Paestum was founded by Achaean colonists from Sybaris (on the South Italian coast near Taranto) whose taste for high living gave us the word “sybarite”, in about 600 BCE. Sybaris and Paestum are part of the Magna Grecia (Greek colonial settlements in Italy). Paestum lies on the coast south of Salerno. The Greek colonists called it Poseidonia, after the sea-god Poseidon (Neptune for the Romans). The Romans renamed it Paestum… Read more
"Note also these inscriptions here, ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Avoid extremes,’ how many philosophic inquiries have they set on foot, and what a horde of discourses has sprung up from each, as from a seed ! And no less productive of discourse than any one of them, as I think, is the present subject of inquiry." This month's Book Club will comprise selections from Plutarch, who spent time as a priest… Read more
Watch the CHS Open House discussion with John C. Franklin discussing his book Kinyras: The Divine Lyre. Kinyras was a mythical priest-king of pre-Greek Cyprus, and John C. Franklin's research draws on Greco-Roman material and Near Eastern evidence for the divinization of temple lyres, and seeks to illustrate the cultural interactions in the eastern Mediterranean. Read more
