Ken Dowden: The Home Page

Welcome to my home page. I used to apologise that it consisted of odds and ends. I suppose it always will. I'm in the process of updating this page - so pardon the building site appearance.

The backcloth is sunset from my Birmingham study, 10th November 2002.

Some presentations

Powerpoint presentations, mainly transmuted (thanks to the magic of Open Office) into pdf files: if copyright problems offend any copyright holders, please let me know. These presentations tend to be a window on the world and I recognise that some of the world is owned. The slides are available below:

talk to the Guildford Classical Association (2007) on Roman religion. Some nice stuff on Luperci, Saturnalia and Roman hills.
'Isis saves - but what from?', a pleasing piece delivered once to their surprise to the N Staffs CA (I'd promised to do 'Homer - the story you're not told' - and they weren't, but they were very nice about it, and the Chinese food in Newcastle Staffs is excellent)
Zeus - a commanding performance
talk at the British Museum in July 2003 on Uses of Greek Myth
talk to teachers and pupils around the country on comparing Homer and Vergil
piece on 'Homer's Iliad - The Story You're Not Told'.
the recipe for making an Odyssey, as cooked up for the Nottingham and Exeter CAs and quite a few places since
- Analysis of the plot of the Odyssey (Word document)
then there's the piece looking in a little detail at the quality of Odyssey 9 and 23, well of 9.
Last pictures of Troy, on Aeneid 2 - good bits on fire
my inaugural lecture on Tuesday 1st March 2001 - 'An ABC of Greece and Rome'.
I hadn't really intended to keep it on the Web so long, but occasionally friends find it fun. The text is here too.

Things I'm thinking about

So much I haven't yet had a chance to set it down ...

Things I've done recently

To follow!

For my books click here.

Resources

Occasionally people find my javascript Reading Latin vocabulary tester useful.
Press the 'instructions' button and it should be pretty obvious after that.

Links to other stuff

I've got a selection of links that you might find useful (or not) here, largely focussing on finding etexts - in Latin, Greek, and English..

Ken Dowden, 21 Jan 08