I thought today I would:
a) be a little self-indulgent again, and
II) do some real history this time.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I know I’ve brought this up in other places: I’ve been listening to the back numbers of Mike Duncan’s “History of Rome” podcast, and enjoying them a great deal. Some other bloggers have been discussing history, and especially Roman history as well. So today’s entries are all Roman themed, for reasons.
I know these are long, and I apologize, but I think they are worthwhile.
First of all: this is a talk at Stanford University from 2011 by Dame Mary Beard: “Mistaken Identities: How to Identify a Roman Emperor”, in which she talks about various busts and statues, and why the identification of them with Romans like Julius Caesar probably isn’t true.
(You could probably fast forward to about the 7:00 mark if you want to skip the excessively long introduction.)
Bonus video: “The Accidental Suicide of the Roman Empire” by Michael Kulikowski. I have another reason for posting this: while Dr. Kulikowski is currently at Penn State, he gave this lecture in 2012 at Washington and Lee University, where he was formerly a professor of history. So this is basically bait for the Washington and Lee contingent out there.
Bonus #2: Dame Beard again, at the 92nd Street Y from 2015, talking about SPQR: The History of Rome.
I was going to write more about Dame Beard, but I find that pretty much everything I wanted to say, I wrote not long after reading SPQR in 2015.
Point of etiquette: if someone is both a PhD and an OBE, does the OBE title (Dame or Knight) take precedence over the “Dr.”? I would assume that it does, since I believe it is a lot harder to become an OBE than a PhD, but I’d like to establish that for certain.