Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril @PhiloCrocodile Twitter profile

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

Museum Closed: On the Desecration of the #HagiaSophia

Museum Closed: On the Desecration of the Hagia Sophia

I don’t like genocide. I don’t like the destruction of monuments. I don’t like totalitarianism.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

Up to the age of 25, you read wholesale & in a mercenary way, to “acquire” a possession, to build a “literary culture”... After 25, you lose your hang-up and start re-reading –and it is precisely what you re-read that reveals your literary soul, what you like. - @nntaleb

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

11 months

"Study something old but not visibly useful (classics), something modern and useful (accounting, coding), never something new and not visibly useful." - @nntaleb

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

Look familiar? This is an Old English version of the Romulus and Remus myth! The runes read: Rōmwalus and Rēomwalus, twēgen gebrōðera: fēdde hīe wylf in Rōmeceastre, ēðle unnēah: Romulus and Remus, twin brothers, a wolf fed them in Rome, far from home.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

9 months

@nntaleb would perhaps suggest that their resistance to summarising is part of what makes them classics.

Agnes Callard

@AgnesCallard

9 months

This is a great question: why aren't there excellent summaries of the main ideas of classic thinkers? Why do you have to go read the original sources?

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@PaulSkallas interesting how they're both acting like much younger men (e.g when we were teens we would meet up and beat the shit out of each outside boxing/mma class). Is it a) billionaires being billionaires or b) ex-nerds finally discovering physicality?

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

It fell out of fashion right after WWII when there was a mass elite shift from venerating Charlemagne, Roland, and the Fränkisches Reich to autochthony, Vercingetorix, and the Gauls. Fernanda Moore has an excellent article on this.

Lucerne Bolvin

@LucerneBolvin

1 year

Whenever I teach the Song of Roland, I wonder again how it fell so low in the western canon. My 7th graders lose it when he first refuses to blow the horn. The girls are like "what is he thinking!!?? Call for help!" and the boys are like "YEAH COME GET SOME"

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@Hieraaetus Is that crazy though? Charles III is a direct descendant of Woden and he is still on a throne.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

"Rome is the true silicon valley of humanity". Well, I guess @kanyewest has offered a better defense of the classics than most of the current professoriat. In one sentence?

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

No idea how I'd yet to see this brilliant take on the rage of Achilles by @beatonna

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 months

Hyperbole aside it’s because humanities used to filter for those who were good at humanities whereas now they filter for those who can’t do Maths.

Tyler Austin Harper

@Tyler_A_Harper

6 months

Comp. lit is so nuts because every comp. lit. scholar above age 60 is like “I speak 16 languages fluently, 17 if you count Greek” and everone under the age of 60 is like “I once did cocaine with Ranciere at a gallery opening in SoHo.” No field has declined more ignominiously.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

Socrates would slap you for this idiocy. Freedom only comes *after* discipline & order. that's why Chariton had to stop being a fat useless sack, why Xenophon fought the Persians. Obeying your desires is *slavery*, not freedom. Once again, the Ancients were better men than we.

Ian Dunt

@IanDunt

3 years

I don't want schools to teach children discipline and order. I want them to teach children how to think for themselves.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@uncle_deluge I tried to play the Greek one, noting how all the classicists who can’t read Greek and hate the Greeks were going mad over it. It sucked something foul.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

8 months

Great that this comes after a time the academy has spent 10-15 years selecting against the kind of expertise needed to read and interact with the new material. Telling it had to be done by outsiders. Make of this what you will.

Nat Friedman

@natfriedman

8 months

Ten months ago, we launched the Vesuvius Challenge to solve the ancient problem of the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of scrolls that were flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2000

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 months

@wylfcen Saxgar, Saxberg, Saxhelm, Saxhild, and Saxulf? Were those actual names lol? Gotta bring them back….

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 months

@holland_tom I recall mentioning to you that a friend and I got removed from an a level English class because our version of the St Crispin's day speech was too amped up? We did horsey shouts, calls of "sacre bleu, l'anglaise" in the background etc. I stand by it.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

The bear has been an object of veneration and dread for millennia. There are good reasons for this!

