Plenty of Nothing

Young Hercules

This bronze statue of young Hercules was uncovered in Rome in 1864 near the Theatre of Pompey. It had been ritually interred after being struck by lightning. Source.

Col·lecció Bernat Metge

It gets harder to argue that Catalan is not a major European language once you know about this 400-plus volume series of translations of Greek and Roman classics. Catalogue.

Antiphon, Father of Psychological Counselling

    There are currently sixty orations ascribed to this orator, twenty-five of which Caecilius says are spurious. He is ridiculed as a lover of money by Plato in his Peisander. And he is said to have written tragedies both by himself and in collaboration with the tyrant Dionysius. But while he was still busy with poetry he invented a method of curing distress, just as physicians have a treatment for those who are ill; and at Corinth, fitting up a room near the market-place, he wrote on the door that he could cure by words those who were in distress; and by asking questions and finding out the causes of their condition he consoled those in trouble. But thinking this art was unworthy of him he turned to oratory.

Plutarch, "Lives of the Ten Orators", 833 D (Loeb trans. Fowler, Plutarch's Moralia, volume 10, page 351).

Plutarch Cigarette Card

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The Alunda Elk

This stone moose head was carved around 2000 BC and found in 1920 in Uppland, Sweden.

Roman Amphitheatre, Caerleon

The Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon, Wales. Photo by Gareth Blaney. Source.

Epicurean Stoa

This is a reconstruction of the stoa built in Oinoanda, Lycia to display the works of the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes, whose writings are not otherwise known and are now lie scattered over the town site, having been reused in later buildings and defenses that have since fallen down. The work of piecing together Diogenes' writings (and the stoa), and puts him in the same category as Philodemus, another philosopher whose work (in his case on charred scrolls) is slowly emerging in the 21st Century. Source. See also.

The Afrin Stele

The Afrin stele contains a fragment of hieroglyphic Luwian text from about 900 BC. It was found at Afrin in northern Syria. Source.

The Arena of Nîmes

This amphitheatre in Nîmes, Provence, built around 70 AD, was converted into a bullring in 1863 and now serves as a concert venue, with a couple of bullfights per year to propitiate the ghosts. Source.

Sant'Adriano al Foro, 1909

The Church of Saint Adriano in the Forum (the building between the pillars) started life as the Curia Julia, the meeting-house of the Roman Senate. Source.