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The Lost Cities of Ancient Apulia – South-East Italy
When we read stories of ancient pre-Roman Italy, often the point of view we absorb is that of the Greek city-states of southern Italy, or of their later Roman neighbours. Virtually no written material except the Greek or Roman has survived the ancient period. This is despite writing having spread to their neighbours. To the extent that other peoples of ancient Italy appear in the written record, they do so as “decoration” in Roman and Greek centred stories. The peoples of Ancient Apulia are a case in point. The Greek and Romans often described the people around them as “tribal” and led by kings or chiefs. From the seventeenth to…
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The Middle West hiding in the Middle East
There is something wrong with the term “the Middle East”. To come straight to the point, it should really be the Middle West. Of course it won’t escape the reader’s attention that this thought bubble occurs in a moment angst about the relationship between the “West” and “the Middle East”. And in the western public mind, as projected by popular media, danger lurks everywhere. Some dangers (religious fanaticism and terrorism) are sadly all too real – and the victims are all over the world, although it has to be said largely in the Middle West. Other existential dangers are well, fanciful. The “burkini”, or to describe it accurately “modest” or…
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Agora movie – seeing ourselves through an alien past
The movie Agora (director Alejandro Amenábar) is not history, but perhaps, it rises to allegory. It is well worth watching, despite its ‘interpretative’ approach to history. It is a movie which captures deeper truths about human relationships and its fictionalized past helps us understand the challenges of our conflicted present. The struggles of Agora’s characters are enriched by Dario Marianelli’s haunting film score and the movie’s epic intellectual and scenic setting. Agora takes us to the unfamiliar world of fourth century Alexandria. It is a world being overtaken by change. Certainties of a pagan past are fading as new Christian ways of being emerge. It is a world beset with…