*h₂ŕ̥tḱos gon give it to ya: Indo-European Bear Taboos

In which the croc disproves the notion that there was a Proto-Indo-European bear taboo, with zero recourse to memes whatsoever.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

Alison Fisk

@AlisonFisk

1 year

An ancient amber bear. Carved about 10,000 years ago, this magical find washed up on a beach at Fanø in Denmark from a submerged Mesolithic settlement under the North Sea. National Museum of Denmark. 📷 my own #Archaeology

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 months

@Paracelsus1092 That is astonishing…ly depressing. One of the most important men in British history should be honoured like a king and a father. His well kept kurgan should be a pilgrimage site.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@Hieraaetus Bit like how the Ottoman royal house has ended up in exile, looking very Greek/European, and...involved in petty real estate scams?

British millionaire and Turkish 'princess' wife own squalid flats

Millionaire property developers Nick and Ayse Sutton rented out squalid flats to families in Norwich. The taxpayer now faces a £50,000 bill to rehome the tenants because of the appalling conditions.

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

hello, yes, sorry, it is time to look at some #Byzantine #Art . Specifically the survival of Greco-Roman pagan motifs well into the Christian period. What has the bible to do with Euripides? Let's examine the Veroli Casket and find out ...

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

Great thread. Remember, if you’re a millennial or younger you have never ever seen institutional competency in your lifetime. Hence the constant skepticism. If the BL can’t function…

Incunabula

@incunabula

1 year

I've worried about @britishlibrary ever since the retrograde decision to combine the utterly unrelated Asian and African departments together under the management of a curator whose expertise is in Chinese books only. Why is this post still up? The script, as was near instantly

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

Yeah it's not, because that lexicon is turgid and ugly. Tip to sound like an actual Roman: 1) Take the modern Greek equivalent. 2) You now have the ancient Greek equivalent. 3) Use it, Latinise the ending, or calque it. You are welcome.

Medieval Latin

@MedievalLatin

1 year

Modern Latin has to deal with things no ancients or medievals would have known. One way to do this is to coin new terms out of old ones📚 The main source is the Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis, which can get pretty creative✨ A thread of highlights (updated periodically)🧵

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

Whenever I need a word for a modern concept in Ancient Greek I remodel a Modern Greek word because that's what an Ancient Greek would want. When I need one in Latin...I remodel a Modern Greek word because that's also what an Ancient Roman would want.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

@DokDraws An old canard, most likely convergent evolution (no linguistic exchange, intervening gap). Though there ARE Greek survivals there (e.g the Buddhist dress). This is the best thing you'll find on the cap. cc: @Paracelsus1092

Did Alexander wear my hat?

This is a pakool, پکول, or you might hear it called a Chitrali cap, or even just an Afghan cap. At any rate it’s an article of headwear from the Afghan/Pakistan borderlands with which we̵…

llewelynmorgan.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 months

Has anyone else noticed the semantic shift of “Latinist” from “Classicist focused on Latin [& therefore needs a lot of Greek]” to “doesn’t know any Greek [and therefore doesn’t really know Latin]”. I swear this shift happened < 15 years ago.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

I am not cool enough to be invited out tonight so instead I am carrying on with my Gibbon re-read (something I should do more often). But why Gibbon? A 📕 (apologies for kettlebell bookmark)

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@0xAlaric Xenophon explicitly denies it (Symp 8.31), others, like Aeschines do not think it explicit in text. But the modern Classicist (who can't read the Iliad) is strident in their view and will call you a bigot for allowing any interpretative lee way on this point. Maybe I write on it.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@Tocharus For context of course that is much much easier than the exams taken nowadays at 13 for entry into schools like Eton. It really is not very much grammar at all.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

@Hieraaetus Subversion is only good from a master, else gnats bothering giants. Hence modern programmes like GoT are awful: "hur dur everything is grey, evil, I am so wise". No, you are coward. Tolkien had the courage to write about what he thought was right. Light despite the Somme.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

7 months

@HellenicVibes Fear not, I will show you the way:

