Blog

Updates regarding the project, the database, and the website are posted here regularly

 

4 year NWO funding for Connecting the Greeks

Posted by: Onno van Nijf 6 years, 5 months ago

We have just received funding for our project Connecting the Greeks: multi-scalar festivals in the Hellenistic world. We shall investigate the role of agonistic festivals in the crucial timeframe from the third to the first centuries BC when festivals with athletic and cultural contests flourished as never before. This festival explosion was not simply the outcome of the spread of Greek civilization, but it was rather a major contributor to the process of identity creation at local regional and global levels, and to the growing interconnectivity of the Hellenistic world. This project aims to subject this multi-scalar festival culture to a rigorous analysis with innovative tools, theories and methods derived from social sciences and digital humanities, including network analysis and agent-based modelling. There will be a central role for the connected contests database.  One focus area will be the development of a mapping tool to display the mobility of athletes and performers between festivals. We shall also be recruiting two PhD students starting early 2019 to investigate the festivals and the representation of Hellenistic rulers and ruler cult, and the development of regional festival networks.

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Fellowships for Onno van Nijf

Posted by: Onno van Nijf 6 years, 6 months ago

Onno van Nijf is the recipient of a Visiting Fellowship of the British Academy that he will hold at Royal Holloway University of London from September 2018 to February 2019, together with a visiting fellowship at the Institute of Classical Studies. During the Fellowship Onno will work on a study of agonistic festivals, and continue work on the database.

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Moretti's Imperial Olympionikai and Brunet's Ephesian athletes online

Posted by: Caroline van Toor 6 years, 7 months ago

For the past two months, we have been entering data from two prosopographies, viz. the athletes from the Imperial period listed in Moretti's 'Olympionikai' (1957) and Brunet's collection of Ephesian athletes, from his 1998 dissertation, 'Greek Athletes in the Roman World: The Evidence from Ephesos'. Save some problematic cases, we are happy to announce that we will finish working on these lists this week. Users can now search through the data of over 500 athletes and musicians who won more than 3000 victories. And for those of you who wondered: no, these over 3000 victories are not largely made up of Emperor Nero's 1808 victories (as claimed by Cassius Dio). Only the victories by Nero that are linked to actual festivals in ancient sources have been added to the database as separate victories. The almost eighty recorded victories by Valerius Eklektos have of course been added separately.

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Data on synod members to be added thanks to Bram Fauconnier

Posted by: Onno van Nijf 6 years, 8 months ago

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Bram Fauconnier has allowed us to include in our database the list of members of athletic and artistic synods of the Roman imperial period that he collected for his recent Amsterdam PhD. We shall add the data ASAP.

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Farrington's Isthmionikai online

Posted by: Caroline van Toor 6 years, 9 months ago

As of January 2018, all ca. 300 Isthmia-victors collected by Andrew Farrington (2012) are added to the online database. Apart from adding their victories at the Isthmia, we also added other known victories by these athletes and musicians.
We are currently in the process of checking the consistency of these entries and updating them.

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Recent Posts

  • Added Strasser Mémoire de champions

    We have now added references to Jean-Yves Strasser's  magisterial corpus Mémoire de champions. Corpus des palmarès d'Octavien à Valentinien Ier. Athens, 2021 (École française d'Athènes). This wonderful work is available online via   >> https://books.openedition.org/efa/13782?. Blang=en <<

  • New feature: mapping who went where

    It is now possible to view the trajectories of individual athletes and performers: if you do a persons search you will get a map with registered victories.

  • New feature! Distribution map of festivals

    Take a look at the first version of our geographically and chronologically determined distribution map of festivals ((the link is also available via our homepage). The map shows cities in the ancient world where one or more festivals were organised. Sliding the bar below the map allows you to see the chronological development and popularity of the cities and their festivals. The size of the red bulb represents the number of participants in a particular period. By clicking the red bulbs you will see which festival(s) were hosted by this particular city, how many known participants it attracted, and the names of the athletes and musicians that were born in that particular city. We are working on improving the functionality of the map, i.a. by creating a map that shows the result of any query you might run. 

  • New content! Organizers and competitors in Boiotian contests centred on Rome

    The newest addition to the database includes ca. 150 competitors in and organizers of some Boiotian contests associated with the presence of Rome, that were being organized in the second and first centuries BCE: the Amphiaraia kai Rhomaia in Oropos, the Rhomaia in Thebes, and the alleged Erotideia kai Rhomaia in Thespiai. Like other contemporaries, the Boiotians seem to have used their association with Rome through these contests to claim their status in a rapidly changing world.   

  • CfP - Rooted Cities, Wandering Gods: Inter-Urban Religious Interaction

    We are proud to announce that the members of the Connecting the Greeks project are organising a conference on inter-urban religious contacts, to take place (hopefully in person!) at Groningen in the autumn of 2021. We invite anyone interested in cities, religious practices, and the ties between them to submit an abstract – you can read all about the conference theme and confirmed speakers in the full call for papers. 

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