
Raxa Collective is fortunate to have classicist contributor, James, currently in the field with Seth in Costa Rica. Slacklining, occasional ichnologizing, and restoring a coffee plantation are (we think) the perfect prelude to a Ph.D. program in Classics. James will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the next few years, utilizing the Latin, Classical Greek and other languages he has already mastered, preparing to teach the next generation in the liberal arts. We never know, nor really need to know, where the liberal arts may take us. They are important for the sake of thinking and communicating effectively, in any walk of life, and we hope they remain alive and well in perpetuity for undergraduate university students.
We also hope that while he is in Costa Rica James has the chance to visit the home Seth grew up in, across the Central Valley from Xandari, where some of Raxa Collective’s contributors have had the opportunity to see the uniform of Seth’s great-great grandfather on display. More than a century old, and lovingly restored by a friend of Seth’s family who does museum restoration work, the uniform looks something like what Alexander the Great may have worn. After seeing it James may have more to say on this post by Joshua Rothman on the New Yorker website’s “New ideas from the arts and sciences” section:
Intellectual life thrives on mystery. When it comes to ancient Greece, one of those mysteries is the linothorax—the flimsy-looking, hip-length armor that you see warriors wearing on Greek vases. (Linothorax means, literally, “linen chest.”) Why go to war, archaeologists have wondered, in what looks to be a linen minidress? While a linothoraxlets you show off your muscular legs to great effect, it hardly seems like practical protection against the enemy’s swords and arrows. And yet, judging by how frequently linothoraxes are represented in Greek art, they were extraordinarily popular among soldiers in ancient Greece and around the Mediterranean between 600 and 200 B.C. Because no linothoraxes have survived—linen doesn’t last—no one knows why. Continue reading →
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