The First Line(s) of the Iliad

In this our brave readers set off with a potentially rabid crocodile as guide, to talk about the first seven lines of the Iliad.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

@holland_tom Always liked this based on Vatican bust. Like being in front of the man: you can almost hear that pure style in aristocratic drawl: omni ornatu orationis tamquam veste detracta "with all the adornments of eloquence stripped like clothing" (Cicero)

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

2m readers. The classics are not dead just because their enervated self-appointed gatekeepers say so. Look what actual engagement - not self projected syndromes - gets. 2m! Pick up your Virgil and your Homer, you are in great company.

Antigone Journal

@AntigoneJournal

1 year

Well, now seems as good a time as any to remind all our readers of the top *50* most-read Antigone articles to date. It's a very eclectic selection, showing just how varied your tastes are! So, here is the 15% of our output that has found some 2m readers!

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

On @BorisJohnson 's not at all recent Iliad performance. Because that's somehow causing a furor with you lot. How about a NY resolution to actually read some Classics instead of gossiping? You utter fucks . You know who you are.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

Listened via one head-phone whilst ostensibly part of a zoom meeting. Very good. Let's talk about his apparent line "I am become death, destroyer of worlds". Easy enough to say it's from the Bhagavad Gita...but what is that, why did he use it? What does the text actually say? 🧵

Dominic Sandbrook

@dcsandbrook

1 year

Morning. Today's @TheRestHistory begins the extraordinary story of J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, the man behind the atomic bomb. The golden age of quantum physics - the Manhattan Project - the race against the Nazis to build a super-weapon ... 💣

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 months

I hate this meme. Ancient Greek has never been alien to Greek speakers (if we are counting late I.E koine); the pronunciation used by the dilettanti was a turgid combination of wheat vowels and buttery consonants never ever uttered by a Greek mouth.

Z

@_mengde_

2 months

@CharltonCussans My favorite anecdote I will never stop sharing was how British aristocrats would speak Ancient Greek to the Greeks, for whom the language had become so alien after 2000 years of sound change that they thought they were hearing English.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

Just found these two sonnets to Herodotos in a student commentary. How times have changed.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

@holland_tom I was once King Alfred at a primary school nativity. I had a fight with the lobster who was trying to steal baby Jesus.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

BUT WE CAN GO FURTHER! Semantic/etymological link between mist and...peeing! The PIE root *h₃meyǵʰ- gives us mist, ὀμίχλη, but also ὀμῑχέω ,I pee. See also Sanskrit: megha(na) (raincloud), miha (rain) and meha (urine) all from the same root.

Greek Etymologies

@GreekEtymology

5 years

Modern Greek ομίχλη [omíxli] ("fog, mist") derives from ancient Greek ὀμίχλη ("fog, mist"). ὀμίχλη is first attested in the Iliad, when Thetis rises from the sea like a mist (ἠΰτ᾽ ὀμίχλη).

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@PhiloCrocodile

4 months

My (unsolicited) advice: unless you're a top shelf Classicist (you are not); you can not make do with only two ancient languages. Your mind is not good enough to generate real insight from only Latin & Greek. I can count on one hand my tutors that were. You need be learnin moar.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

11 months

sorry JFK but ich bin KEIN Americaner: the great books tradition is FOREIGN to me, but something of this thread strikes me as unfair and insipid. Given that I've enjoyed many a convo with a "history bro" on here I will respond.

Ryan Rhodes ⚙️🧠

@langofmind

11 months

"western civ" bros are deeply unserious. "Have you read the Iliad?" Bro, the Iliad is FICTION Do you know the history of the Hittite empire? Of Arzawa, of Wilusa? Do you know the exploits of the great kings? Hattusili, Muwatalli, Suppiluliuma?

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

We underestimate how much of the early Iranic world, from the Danube to the Oxus become Hellenised. This is a book of endless treasures. Whilst I rarely recommend transl, I urge you towards @holland_tom who is himself a Herodotean character.

