Durham

The trip to Durham midweek was fun. I went up to see Dr Peter Heslin, give his talk: “The Emperor’s New Sundial: Domitian and the So-Called Horologium Augusti“. The Horologium Augusti is something I’ve never really understood. It’s supposed to have been a massive sundial on the Campus Martius built by Augustus. The problem is I’ve never been able to find any useful details to see how it worked. It turns out that this is because despite the presence of many curly mathematical symbols, the proponent, Buchner, didn’t provide enough detail to explain it. The whole sundial was debunked in an entertaining way, but it did also raise the serious point that the peer-review system isn’t working as well as it should. If you have the chance to see the talk you should – it’s very good.

As for Durham itself, both the Classics and Archaeology departments were very friendly. There’s a lot of interesting people there and I’ll have to make a point of going back. My photos were a disaster though. I was tired and had the shakes. The cylinder above is the only good photo I got in two days.