Friday, August 07, 2009

Dum dee dum

A real indian summer earlier today, I walked some way towards the city. The scent of these late-summer flowers so wonderful, too bad it can't be blogged. Now it has changed: cloudy-sometimes-rainy.

I started on a new article today, typed the introduction stating the premise and the method. Shouldn't be too troublesome as I did the groundwork earlier. Was only later that I saw there was substance for another article there. Broadly speaking it's about immigrant groups, foreign ephebes (youths who participated in a 12 month training program of military skills and other stuff) and their ethnics (e.g. Demetrios Milesios, 'Milesios' the ethnic = Demetrios the Milesian, or of Miletos).

5 comments:

Vallypee said...

Oooh that sounds interesting Maria, and could well have application to current issues. Would like to hear more! Do you write these articles in Finnish or English?

The weather is overcast here this evening too, but it has been very hot the last few days so the cooler evening is quite a relief.

grace said...

Good luck with the article.
Those flowers around here, could be mustard flowers. I like the yellow against the water.
Glad to see you are enjoying the pleasant days of end of Summer too.

E.L. Wisty said...

Thanks Grace!. It's actually called Tansy, this flower. Hope your summer days have been good!

E.L. Wisty said...

Hi Val,

I write them in English, the articles: basically has to be done if I'm going to send any articles to international journals.

As to the premise of this article: the ephebeia was a sort of a training system of young men after which they became full-fledged Athenian citizens. Foreigners gained access to the training in about the 120's B.C. My aim is to investigate whether the foreign ephebes had any connection to how well or little established the immigrant groups they represented were in Athens. I.e. was the presence of ephebes from, say, Antiocheia in itself an indication that the Antiocheian immigrants were particularly established in Athens? My method is to compare the ethnics of the ephebes with the occurrences of the same ethnics in grave inscriptions, which are the surest evidence that the persons in them actually lived in Athens. You can see difference: some of the ethnics are common in Athens throughout the Hellenistic period, others were not known before the first foreign ephebes appeared but became fairly common after; and yet others are only known from the names of the ephebes. My idea is that such variation is not incidental but may reflect the different identities of the ephebes: they may have been sons of immigrant families established in Athens perhaps for generations; they may have been recent arrivals and then decided to enter the ephebeia; or they may have come to Athens specially to be trained as ephebes. And so on...

Vallypee said...

Aha, I've been looking for this post and couldn't remember where I asked the question. Glad I've found it now and read your response. It sounds absolutely fascinating and quite marvellous to me that you can do such in-depth research on social issues so far back in history. Sometimes I wish I was you, Maria...sigh. I'd love to be doing that kind of research. Let us know how it goes!