunt The authors of this article are amusingly inspired by the coincidence that in 1572 one of the Masters of Shakespeare’s Stratford Grammar School (King’s New School) was Simon Hunt and that the will of a fellow actor named Augustine Phillips bequeathed the Bard thirty […]
Electrum: from Ancient to Modern Meanings
by Patrick Hunt Historical linguistics often surprises us about how old are some of the words we use today, especially when we might expect they were coined only within the last century or so. While some of these old words, either commonplace like “star” and “myth”, or not so common […]