Category Archives: Poetry

The Power of Song and Music at Pompeii

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Clearly some houses at Pompeii are more prone to disaster than others. Not only was dwelling III 5.1, the shop and house of Pascius Hermes, destroyed and covered by volcanic matter just like everything else at Pompeii: it was damaged … Continue reading →

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Grand Theft Pompeii

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Just off Pompeii’s principal street, the so-called Via dell’Abbondanza (‘Street of Abundance’), painted onto a pilaster between two doorways, the following (somewhat fragmentary) inscription was discovered (CIL IV 64): Vrna aenia pereit de taberna. Sei quis rettulerit dabuntur HS LXV, … Continue reading →

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Lecture: ‘Aufidius was here. (Really? And where exactly?)’

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Today I had the great pleasure to open the ‘Pompeii: The Present and Future of Vesuvian Research‘ seminar series at the University of Leeds, organised by Dr Virginia Campbell and Dr Rick Jones. A video of my lecture is now … Continue reading →

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An Olympic Shitstorm

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Poking fun at Russia and its organisation of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi has become a new pastime. Among the more recent entertaining news feature stories of loos that lack dividing walls between individual toilets – a gaffe that … Continue reading →

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Hot Air and Sage Advice, or: Human, All Too Human (A Blog Post for Free Thinkers)

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

There has been a remarkable wave of outputs recently, traditional and web-based, that conceptualised the wish to find ancient Roman fore-runners of the walls of social media, counterparts for toilet graffiti and related witticisms, or at least some proto-memes by … Continue reading →

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Plautus on Immigration and Domestic Policy

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

The Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (254-184 BC) wrote a play called Mostellaria (‘The Spectre’ or ‘The Haunted House’). In the second scene of the play, Philolaches, a young man who enjoys life rather more than he should while his … Continue reading →

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Out of the woods?

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Peter Kruschwitz

This is a slightly shortened version of a paper given as introductory talk on occasion of a celebration of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 700th birthday, organised by Dr Paola Nasti (Department of Modern Languages and European Studies). Boccaccio’s Bucolicum carmen 5: ‘Silva … Continue reading →

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Sine fine, or: Imaginations of Infinity, Unlimitedness, and Limitlessness

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Peter Kruschwitz

Jupiter, in the first book of Vergil’s Aeneid, outlines his vision for the future and develops a strategy for the Roman Empire. One of the highlights of his speech is a well-known, rather extraordinary promise (Verg. Aen. 1.278-9): His ego … Continue reading →

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Grapes and Wrath, or: Phaedrus on Things Too High

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Peter Kruschwitz

Former UK Prime Minister Sir John Major recently expressed his shock at ‘at the way in which every sphere of modern public life is dominated by a private school-educated elite and well-heeled middle class’. ‘Our education system should help children … Continue reading →

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False Worship and Filthy Lucre

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Peter Kruschwitz

Thomas Bonney of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1728, performed a Latin poem at Reading School. The poem, like several others from similar occasions, is reported in the addenda et corrigenda of Charles Coates’s marvellous 1802 The History and Antiquities of … Continue reading →

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