Classicist
@GVSU
| Late antiquity & reception in Metal | he/him | “Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth & the Refounding of Rome" under contract
@OxUniPress
I’ve sat on this news long enough. Proposal & full manuscript submitted back in May passed peer review & the editorial board. Finally got the contract.
I will publish my first book, “Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth, & the Refounding of Rome,” with Oxford University Press.
I’m in a British supermarket for the first time. There is literally an aisle of Indian food made for white people next to an aisle with Indian food for actual Indian people.
If you're still confused why today so many women who have been assaulted are still not believed, there are people who refuse to believe me, a white male with a PhD in Classics, for saying that Medusa was raped.
Greek tragedies, summarized:
Bacchae: Fuck around & find out
Persians: Fuck with Greece & find out
Oedipus Rex: Fuck your mom & find out
Medea: Fuck another woman & find out
Antigone: Fuck tradition & find out
Orestes: fuck with the audiences' expectations & find out
CW: sexual harassment
The creator of The History of Ancient Greece podcast announced yesterday that he’ll resume production of episodes.
He has harassed multiple women, and his misdemeanors are well documented.
There are other podcasts on Greece out there you can listen to.
My friend and once again colleague Steve Tuck had me over for dinner the other night. I went to wash my hands and came out knowing how to decipher hieroglyphs.
I really don't see the big deal in abandoning the exclusionary label "Classics." I think adopting a more inclusive & interdisciplinary "Ancient Mediterranean Studies," with departments made up of scholars under that wider umbrella, seems to me perfectly reasonable & realistic.
Instead of working I spent the past couple hours tallying up the number of times a Roman emperor is mentioned in the lyrics or title to a Metal song, according to what's available in the Encyclopedia Metallum. Here's the results. In include here only those mentioned more than 2x.
Some of these marble statue accounts seem forgetful or unaware that Dante puts Odysseus (aka Ulysses) in Hell, & not among the virtuous pagans in Limbo. Odysseus is literally burning alive for eternity in the 8th bolgia of the 8th circle of Hell, for being a fraudulent counselor.
The masculine urge to abandon and cheat on your wife for 20 years, then come home and kill all your houseguests along with the enslaved women who slept with them.
Dr. Peter Green passed away this morning at the age of 99 in Iowa City. He was a titan of scholarship & mentor and friend to generations of classicists & ancient historians. It was a pleasure & honor to know him & his equally brilliant partner Carin during my time at UIowa.
Every time this Gal Gadot discourse happens I have the same response. We don’t need another Cleopatra take. There’s so many other fascinating women from antiquity whose stories could be told, e.g. Hatshepsut, Dido, Arsinoë II, Boudicca, Julia Domna, Zenobia, Galla Placidia…
I'm a man of my word. I present to the world my translation & performance of
@IronMaiden
's masterpiece "Alexander the Great" in ancient Greek.
Watch here:
I hope to one day revise & re-record this with a better singer & audio engineer. Get in touch!
My whole time in Italy while it was in the 30s C/90s F the coolest places I was in without modern AC were literally the 2,000-year-old houses in Herculaneum.
This is a nice & useful diagram, but the title “Roman house” implies that this is what the majority of Romans lived in. Call it a “Roman aristocrat’s house” & suddenly you shift the perspective away from centering as “normal” the experience of a tiny elite.
Got some big news to share, folks. This summer I’ll be returning to the very place of my birth, Waltham, Massachusetts, to work at Brandeis University as a Lecturer in the Department of Classics! IM COMING HOME BABY
Why, when a meal comes with a side salad, is there so often an upcharge to have a Caesar instead of a house salad? There are fewer ingredients!
I think it might be a scam.
My students just asked me why the Romans used the word "lupa" for prostitute, but were not prepared to hear me compare it to the word "cougar" in English.
Because I no longer care how ridiculous I look or sound doing anything in public, here’s a recording of me delivering the first few lines of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon at the Theatre of Dionysus, followed by a clunky off the cuff translation.
Good news! I can officially announce that I have been offered a second year of employment as a lecturer in the Department of Classical Studies at Brandeis.
This fall I look forward to teaching Classical Myth, Intermediate Latin, and an advanced Latin seminar on Ovid's Heroides.
Are you a Byzantinist who’s having a baby? Here are some nice Byzantine names for your child:
Porphyrogenetos
Bulgaroktonos
Pogonatos
Makrembolitissa
Methysos
Palaiologina
Monomachos
Palaphates
Dekapolitissa
Kopronymos
Karbonopsina
Parapinakes
Rhinotmetos
Are you an archaeologist who's having a baby? Here are some nice archaeological names for your child:
Göbeklitepe
LinearB
Flint
Stratigraphy
Megalith
Lekythos
Levallois
Processual
Radiocarbon
Trowel
Geofact
Stylobate
Theodolite
Neutron Activation Analysis
🏺
I hear so much about the need for history to "demystify the past" or "debunk myths" or "stop romanticising" a particular society or to "stop glorifying" a particular individual.
This is horrible for teaching young people. It's basically saying this:
"Real life is boring and
This is my final week of teaching a an entire study-abroad course on Roman cities here in Italy, so I'll be showing this to my students today so they can point out of everything wrong with it.
In Greek class today I caught myself saying "I'm not just going to give you the answer I'm trying to Socratease it out of you," and I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of myself.
My aversion to April Fool's Day pranks is being seriously challenged by Metal Archives replacing every single band photo with cats today. Look up any band and there's a different cat picture:
Every time this podcaster tries to come slithering back we must remind/inform people that he sexually harassed several women scholars, for which there is ample testimony, and evidence.
What's a good equivalent of "fuck the police" in ancient Greek?
How about ῥαφανιδωθήτω ἡ κρυπτεία (rhaphanidōthētō hē krypteia).
Literally, "let the organization designed to terrorize racial underclasses be publicly humiliated by getting radishes shoved up their asses."
All the different ways my students translated βαβαί on their midterm for my Julian seminar:
Oh jeez
Damn
Wow
Oh shit
Good heavens
Yikes
Oh my
Bless me
Hey now
Nude woman climbing into a basket full of dicks.
Attic red-figure pelikē, 480-475 BCE, found in Gela.
Seen at the Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi in Syracuse, Sicily.