On this day in 1796, Thomas Bulfinch, son of architect Charles Bulfinch, was born. Fifty-nine years later he published The Age of Fable; or Stories of Gods and Heroes, which became the standard version of Greco-Roman and also Norse mythology that Americans knew. Bulfinch's Greco-Roman mythology was largely based on the Roman poet Ovid, who had written a collection of stories from mythology, in Latin, known as the Metamorphoses.
Unlike Bulfinch's contemporary Nathaniel Hawthorne, who also wrote a successful collection of mythology (Wonderbook and Tanglewood Tales), Bulfinch wrote his mythology for adults as well as children. Bulfinch adds his own insights or editorial comments like the following (from the story of Prometheus and Pandora):

Woman was not yet made. The story (absurd enough!) is that Jupiter made her, and sent her to Prometheus and his brother, to punish them for their presumption in stealing fire from heaven; and man, for accepting the gift. The first woman was named Pandora.

Read more about Bulfinch and his mythology.
A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature (About Classical Literature)

July Calendar
Pandora image © 2006 Clipart.com

One of these coins shows Alexander the Great. Can you guess which one? Can you guess who the other one is? If you click on the photos, you'll find the answers. If you want a hint, keep reading. In Adrienne Mayor's forthcoming book, Poison King, she says the resemblance was cultivated.

Photo Credits:
The left: PD granted by owner PHGCOM.
The right: CC Flickr User brewbooks

Wordless Wednesday and About.com's Wordless Wednesday

It may be hard to believe, but we may have the answer to this question, although the ingredients are exotic enough I can't imagine what it smelled like. A Discovery Channel article, Ancient Etruscan Ointment Discovered in Italy, explains ingredients found in an almost intact Etruscan ointment from the second century B.C. The article says the team that used chemical analysis to ID the original compounds of the ancient ointment reported their findings in the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. One of the ingredients is probably moringa oil, which Pliny calls a regal perfume. Other ingredients in the ointment are pine resin and mastic. The ointment was probably imported from Egypt.

Augustus Caesar (Octavian) established July 12 as the date of the official birthday of Julius Caesar, but July 13 is also counted as the date of Caesar's birth. Augustus, who dedicated a temple to the deified Julius (29 B.C.), actually knew the man, so Dorothy King has a point when she writes that if it's good enough for Augustus, it's good enough for her. However, the day of Caesar's birth is not the only part of the Caesar birthday celebration in question. Caesar was born in mid-July in the year 100 B.C. Or was it 101? Or 102? The problem with 100 B.C. is that special dispensations would have had to have been given to allow him to run for various offices if his birth year was 101 or 100. Such permissions had been given before, but evidence about it is missing in Caesar's case. If you're interested in this topic, here's an old article that explains why there is lack of agreement on the topic:

"The Year of Caesar's Birth," by Monroe E. Deutsch. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 45, (1914), pp. 17-28.

For more on how Augustus honored his adoptive father, see

"Julius Caesar in Augustan Rome," by Peter White. Phoenix, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), pp. 334-356.

When do you think Julius Caesar was born and why?