Anne Byrne escapes a rainy day in Dublin with an on-line journey through times gone by and finds herself fascinated by the many wonders of the ancient world that are there for the taking on the web
The sunny blue skies arching over the ancient Greek theatre of Dodona are enough to predispose anyone to a tour of classical sites, whether virtual or real.
So, while the rain beat against the windows of The Irish Times, I set off a tour of Greece, courtesy of Classics Éireann (http://homepage.mac.com/ classicseireann/). The theatre of Dodona, with its 21 tiers of seating, divided into three sections, was one of the largest theatres in Greece. Dating from the third century BC, it was excavated in 1959, and looks like the perfect setting for a picnic in 2002.
Back in Ireland (still raining), the Classis Éireann site includes a useful survey of the Irish universities' classical offerings. UCD, TCD, UCC, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth and QUB are represented, with information on departmental history, size, resources, staff and research.
On the "not-so-serious page" there are links to general Irish sites, including the national archives, the national library, and the Official Unofficial Official Father Ted Fan Page.
Another Irish site, www.ucd.ie/~classic/ ClassicsIreland.html, has information on the Classical Association of Ireland, which is open to anyone with an interest in the ancient world. Its aim is to provide lectures, field trips and social events so people can cultivate that interest. The association's journal, Classics Ireland, is available in both electronic and printed form.
Who could resist an article, in the online version, entitled "Plato in Wonderland or 'Beautiful soup' and other more philosophical ideas". August A Imholtz Jr asks if the already-long catalogue of literary influences on Lewis Carroll's Alice books could include Plato? Is the Mock Turtle singing of "Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen! Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful soup! soup of the evening, beautiful soup!" an echo of Plato's Hippias Major dialogue? "Hippias: We shall at any rate admit that whatever is appropriate to a particular thing makes that thing beautiful. Socarates: he (the troublesome guest) will continue, then when a man oils the pot of which we spoke, the beautiful pot, full of beautiful soup, which is more appropriate to it - a ladle of gold or a ladle of fig wood?"
Did Carroll read Hippias Major in Greek? He certainly could have done, argues Imholz, as he gained a second in classic moderations in Oxford.
Which leads us nicely cross the water to that other bastion of British higher education, Cambridge University, whose Faculty of Classic and Museum of Classical Archaeology website (www.classic.cam.ac.uk) provides a useful guide to the "who, what, when, where, sometimes how and occasionally why of classical myths and history". This will be particularly useful to those of us whose education did not include the study of the classics.
Sticking with the As, it includes Amazonomachy (name given to the slaughter of the Amazons in Greek myth), Antiope (a mythical women who spent most of her career being abducted or escaping), Archiac (an early period of Greek art, roughly 600 BC to 480 BC) and Akroterion (you'll just have to look this one up yourself).
Skipping forward in the alphabet, it's time to visit Qumran and "The World of the Scrolls" (www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/world.scrolls.html). In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds, searching for a stray goat in the Judean desert, found jars filled with ancient scrolls in a cave. Within a short period after their discovery, historical, palaeographic and linguistic evidence, as well as carbon 14 dating, established that the scrolls date from the third century BC to 68 AD. Coming from a time when Jesus lived, the Dead Sea Scrolls are older than other surviving bilblical manuscripts by almost 1,000 years.
The descriptions and photographs of accompanying artefacts provide a fascinating insight into everyday life.
The unusually arid climatic conditions at Qumran meant many wooden objects, such as bowls, boxes, mirror frames and combs, have survived. One side of a two-sided comb has closely-spaced teeth for straightening the hair, while the other side provides even more teeth for delousing the scalp, we are told. And I thought the fine comb was a modern invention, designed to torture parents and their children alike.
So, what else were children and adults doing, about this time? A website on Roman ball games (www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/romeball.html) shows a fresco, dating from the first century AD, depicting several young men playing ball. The Romans enjoyed a variety of ball games, including forms of handball, field hockey and soccer. Another fresco shows bikini-clad girls exercising, one with a medicine ball of oblong shape, another with dumbbells.
The range of sites dealing with the classical world is bewildering. As the Classic Resources site of the Victoria University of Wellington www.vuw.ac.nz/ classics/ resources.html notes: "There are more sources of information and of links for the classicist on the internet than you can click a mouse at." A site such as this can make a useful departure point for a virtual tour of the classical world.
