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Poison-Damsels and Other Essays in Folklore and Anthropology by N. M. Penzer London: Chas. J. Sawyer, 1952 The present four Essays are based on Appendixes originally published in my edition of C. H. Tawney’s Kathā-Sarit-Sāgara, which I called The Ocean of Story. Somewhat hidden in such a large work—it ran to ten volumes—and in view […]
Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) Update: I have included links to the posts in the list of chapters. I may include links to other books that tie in with the chapter posts (such as N. M. Penzer’s essay on Poison Damsels) as I get to […]
Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) Except for the account of the west coast of Africa with Cerne and the trade in Attic pottery, to which we have already referred, the Periplus of Scylax is not a particularly exciting work, nor has it any pretensions to […]
Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) Now the poison-damsel legend is that of a girl who, being poison herself but immune to it, brings death to all she comes in contact with; in some forms of the legend her mere look is fatal, in others it […]
Pytheas’ route Fridays with Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) continues, although a little late… Of the three great explorers of the ancient world Pytheas has had the worst fortune. Of none of them has the personal narrative survived, but the work of Hippalus and Hanno, […]
Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) To what extent the civilizations whose remains have been discovered in North-West India influenced and were influenced by the civilizations of Mesopotamia and, thereby, influenced those of the Western World, we cannot as yet determine. Such influence there certainly was, […]
It’s Friday so I’m continuing with a chapter from Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936). In studying any long period of history, one frequently realizes that great ‘discoveries’ which have profoundly influenced civilization are, after all, only rediscoveries—though the later discoverers showed every whit as much […]
10th century CE Greek copy of Aristachus Samos’s 2nd century BCE calculations of the relative sizes of the Sun, Moon and the Earth Picutre source Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) So stupendous is the work of the Greeks in art, literature, and philosophy that there […]
Codex Heidelbergensis 398 The single surviving manuscript of Hanno’s Periplus Locate din the Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg Picture sourceOff the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) For the most part the student must lament that ‘the iniquity of oblivion’ has overtaken work of the utmost value, but sometimes a precious […]
Off the Beaten Track in the Classics by Carl Kaeppel (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936) Kaeppel begins his book with an essay on “Gais Iulius Solinus, a Teller of Wonder-Tales”. Solinus’ work, the Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium (Gallery of Wonderful Things), was written somewhere between 230 and 280 A.D. by Kaeppel’s reckoning. Different editions of it […]