The Ad Navseam podcast, where Classical gourmands can finally get their fill. Join hosts Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle for a lively discussion of Greco-Roman civilization stretching from the Minoans and Mycenaeans, through the Renaissance, and right down to the present.
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Civil Serpents: The Myths of Asclepius and the Healing Sanctuary at Epidauros (Ad Navseam, Episode 159)
1:08:32
This week the guys take ya'll on a virtual tour of the ancient cult site Epidauros. As part of Jeff's continuing project of 3D reconstructions on archaeological sites, he helms us through a look at the origins of the famous ancient healer (or quack?), the abaton where invalids sought to meet the demigod in their dreams or be introduced to one of hi…
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Becoming Nobody: A Conversation with Homeric Bluesman Joe Goodkin (Ad Navseam, Episode 158)
1:09:46
This week the guys interview (via Zoom from Chicago) wandering troubadour Joe Goodkin, a singer/songwriter/guitarist who has traveled the world performing his intimate interpretations of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. This lively conversation includes Joe's background as a Classics major at the University of Wisconsin, his dues-paying in rock bands in …
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Jeff and Dave are at it again, with a veritable pent, hept, dec -athlon of "Physical Education" bits and blocks, and a major excursus on the centrality of sport to Greek educational culture. Sure, you think you like sports, with your Big 10, your PAC 12, your SEC, your NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA, MLS, FIFA, FIDE, etc. But trust us, your devotion to s…
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Barbarisms at the Gates: Some Perils in Active Latin Pedagogy, with Patrick Owens (Ad Navseam, Episode 156)
1:11:46
This week sees the return of active Latin guru Patrick Owens, live via Zoom to discuss his 2016 article “Barbarisms at the Gate”. In this piece Patrick delves into the current state of the use of spoken Latin in language acquisition and in particular some of the pitfalls and challenges that remain. The guys get into the particulars of the history o…
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The Golden Age of the Classics in America by Carl Richard, Part II (Ad Navseam, Episode 155)
1:09:55
This week Jeff and Dave continue their look at Carl Richard's 2009 masterpiece on Classics in America. As Richard surveys the antebellum landscape, there are some surprises in store. For example, devotion to the Classics, to the expanding literary reign of 'Tully' was not limited to the eastern elite along the seaboard. Even in the hinterlands, rus…
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The Golden Age of the Classics in America by Carl Richard, Part I (Ad Navseam, Episode 154)
1:11:33
This week we salute American independence with a dive into Carl Richards’ fascinating tome The Golden Age of the Classics in America (2009). The guys begin with a look at the state of Classical education during the antebellum era, frontloading the discussion with questions as to why Classical education was the default at this time: did Americans be…
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This week the guys wrap up the second portion of Marrou's chapter on the ancient ephebia, that system of education for youth ages 14-21 that was popularized by the city of Athens and which spread to more than 100 cities around the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic era. What were the features of this system, and how did they vary from polis to po…
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This week the guys are back into Marrou and off into the history of education during the Hellenistic Era. Contrary to what one might think, following the transformation of the world after the conquests of Alexander, the world of education did not become centralized and governed from on high by the potentates of succeeding dynasties. In fact there w…
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Hiss and Tell!: Lucian of Samosata's Alexander the False Prophet, Part 2 (Ad Navseam, Episode 151)
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Dave and Jeff are off to Abonoteichus this week to wrap up Lucian of Samosata's crazy account of Alexander the False Prophet. If you like crazy, you're going to love this episode. It has a bit of everything: Big Sid the Standale Terror, Jeff's dad sporting with fugitive serpents, the origin of mustard, food trucks, snakes in a can, and so much more…
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Hissterical!: Lucian of Samosata's Alexander the False Prophet, Part 1 (Ad Navseam, Episode 150)
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This week Jeff and Dave take a break from the Marrou series to talk about 2nd century A.D. satirist Lucian of Samosata. Born in the further reaches of Asia Minor, Lucian made a name for himself as a Greek stylist by making fun of the rich and powerful, including the gods. Many claim him as the inventor of the science fiction genre because of his mo…
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This week Jeff and Dave continue on with Marrou's clues, finishing up the last portion of Chapter VII, Part I, Isocrates, and taking on all of Chapter I, Part II, "The Civilization of the Paideia". For Isocrates, the comparison to Plato continues, particularly with respect to the question of the teaching and inculcation of virtue. Is it possible, a…
