Author Archives: Rebecka Lindau

She-Wolf Exhibition in the Burnam Classics Library, November 3

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Place: Eden Park and the John Miller Burnam Classics Library, UC.
When: November 3. 1. Dedication ceremony in Eden Park at 10:00 am; 2. Exhibition in the Burnam Classics Library after the ceremony.

Exhibition and Dedication Ceremony: In connection with the dedication of the new She-Wolf nursing Romulus (the eponymous founder of ancient Rome) and Remus in Eden Park on November 3, 2023, at 10:00 am (rescheduled from October 20), the John Miller Burnam Classics Library is hosting an exhibition featuring ancient texts about the story underlying the statue, Roman original coins depicting the scene, and photos and a video of the making of the new statue in Tuscany, Italy, before its transport to Cincinnati, and posters with newspaper clippings and other historical materials from the late 1920s and early 1930s concerning the gift of the statue to the City of Cincinnati, the gifting of a “wrong” baby wolf, the explanation of its location in Eden Park, and much more.

Parking: Please plan to visit the Burnam Library after the dedication ceremony. Parking in Cincinnati is always an issue because there are few public transportation options. For the dedication ceremony, plan to arrive at 9:30 am and park at the Krohn Conservatory and walk to Eden Park. For the exhibition, look for parking along Straight Street opposite the Blegen Library building and above, i.e., south of, McMillan Street at the top of Clifton Avenue. There is also metered parking along Clifton Avenue.

Lemonade: Will be served outside the Blegen Library building if it’s a sunny day; inside the lobby if it rains. While enjoying a glass of lemonade, note the Lupa with twins on a relief on the pylon beneath the roof and above the outside entrance to the Blegen building from the 1930s, inspired by the Eden Park statue, which in turn was modeled on a statue now housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy.

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“An Evening with Seneca,” October 5, 4:00-6:15 pm

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  • After a hiatus because of a pandemic, the John Miller Burnam Classics Library is poised to host its third annual author celebration. The honoree this year is Seneca the Younger, author, politician, and Stoic philosopher. We aim to vary the format each year adapted to the author honored. With that in mind, this year we have organized a panel with leading experts on Seneca (James Romm, Bard, Gareth Williams, Columbia, Christopher Trinacty, Oberlin) discussing the curious case of a man promulgating a philosophy of mindfulness and reason while seemingly condoning the murderous behavior of a madman, Emperor Nero, whose advisor and amicus he was.
  • The panel is followed by a presentation of an interdepartmental group of undergraduate students and their participation in an experiment entailing living like a Stoic for one week.
  • As usual, there will be a music performance, this time with chamber music, and, also true to tradition, under the leadership of Yo Shionoya, a DMA candidate at CCM and long-time student worker in the Classics Library, who has chosen to perform works by Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer who had to balance his creative voice with the demands of another madman, Joseph Stalin.
  • Also, as customary, there will be an exhibition featuring rare books, this time of the works of Seneca from the 16th and 17th centuries (below is a 1651 edition of his philosophical works), an incunabulum of the works of Tacitus, a chief source for the life of Seneca,

an original copper coin of Emperor Nero (the copper as below from 65 CE of Nero on the obverse and the closed door to the temple of Janus, symbolizing peace, on the reverse. The phrase S[ENATVS] – C[ONSVLTO on the reverse shows that the issuing of money was still the prerogative of the Senate),

and a reception serving Mediterranean appetizers.

  • For a special treat, Professor Romm will be signing his best-seller, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero.

Place: Reading Room, John Miller Burnam Classics Library, Blegen Library building, 2602 University Circle, off of Clifton Ave.
Date: October 5, 2023
Time: 4:00 – c. 6:15 pm

For additional details, please download the program, flyer, and post below.

Seneca-Event-Program-BurnamDownload

Seneca-event-posterDownload
Seneca-event-social-media-postDownload

The “New Lupa” has Arrived in Cincinnati!

