Online Image Resources for Classics

When I present to classes, I often am asked to show them where they can find images of classical artworks, sites, or archaeological finds to use for presentations or even as references when writing a paper.  There are relatively few subscription databases that provide images; at UGA we subscribe to CAMIO, which has images from North American museums, including the MFA Boston and its collection of classical materials, but we don’t subscribe to ArtStor, the biggie in the field.  We do have a campus Visual Resources Center, with access limited to campus users (by arrangement on a per-class basis with the librarian).  But often students want free-web images.

Perseus has an Art and Archaeology Artifact Browser, which is somewhat limited in its coverage but provides good scholarly information for students.  A simple Google image search can find some things; limiting the search to .edu sites can be even more useful (one does this in the Advanced Search interface).  Flickr is another place to look – some faculty clearly stash their teaching images here, and there are a striking number of really good photographers who like to travel to Mediterannean sites and museums.  Especially useful is a group pool of more than 25,000 images at Flickr called Chiron, which collects Creative Commons-licensed images of the classical world.

I also remind students that for educational purposes, it’s fine to scan an image from a print book or scholarly article and use it in a powerpoint presentation or attach it to a paper.  We have several flatbed scanners in the Library, and in the Miller Learning Center scholarly commons building where my office is.

Next week I am taking myself firmly in hand and starting to review reference resources in classical philosophy.  Somebody hold me!

Resource Roundup: Footage of Triremes!

A friend who is a historian of 20th century technology, but teaches “Western Civ,” recently asked an assembled group of experts his Facebook friends if any movie buff among them could recommend films with footage of ancient naval battles, preferably Greek and involving triremes.  (I’m betting he’s teaching Salamis).  A couple of people mentioned Cleopatra and Ben Hur, but of course neither of those are Greek.  I don’t know of any trireme-featuring films myself, not being much of a movie buff – does 300 involve naval battles at all?  Or is there anything in the new Clash of the Titans?

I do know about triremes, though.  I’ve been to see the H. N. Olympias, the replica trireme built by the Trireme Trust and the Greek Navy, launched in 1987. The Olympias is planning to make its first visit to the United States in 2012 – any New York based rowers (who are on the shorter side – it’s apparently a bit cramped inside) should consider volunteering!

The BBC documentary about the Olympias trials was titled “The Trireme Quest” (and was released on VHS) and the Trireme Trust site mentions that other sea trials were filmed by “Channel 4 and Greek film crews.”  Probably some tourists whipped out their video cameras during the sea trials as well!  Youtube has some footage of the Olympias and clips about triremes, unfortunately usually unsourced and probably under somebody’s copyright (in several clips the History Channel “H” logo is visible).   A decent clip including the Olympias under oar and interviews with Ioannis Koliniatis is here;   it looks like the entirety of the History Channel’s “History’s Turning Points – (480 BC) The Battle of Salamis” is online, too.  Then there’s this History Channel parody – geeky-classicist humor for the win!

There are tons of images of triremes – drawings, plans, and photos of Olympias – available in Google Image search and also at Flickr (including Creative Commons-licensed images like the one below, taken by Kenny Murray off of Poros in 1987!).

A fine starting place for scholarly and popular bibliography about ancient Greek ships in general, and the Olympias in particular, is available at the Trireme Trust.