Wow, I feel like it's a rare chance to correct a mistake on the New York Times Maybe a bit trivial and at any rate an interesting read all the same: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/science/caligula-archaeology-rome-horti-lamiani.html Ps. Does anybody else ever bother sending in corrections or is this considered an old fart type of thing to do these days? Rasiel
I almost thought that archeologists found a Roman water pipe in New York Well, yes, to do that makes one an old .... No, just kidding, it's a good thing to do in this instance! And thanks for the interesting read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Lidz I might suggest sending a fan letter to the author personally rather than the paper. Start with praise for the article and mention that you regret the inclusion of an error. He is interesting enough to have a Wikipedia page. It might well turn out that he is not responsible for the error since the photo caption might have been added by a underling staffer.
Really? I find I could write a letter to the editor on about 85% of the articles in the NYT. Seems like the paper is simply one large Opinion section nowadays, real facts are fairly scarce or twisted up so severely they are barely recognizable.
Interesting read, including this: Mary Beard, a professor of classics at Cambridge University, posited that while Caligula might have been assassinated because he was a monster, it is equally possible that he was made into a monster because he was assassinated. In “SPQR,” her rich history of ancient Rome, she argues that “it is hard to resist the conclusion that, whatever kernel of truth they might have, the stories told about him are an inextricable mixture of fact, exaggeration, willful misinterpretation and outright invention — largely constructed after his death, and largely for the benefit of the new emperor, Claudius.” Hmmm......!
I had once written to the National Museum, New Delhi, pointing out that a breast-plate in their collection, which reportedly belonged to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had the emperor’s name (in Persian) clearly mis-spelt as “Rorangzeb” (which, to me, casts some doubt on the authenticity of the piece). Never recieved a reply, though the piece no longer features in the online gallery on their website.