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The Cincinnati chapter of the “Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America” has raised funds to replace the famous She-Wolf, which was stolen from Eden Park on June 16, 2022. A workshop connected to the University of Florence, Italy, has created a replica which was shipped to the United States and arrived in Cincinnati on Friday, August 25, 2023 (see the first three images below, taken by Joe Mastruserio, president of the Cincinnati lodge of OSDIA). The statue will be returned to Eden Park at a dedication ceremony on October 20, 2023, at 10:00 am.

The story of the Lupa (Latin for female wolf) is well-known and can be easily found on Wikipedia, so I won’t repeat it here, just to say that the statue that was stolen and vandalized after criminals had removed it from its base by cutting it off from the paws, leaving the twins and base intact, was originally gifted in 1931 (dedicated in 1932) by the City of Rome, Italy, under the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. He donated wolf statues also to other towns in the U.S. with some connection to Rome, however faint, such as a town in Georgia by the name of Rome. The Cincinnati “connection” was the name of the city and the Roman military leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. The statue was modeled after the so-called Capitoline Wolf thus named as the original is housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy (see the last image below). The date of the original statue is uncertain. Some scholars claim it to be Etruscan from the 5th-4th centuries BCE; others that it is early medieval from the 10th-11th centuries. Other dates have also been suggested. What seems clear is that the nursing twins are additions from the Renaissance (probably late 15th c.).

In connection with the dedication ceremony on October 20, a book exhibition devoted to the She-Wolf and Romulus and Remus will be on display in the Reading Room of the John Miller Burnam Classics Library at UC, featuring texts describing the story of the Wolf’s role in the Founding of ancient Rome, and original Roman coins, such as a silver denarius dating from the Roman Republic; other coins from the time of emperors Antoninus Pius and Constantine, representing the wolf nursing the twins. Interestingly, the depictions are of a wolf looking down at the twins, not at the viewer as in the Capitoline Wolf which, as I mentioned, did not originally include the twins. The relief of the Lupa and twins on the parapet of the façade of the Blegen Library building, housing the Burnam Classics Library, can be viewed at any time (see fourth image below).

As UC is a public university, the exhibition will be open to all. If you can, please attend both events, especially the dedication ceremony in Eden Park to convey the message that Cincinnatians will not allow theft or vandalism of their historic monuments and that we as law-abiding residents are reclaiming our parks as safe and clean spaces for families, wildlife, plant life — and for history!

Classicists — Burnam Library Updates and Happy Summer!

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Happy Summer and congratulations to all our new graduates, not the least our new PhD’s this spring, Sarah Wenner, Cecilia Cozzi, Duccio Guasti, and Andrew Lund, and MA’s, Charlie Kocurek and Dalton Davis!

Please see the Classics Library Newsletter (link below) recounting several new and interesting undertakings, especially the many digitized items, and their descriptions and histories in the new Book Tour and much more. Happy Reading!

Spring Semester 2023 Classics Library April 28

 

 

 

 

Classics Library: Student Assistant Positions Available — Apply Now!

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The John Miller Burnam Classics Library is looking to hire energetic, hard-working, and responsible student assistants.

The UC Classics Library is the premier classics library in the country thanks to its world-class collections and it is a destination library for national and international students and scholars.

We are seeking highly motivated student workers for immediate openings. We offer employment of c. 10-15 hours a week. Unlike most jobs, we work around your class and exam schedules when planning the work schedule for each semester. Thanks to the variety of responsibilities and the excellence of the collections, working in the Classics Library can improve your research and library skills which are important for academic success as well as add to your CV and list of references.

In addition to being a valued member of an international and vibrant scholarly community and a distinguished library, you will be trained in varied and detail-oriented tasks ranging from staffing the circulation desk to shelving books, searching book lists against the library’s catalog, scanning documents, checking for broken web links, dusting shelves, and anything and everything a large and modern academic research library requires. We guarantee that you will not be bored, but because of our library’s important responsibilities and your limited work hours, you will be required to focus on the many tasks of the job rather than on personal social media or homework.