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Isocrates, Yousocrates, Hesocrates? This week Jeff and Dave are back at it with the work of H. I. Marrou and education in antiquity. Here they tackle the last bit of Part I of the book, Chapter VII, and the groundbreaking "humanist" Isocrates. Born in 436, he spent the first part of his career as a "hired gun" speech-writer, before developing an in…
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We Know What you Did Last, Summers: A Conversation with Kirk Summers about Theodore Beza as Poet (Ad Navseam, Episode 147)
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This week Jeff and Dave welcome into the studio Classicist extraordinaire and all around good guy Dr. Kirk Summers. We should probably also mention that Kirk is a Prof. of Classics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, former co-owner of the Red Cat Coffee Houses in the same city, and one of the world's leading experts in Theodore Beza. And h…
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Herein Dave and Jeff resume their tour through Henri-Irénée Marrou's ground-breaking volume on ancient education. We wrap up Chapter VI, "The Masters of the Classical Tradition", and see what Plato thought about mathematics, elementary education, gymnastics, plastic-segmented jumpropes, playing the triangle and blocks in Kindergarten, and more. How…
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Make it Come Alive: A Conversation with Veteran Translator Stanley Lombardo (Ad Navseam, Episode 145)
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This week tune in as the guys interview one of the greatest and most prolific translators of this and the previous century—Dr. Stanley Lombardo. In this conversation we hear about Stanley’s early education where he was, yes, drawn to Greek and Latin but especially the rhythms and performance of poetry. The idea that these ancient works were meant t…
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This week the guys welcome back good friend, former colleague, and two-time Newberry Medal honoree, young-adult writer Gary Schmidt. How did Jeff and Dave manage that? Well we invited him in, and just like that he accepted our invitation. He found the studio comfortable, or at least okay for now, but the conversation was more than a little bit supe…
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This week, Jeff and Dave resume their woolly perambulations through the wonders of Henri-Irénée Marrou's august volume on ancient education. Specifically, we look at Chapter VI, entitled "The Masters of the Classical Tradition" to get our bearings on Plato's pedagogical revolution. Along the way, we ask, and seek to answer, such questions as: What …
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Anna Maria van Schurman and Women's Education, with Anne Larsen and Steve Maiullo of Hope College (Ad Navseam, Episode 142)
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This week the guys are joined in the Bunker (via Zoom) by scholars Anne Larsen (emerita, French, Hope College) and Stephen Maiullo (Classics, Hope College) for a fascinating discussion of the “Minerva of Utrecht” and "Tenth Muse", Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678). Van Schurman was not only an accomplished painter, engraver, and calligraphist, sh…
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Gullible's Travels? An Introduction to Herodotus with Dr. Ken Bratt (Ad Navseam, Episode 141)
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This week Dave and Jeff welcome back into the studio (this guy's becoming a regular!) our longtime friend, mentor, former colleague, and teacher, the inestimable Ken Bratt. You may know him from such episodes as "From there We Travelled to Philippi" (46), and, "A Visit to the Roman Catacombs" (76). For this go 'round, Ken reaches back into the more…
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In the Beginning was Sermo: Reopening the Conversation on John 1:1 (Ad Navseam, Episode 140)
1:17:59
In the beginning was the…conversation? In this episode Jeff and Dave tackle a fascinating 1977 article by Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle in which she reviews the history of the translation of John 1:1, particularly the Latin words used to express the Greek ὁ λόγος (logos), usually taken in English as “Word”. We learn that the earliest Latin translations u…
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This week, Jeff and Dave continue on their stroll through the wonders of Marrou's volume on ancient education. Specifically, they look at Chapter V and the question of the Sophists. Men like Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus were doing something new and unusual at the close of the fifth century, no doubt. And that something was -- wait for it -- se…
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The Roman Mysteries: A Conversation with Bestselling Children’s Author Caroline Lawrence (Ad Navseam, Episode 138)
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This week the guys have the honor of interviewing kids/young adult author Caroline Lawrence (The Roman Mysteries and Roman Quests series, along with many others!) Ms. Lawrence is beaming in to us from London, where she writes her books overlooking the mighty Thames itself. And she's no pretender when it comes to the Classics--she comes to London by…
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This week the guys tackle Chapter IV of H.I. Marrou's monumental work, entitled "The 'Old' Athenian Education". Relying on Aristophanes, Thucydides, Solon, and others, Marrou explains how the Athenians decided to lay down their weapons within society, and soon after education was democratized. So, “the decisive step" was taken from a warrior to a s…
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Legend-tripping at Bunnyman Bridge: American Urban Legends and Classical Mythological Tropes (Ad Navseam, Episode 136)
