Sean Redmond

Demosthenes always seemed a little tragic to me. He messes up enough in Aitolia that he can't come back to Athens (similar to someone else we know), redeems himself, but then doesn't get enough credit for Sphakteria, and is killed in Sicily. T. seems to draw him as someone who deserved better

What I Learned Going Viral On Museum Twitter | Jonathan Talmi

Catching up w the guy who made the BM chatbot where you could chat w human remains & did u kno your uncomfortableness with that comes from

"an obsequious need for moral & ideological purity, & obedience to a set of ideological principles that were far from mainstream"

www.talms.me/posts/living...

The thing about PBS is that LeVar Burton was to me what MrBeast is to kids today.

For reals

Or would Perikles have seen the limits of his strategy himself and been better (or worse!) than Kleon at more aggressive strategy?

Massively distributed Bicameral cloud mind as a service

Frame #8292 from 60sE11 the small planets

I haven't read enough Badian to judge whether he just wasn't up on the voluminous and frustrating debates about the calendar to think of the visible new moon, or was staking out a real opinion (contra Miller?) about the 19th vs the 20th.

I don't think there's anywhere near enough evidence to resolve that so, unless the task is establish a date with precision for precision's sake (which I don't think we can do for Alexander), we should just say "around the 20th."

Pritchett argued it was *always* observational and Meritt that it was occasional observations with alternation in between. Alternation is a perfectly good approximation as long as you're willing to put up with the occasional νουμηνία when the moon isn't visible yet.

Geminos is pretty clear that the conjunction occurs on the last day of the month (Ph 8.1) and that the νουμηνία is when the moon appears after the conjunction (Ph 8.11), but the more essential question is whether the Greeks began each month by observation or mostly just alternated hollow and full

... and the likely date of the Olympics of 356 serve to increase the likelihood that Plutarch's date is correct

...and Plutarch's account of Alexander's birth gives this hypothesis more likelihood. The best reason to doubt Plutarch's date is because you don't trust the coincidence of the temple of Ephesus burning the same day, but the independent evidence of the fit between Alexander's birth date...

A lot of Greek calendar discussions end up being an Ouroboros like this but, while I have a *lot* of opinions about bad circular logic in Benjamin Meritt's calendar reconstructions, I think this is valid. It's *likely* that the ancient Olympics happened at the 2nd new moon after the solstice...

But Alexander was probably born on 6 Hecatombaeon, whereas the Olympic victory was about July 26: see S. G. Miller, "The Date of Olympic Festivals," AthMitt 90 (1975), 229-230.

If, as will have been the case frequently, Hekatombaion in 356 was the first month after the summer solstice, then the birth of Alexander will have taken place on or around July 20. Whether or not one accepts the historicity of the date given by Plutarch, or the validity of placing Hekatombaion at the first new moon after the summer solstice, the significance for our purposes is that the date of Alexander's birth was close enough to the date of the Olympic festival to allow the story of the three simultaneous reports to gain credence.

Worth noting that Badian cites Miller "The Date of Olympic Festivals" as foundation for Plutarch's date being correct. Miller uses Plutarch's story to bolster his hypothesis that the Olympics occurred at the 2nd new moon after the summer solstice

So Philip would have been in Olympia when Alexander was born. I could easily have taken a few days for word to reach him, enough time for him to win his horse race before he heard

356 just happened to be a year when there was a new moon (Jun 29?) right after after the solstice on Jun 27. So after the first *new* moon on Jul 14, the next *full* moon, in the middle of Hekatombaion, was the *second* after the solstice

If it's true that the ancient Olympics culminated on the second full moon after the solstice, this normally falls in the middle of the second Athenian month, Metageitnion which would have been late August in 356. But...

The really cool thing, though, and this is the point the Badian is really making, is that another part of the story, that Philip heard the news about Alexander's birth after just winning an Olympic horse race (Plut. Alex. 3.5), is plausible

All this is +/- because there are lot of ways it could be a little earlier or later than we think. But, to quote Badian, "The difference, in any case, will not be more than a day or two."

Which is, at a minimum, something like 13 hours after the conjunction. In practical terms it is likely to be the next day after the conjunction, i.e. July 15. If that is Hekatombaion 1, then Hek 6 is July 20.

The conjunction occurred on July 14 (Badian's date and time derive ultimately from Ginzel's _Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie_). The day of the *conjunction* should the last day of Athenian Skirophorion. The first of the month is when the waxing moon is visible...

I hate to nitpick Ernst Badian, but I do think he's wrong here. He seems to be counting from the conjunction (July 14) not the visible new moon which should be July 15 or later. Counting 6 days (inclusive) from the *15th* is how we get July 20

It's on the *left hand* side of the page though, so maybe there's another footnote out there

In case I caused a misunderstanding: this is a footnote in an article of Badian's. I just mentioned Bickerman because Badian cites him here

"But it is generally agreed that Hecatombaeon was the first lunar month that began after the summer solstice. (See, in general, A. E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity. Hd. d. Alt. 1.7 [1972], 64, with note I.) In 356, the new moon phased in Athens about 7:30 p.m. on July 14. (For the precise time, see E.J. Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World [Ithaca, N.Y., 1968], 115, given, of course, in GMT.) If that day was 1 Hecatombaeon, Alexander was born on July 19.The difference, in any case, will not be more than a day or two."

I love a good anecdote but I wonder if it just goes back to this (Studies in the History of Art [1982] 10 48n34)? Bickermann reproduces Ginzel's tables of new moons which are still pretty good for 120 year old hand calculations.

This was a really nice explainer. Does anyone know the source of the anecdote about Ernst Badian going to the Harvard Astronomy Department to ask about the date of the new moon in July 356 BCE?

Barber cutting a man's hair Greek Late Archaic or Early Classical Period about 500–475 BC Place of Manufacture: Greece, Boiotia, Tanagra MEDIUM/TECHNIQUE Terracotta DIMENSIONS Height: 11.6 cm (4 9/16 in.) CREDIT LINE Museum purchase with funds donated by contribution ACCESSION NUMBER 01.7784 ON VIEW Daily Life in Ancient Greece Gallery (Gallery 212A-B) COLLECTIONS Ancient Greece and Rome CLASSIFICATIONS Sculpture DESCRIPTION Two bearded men wearing chitons. One, a barber, cuts the hair of the seated man. The flesh of both men is dark red. The chitons appear to have been white and the stool, yellow. The base of the group was once white with red paint along the edge. PROVENANCE By 1901: with E. P. Warren; purchased by MFA from E. P. Warren, December 1901

Just an Ancient Greek barber 💈 (a κουρέως) from Tanagra cutting some hair. Daily life is the best life—for this here historian (Late Archaic or Early Classical Period about 500–475 BCE, Boston MFA). collections.mfa.org/objects/1517...

NYPL fellowship to use their Islamic Studies/Middle East/N. Africa-related collections:
networks.h-net.org/jobs/68904/n...

When I was in grad school someone sent NYU (and who knows how many other Classics Depts) a box-full of copies of a self-published book arguing his version. I still have a copy somewhere (I think that one was the western Mediterranean)