From my diary

I’ve asked a colleague to translate for us Leontius of Byzantium, Adversus fraudes Apollinistarum (Against the forgeries of the Apollinarists) (CPG 6817, PG 86, col. 1948-1976).  This is fourteen and a half columns of Migne, and may well be interesting.  The circulation of banned works under other names was an inevitable consequence of the intolerance in the 5th century, and it will be very interesting to see what Leontius uses by way of criteria for identifying these things.

I’m preparing for my trip to Rome.  I’ve made a list of Mithraic monuments that I hope to photograph.  It looks as if I may be able to go to Ostia Antica as well!

On a less pleasant note, I’ve had to add additional security code to the Mithras site.  The incessant attempts to hack my site show up in the log, and are sobering to see.

Rather foolishly – for I don’t enjoy reviewing books – I have agreed to review Tony Burke’s, Ancient gospel or modern forgery, the volume of papers from the “Secret Mark” conference.  Wipf and Stock have started to send me stuff. 

It will be interesting to see if any substantive reply has emerged to Stephen C. Carlson’s crushing demolition of the book.  Carlson suggested that the book was a scholarly hoax rather than a forgery; a distinction of real importance, but not always noted by either his supporters or opponents.

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3 thoughts on “From my diary

  1. Remember that the Circus Maximus and Santa Prisca mithrea are only open at certain very limited times or with a group tour. I’m in Jerusalem right now, so away from my records, but I think it was the second Saturday of the month for the Santa Prisca Mithraeum. For the Circus Maximus, it is one tour company that does tours, but I can’t remember their name. There is no photography allowed at San Clemente, but I cheated and snapped a couple of shots when no one was looking. For Ostia, I plotted all the mithrea on Google earth if you are interested. There’s also a website that does the same thing. I’ll be back in Berlin on Sunday if you need me to pass along any of this information from my trip. I will be interested to read what you see on your trip. Craig PS Oh, I almost forgot. There was a new book on Mithrea (new to me) in the giftshop at the National Museum. Book is in Italian, but I cannot remember the title or author. I just grabbed it thinking I’d get back to it later. Let me know if you want to know more about this and I’ll send after Sunday.

  2. Thank you for the reminders. Sadly I won’t be alone on this trip and so probably won’t be able to do a lot of serious monument-visiting. But it does look as if I will at least be able to visit Ostia!

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