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This week the guys tackle the subject of American Urban Legends with an eye to what classical cultural and narrative archetypes tell us about why these weirdo tales can be so, well, weird. Jeff eagerly (a little too eagerly, Dave might say) drags us into those liminal spaces as we recount the odd tale of the hatchet-wielding, murderous Bunnyman of …
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This episode is part 3 of the guys’ walk-through of Marrou’s seminal book on education in antiquity. We pick up where the last episode left off with a wrap-up of ancient Spartan education and a look at several questions: What caused Spartan artistic culture to (fairly quickly) calcify and disappear? To what degree can we actually know what Spartan …
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The guys are back for Round 2 in our look at the history of education in antiquity through the lens of Marrou’s book. This time we zero in on the ancient Spartans. Wait, Spartans??? Weren’t those guys just a bunch of beefed-up lunkheads whose only education was how to better kill the enemy on the battlefield? Well, not quite. In fact, we learn that…
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Join us this week as Dave and Jeff launch le paquebot onto the deep waters of pedagogical history, namely, H. I. Marrou's seminal work The History of Education in Antiquity. Written in 1956 by a very learned Frenchman, and translated into English by Charles Lamb, the work is a sweeping review, artfully written, of how education functioned from the …
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This week Jeff and Dave wrap up their 3-parter on Aeschylus' famous play. When Io mooves onto the scene, her first impulse is to show compassion for the shackled Promy, even though she herself is writhing in gadfly-induced agony. Why? To seek an answer, we take a long look at the thesis of Stephen White, namely that the play subtly reinforces ancie…
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It's time for round two of Aeschylus' tragedy Prometheus Bound, and Dave and Jeff are back at it with a careful look at the role of Ocean in his dialogue with the titular hero. Relying on the work of David Konstan, the guys discuss some of the interesting dynamics at play in the stichomythia, as well as some inner workings of the chorus of Ocean's …
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This week Jeff and Dave - with the help of Prof. Deborah Roberts (Emerita, Haverford College) - begin their look at tragedian Aeschylus' magnum opus, Prometheus Bound. We get started with Prof. Roberts providing a lovely reading of the central passage of the play, in which Prometheus explains the many kindnesses he has wrought for the human race. T…
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It's time for Jeff and Dave to finish off their brief foray into all things Philistine and Mycenaean. This week we wrap up our look at Neal Bierling's short but deep monograph on the state of excavation in Palestine. After a quick review of inscriptional and ceramic evidence, the Phaistos Disc, anthropoid coffins, and more, the conversation takes u…
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Does the name Neal Bierling mean anything to you, dear listener? No? Well it will after this episode. Bierling's 1992 monograph Giving Goliath his Due is our theme this week and next, and it's a thorough, exhaustively researched look at the close connection between the Mycenaeans of Atreus and Agamemnon and those inveterate opponents of the biblica…
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This week Jeff and Dave wrap up their two-part series on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Here we learn about Demophoon, infant child of Queen Metaneira of Eleusis. It seems he has a problem with mortality, and Demeter has the cure: nightly fire purgations. As the kids say, "srsly?" But things don't go so well when the blazing goddess of grain is caugh…
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After a welcome hiatus for all of us (especially you, listener), Jeff and Dave are back in the studio for a look at the archaic hymn to the goddess Demeter. Was this intended to be used in the ritual and liturgy of the mystery cult, or is it just a breezy, Saturday afternoon matinee poem? Clocking in at 495 lines, how does this eypllion differ from…
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Whoa, Milo, Come on, Come On, Let’s Go: The Greatest Ancient Athlete (Ad Navseam, Episode 125)
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This week Jeff and Dave talk about Milo of Croton, by all accounts the most accomplished athlete of antiquity. This incredible individual was the winner of multiple Olympiads, strongman, wrestler, supposedly deadlifting a stone of more than 1100lbs. The ancients like Pausanias, Galen, Strabo, Cicero and more were fascinated not only by his tremendo…
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Wait a minute…this STILL sounds like rock and/or roll, or at least the synthy stuff wants to. Join Johnny Pop Winkle and Ye Olde Curmudgeon for a look at seven songs inspired by the Classics. From Abba, to Clientele, Utopia, Perfect Circle and more, you'll get to hear Jeff's perfect aesthetic judgment tear like a buzz saw through Dave's carefully c…
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Gildy as Charged: Arachne and Midas in two More Ovidian Vignettes (Ad Navseam, Episode 123)