Because of the highly specialized nature of the Classics Library, we prioritize students with a background in Classical Studies and the Humanities in addition to students with western foreign language training, especially in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek in addition to in ancient Greek and Latin. Also, because of a limited budget, we prioritize students on a federal Work/Study grant although we do hire non-work/study students as well.

If this sounds like a good fit for you, please contact us to learn more and to set up an interview at your earliest convenience. Please submit your CV and application form (copy and paste the form into word) to:

Shannan Stewart, library specialist, shannan.stewart@uc.edu and Rebecka Lindau, head, rebecka.lindau@uc.edu

The library is located on the 1st floor of the Blegen Library building.

 

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The 2022 Papyrology Summer Institute at UC

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While many are enjoying summer break, the classics library remains open to visiting scholars and others. This summer, world-renowned papyrologist UC Professor Peter van Minnen has been hosting the Papyrology Summer Institute, held under the auspices of the American Society of Papyrologists. This 5 week-long intensive program has comprised lectures on topics such as petitions, magical papyri, materiality (the archaeology of papyri as objects) by scholars from all over the world in the morning or research and readings in the library followed by examination of papyri on loan from the University of Michigan in the lab (Blegen 320) in the afternoon. Some of the participants could already read Egyptian hieroglyphs, Coptic, and Demotic coming into the program, and all could read Greek and Latin. Each participant works on 3-4 papyri. Their findings are subsequently published in the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists. In addition to the papyri, each participant examines one ostracon (a piece of pottery with writing on it), the publication of which will be as a group.

Polaroid collage of participants in the 2022 Papyrology Summer Institute at UC by one of the participants, Dr. Ella Karev, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.

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Happy Birthday, Julius Caesar!

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Today, July 12, is the birthday of Julius Caesar, born 2,122 years ago. It is somewhat uncertain if the day is a cause for celebration or mourning. He, like many modern-day would-be dictators and populists, had imperial designs, invading parts of northern and central Europe, and challenging Rome itself, casting the dice when crossing the river Rubicon, giving rise to not only an insurrection but a full-fledged civil war for the soul, or at least survival, of democracy. He won and was appointed dictator for life. That is until Marcus Brutus and others assassinated him on the Ides of March in 44 BCE at the site of the curia and theater of Pompey, a friend turned foe, and four Republican temples excavated by another dictator, and amateur “archaeologist,” Benito Mussolini, and now the home of a popular cat sanctuary. The assassins were initially hailed as heroes and saviors of the Republic. Ironically, the assassination may have backfired as the long-running (almost 500 year) democratic (excluding women and slaves) Republic turned into an equally long dictatorship, beginning with Emperor Augustus, by comparison a relatively “benign” ruler, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar, which later produced such notorious dictators as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian.

Julius Caesar | Biography, Conquests, Facts, & Death | Britannica

Unlike some other populists, Caesar was an intelligent and well-educated man, an author and historian, whose works, along with those of his opponent Cicero, are read by American school children, not only for their historic content but also for their exemplary prose. His name lives on in words for an omnipotent ruler, Tsar, Czar, and Kaiser, and for the month of July. After his death, he was deified and a comet which had appeared was hailed as a sign of his divinity. Yes, people interpreted “signs” and “hidden messages” then, too.

Julius Caesar’s birth would not have been possible without the aid of the She-Wolf who saved the lives of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome and Caesar’s ancestors. No doubt Caesar was turning in his grave during the theft and desecration of his great-great-great… grand-mother in Eden Park less than a month ago.  Would it not be a wonderful birthday present for Caesar (and for us all!) if she were returned or found further unharmed (the kidnappers cut off her paws)!? Dum spiro, spero.

Happy Birthday, Julius!
Felix sit dies natalis tuus, Iuli!