An American Lion

There is still a debate raging as to whether or not they actually found a bust of Julius Caesar in the muck and the mud of the Arles river:

Dredged up from the murky depths of the Rhône River, beneath a heap of wrecked cars, rotting tires and more than 20 centuries of silt, the statue’s white marble visage was plain as day.

“My God, it’s Caesar!” Luc Long remembers shouting after his team of archaeologists and divers discovered the statue in 2007.

The marble bust that is believed to be Julius Caesar

The Roman appears with little hair, a wrinkled forehead, a prominent Adam’s apple and features that, for Mr. Long, “seem carved in human flesh.” But Mr. Long did not realize at the time that he had discovered what he said was “the first portrait made of Caesar when he was alive.” The bust, which France’s Culture Ministry now dates from 46 B.C., is thought to be the only known surviving statue of Julius Caesar carved during his lifetime.

Historians say images of a contemporaneous Caesar are rare — they are generally idealized versions, produced after his assassination two years later, in 44 B.C. — so the sudden news of the bust’s emergence led some of them to question its authenticity.

Christian Goudineau, a French historian who lectures on Julius Caesar at the prestigious Collège de France in Paris, was caught off guard when Mr. Long told him of the discovery. “I was bewildered,” he recalled.

Some colleagues, he said, have suggested that the Caesar found in the Rhône does not resemble the Caesar usually shown, and that the statue might more likely portray a noble from Arles, a city founded by the Romans. One skeptic, Mary Beard, a classics professor at Cambridge, pointed out in her blog for Times Online, affiliated with The Times of London: “This style of portraiture lasted for centuries at Rome. There is nothing at all to suggest that it came from 49-46 B.C.”

Checking the quality, you have to wonder if a noble would be so brilliantly depicted:

Mr. Goudineau said that he thought the bust showed the same face as that of the Caesar on Roman coins; he dismissed the arguments presented by those who questioned the bust’s depiction. “Which noble from Arles would order a bust of himself made in the best, the most expensive and rare marble, and ship it by boat?” he asked.

Now, that’s a bit of academic smackdown for you. The statue depicts a naked man—is he thus a God? A man equal to the Roman Gods? Idealized in some way?

What struck me was the idea that, all over Europe, the course of rivers hasn’t changed that much. To think that there are such treasures in the water, waiting to be retrieved, is mind-boggling. All you have to do is match the old Roman military maps to the present maps of Europe, get a shovel and someone to work the air machine while you’re underwater, and voila. Instant notoriety and fame.

I think it’s spelled “Mackinlay’s”

Good God, man—we’re talking about whiskey here! And science! To hell with international treaties and Poindexters looking over our shoulders. Dig that whiskey out of the ground and see if it’s any good:

A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.

The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.

Workers from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut’s floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.

The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.

Fastier said he did not want to sample the contents.

“It’s better to imagine it than to taste it,” he said. “That way it keeps its mystery.”

Richard Paterson, Whyte & Mackay’s master blender, said the Shackleton expedition’s whiskey could still be drinkable and taste exactly as it did 100 years ago.

Now, President Norman Rogers would easily give orders to secretly break the treaty. I would make certain that the orders were delivered verbally. No paper trail, you see. Plus, I have heavily researched this subject, and this is what I have found:

In 1907, Sir Earnest Schackleton, explorer, asked the Company to supply the official Scotch whisky for his Antarctic expedition to the South Pole. This momentous trip began aboard the S.S. ENDURANCE. Empty bottles of The Original Mackinlay were discovered by a later expedition, still standing on Schackleton’s base-camp desk.

Okay, so that wasn’t much, but it does speak to the necessity of knowing whether or not that Scotch still tastes good. Science has already told us that if you leave beer in the ground, it will taste bad. Scotch? Scotch is better with age. Scotch does not go bad if the bottle stays sealed. If this old scotch tastes good, yes, definitely come out with more of it. If not, so be it. I’m thirsty just thinking about the possibilities. Here’s what I do when I’m confronted with something I need unfrozen: I use a hairdryer on it. I usually wreck the hair dryer, because I get bored and leave it on, but still.