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This week it’s back to the bottomless well of Ovidian goodness with a walk through a couple more vignettes. The guys start off with a look at the well-known tale of Arachne. While the “hubris-meets-nemesis” theme does seem to be at the heart of the story, there are some striking bits of context that complicate simple interpretations—is Minerva prim…
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This week we sit down for a fascinating, lively discussion with author Margalit Fox about her 2013 book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: the Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. The story centers around the race to decipher the mysterious “Linear B” script. The first large supply of this script was uncovered on clay tablets on Crete by archaeologist Sir Ar…
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This week Jeff and Dave take a look at the 5 canons of classical rhetoric, and how it is that great orators like Aeschines, Demosthenes, and Cicero gave their speeches to such successful effect. Was it nature? Were these men endowed with towering genius and preternatural giftedness? Yes, of course. Or was it nurture? Did they write speeches accordi…
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Well ladies and gentlemen, this podcast within a podcast has finally come to an end: Jeff and Dave, at long last (denique, tandem, demum) have reached the final episode on the Aeneid. We start out by looking at how the end of the Iliad and the end of the Aeneid compare, verge off into some Shakespearean and Miltonian digressions, recite some beauti…
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This week, Jeff and Dave get back to the Aeneid after a brief, Tarzanian hiatus. As the epic nears its end, we witness the intense and interesting interplay between Turnus and the titular hero. Aeneas seems quite secure in his fate, but still he begins the move from representing civilization to savagery. Turnus, on the other hand, ricochets between…
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This week Jeff and Dave wander back into the lush, crowded undergrowth of Edgar Rice Burroughs' prose, guided by the inimitable Erling B. "Jack" Holstmark. Does the vine-swinging, croc-wrestling, ape-aping Tarzan really have anything to do with Odysseus? Hercules? Neither? Or does Dave's late Prof. have a case of academicitis, "seeing what's not th…
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The guys are back, and this time they are taking a break from the Aeneid series to focus on the appearance of classical themes and inspiration in an unexpected place: the 20th century pulp fiction novels of Tarzan. Aided by the brilliant monograph of Dave's late grad school professor, Dr. Erling B. "Jack" Holtsmark, we examine such questions as, Wh…
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In this episode, Jeff and Dave finish off their tour through and analysis of the penultimate book of Vergil's masterpiece. Here we have the jazz-solo moment, the aristeia of the great warrior princess Camilla. She flies across the battlefield at breakneck speed, cutting down in her path every Trojan stooge who dares stand in her way – until she mee…
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Remember way back when the Trojans were “eating their tables”? Well, in Book 11 their tables seem to be turning. Seems like just yesterday Aeneas was raging as Rambo and Turnus was carrying himself with Hector-like respectability. Sed ecce!—Aeneas is handing out truces like sticks of Big Red and actually validating hurt Latin feelings, while Turnus…
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This week there’s more gore in store for shor as Aeneas gets his rage on and goes full Achilles. The carnage reaches such a fever pitch that it raises a number of sticky questions: Is Aeneas just a puppet of Fate? If so, can we hold him culpable for the horrible things he perpetrates on the battlefield? When does embossing your baldric with mythic …
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This week Jeff and Dave are back at the Aeneid, wading into some deep waters murky and redolent with the unfulfilled wishes of Jupiter. As full-scale war erupts on the Latian plain, Venus and Juno bring their high-pitched quarrel to the king of Olympus, whose own hands, it turns out, are tied by the Parcae. As the Fates roll around in their El Cami…
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The guys take a brief break from Vergil this week to talk about some of Dave's recent translation work. The theme is Scottish divine Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) and his Scholastic magnum opus Examen Arminianismi ('A Careful Review of Arminianism'). This is for a forthcoming publication by Reformation Heritage Books. After spending a little time o…
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Tune in this week as the guys wrap up Aeneid 9 and take a look at the fallout and aftermath of Nisus' and Euryalus' disastrous midnight raid. When the Rutulians wake to the bloody devastation, its off to besiege the city in which the Trojans, sans Aeneas, are hiding. In this "reverse Iliad", we find the foreign aggressors -- Aeneas and company -- b…
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A Night to Dismember: The Tragedy of Nisus and Euryalus in Aeneid IX, Part 1 (Ad Navseam, Episode 110)
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"Who drives us to outrageous action? Is it some god, or does each man make of his own desire a god, which then drives him furiously to a violent end"? This is the question we consider this week as we turn to the final quarter of the epic (books 9-12). And we are treated to two surprising events: first, how the ships of the Trojans are transformed i…
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