Tag Archives: Song Culture

Fruit of the Doom: an Image of Life, Death, and Letting Go in Roman Poetry

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

Death has been on my mind lately, having recently learnt of the untimely passing of two of my colleagues at the University of Reading. Whether death was imminent or came suddenly, whether it hits the old or the young – … Continue reading →

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Undying Voices: The Poetry of Roman Britain

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

Britain has produced some of the world’s most highly renowned, influential, and beautiful poetry – Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare,  John Milton, Robert Burns, the Brontë sisters, Lewis Carroll, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to name but a select few! … Continue reading →

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Poverty and the Poetics of Underclass Morality

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

Is there a direct (inversely proportional) relation between (desired) material wealth and morality? The author of the first pseudo-Sallustian letter to Caesar appears to think so ([Sall.] epist. 1.7.3-9; transl. J. C. Rolfe): But by far the greatest blessing which … Continue reading →

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The Faint Voices of the Poor of Ancient Rome

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

More often than not, we tend to turn our eyes away from poverty and the poor, the blemish on the conscience of our society in which everything exists in abundance and in which no one would have to suffer from … Continue reading →

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Fixing a Cracked Record

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Vergil, Rome’s most celebrated poet, in his sixth eclogue (an altogether intriguing piece!), imagines a fantastic story. Silenus lies in a cave, sleeping off his state of inebriation, when two young men, Chromis and Mnasyllos, catch sight of him. Driven … Continue reading →

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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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