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@0xAlaric Every since that cringe book whose author was like “Alaric was misunderstood and marginalised…just like modern refugees” I find myself instinctively anti him, even if I wouldn’t spit on Honorius.

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@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

@PaulSkallas A day in the life: alcohol for work alcohol to come down and take the edge off alcohol to lose inhibition alcohol to get hard Repeat for *30* years because you die of liver failure. To beat the system you must outthink the system.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 months

Just learn Latin to a basic high school level. That will put you light years ahead of any “English specialist”.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 month

Of c. The Parthians, Sassanids, various steppe Iranics (eg Sarmatians) couldn’t do it. The *Hunns* couldn’t do it. But a Stone Age tribe dependent on Euro imported horses could. What is the point of such comments? To “own the chuds”? Abysmal.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

No appetite for "discourse" but this is not entirely true. The sacrifice of epithets, the levelling out of register to the quotidian & and the excision of all that is archaic and strange. No Greek would recognise. Very pretty translations, but not a Homeric experience.

Dr Emily Wilson

@EmilyRCWilson

1 year

The Homeric poems are the culmination of a long oral tradition. In antiquity, they were most often experienced in oral performance. Unlike most modern English versions, my translations use regular meter, to honor that poetic legacy and invite reading out loud.

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@st_louis_stan Her BABEL was recommended to me by a few people due to my own philological bent. Abysmal book. Once more reminded of @PaulSkallas dictum that a bad book rec is an absolute crime against the limited leisure hours of the working man.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

The First Line(s) of the Iliad

In this our brave readers set off with a potentially rabid crocodile as guide, to talk about the first seven lines of the Iliad.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

I genuinely believe all classical scholarship ought to be written in Latin. It would be significantly healthier for the field and iron out all issues of accessibility and representation. It is a no brainer. #ClassicsTwitter

Dr Danny Bate

@DannyBate4

4 years

what language or linguistics opinion is going to land you in this situation?

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

I am once again doing what public facing bodies should be doing but aren't. No memes, no cringe, just a reading list for one of the most important periods of #Roman #history . #ClassicsTwitter

Your Severan Rome Reading List

In which the Croc produces an entirely functional reading list to acquaint oneself with the Severan dynasty.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

@holland_tom Really a problem of Roman *ethnography*: Achaemenids weren't Arascids weren't Sassanids. Like the late Romans/Byzantines complaining about response to everyone from the Getae, Bulgars, Rus &c under the name "Scythians". You don't win wars by chucking Herodotus at your foe.

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@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

@holland_tom Have you seen this wonderful sleeping T-Rex by @thejohnconway ? Utterly lovely.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@General_JWJ is she still after GW950m again? power of the ancestors to you my canid friend, may you run swiftly and glut yourself on the blood of our foes. run with the harm crews of the forest!

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@PhiloCrocodile

4 months

@CSandbatch No. The correct barriers (Latin, Greek, formal linguistics, the Maths required for philosophy [logic, set theory etc]) have been gleefully removed in the name of "equity". We CAN have a proper humanities again. Just not in the universities.

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@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

I am reminded, naturally, of 90% of modern readings of Herodotus.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 months

It's (almost, just missed) #WorldBearDay so how about a thread about a Greek myth and its Indo-European and Ancient North Eurasian forebears? Let's go back 15,000 years. 🧵

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@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

@hannahrosewoods The economy is now less a set of useful metrics as much as it is a fell god to whom we must sacrifice the young, old, unlucky and infirm.

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@relevantmena Romans were right about actors and no serious civilisation can get away from this sore fact.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

Think of this as an early draft, I'll spin out more specifics and tackle Greek next #ClassicsTwitter @llewelyn_morgan @ArmandDAngour @ScorpioMartian @SaturaLanx_Lat @avzaagzonunaada @Giovanni_Lido

How to Learn Latin Well

Wherein the Croc expounds a bare bones method to set you on the first path towards Latin mastery.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

Passio Mariae Barbae - Wherein the Croc tries to make sense of the current nastiness surrounding the only halfway famous Classicist still around.

Passio Mariae Barbae

Wherein the Croc tries to make sense of the current nastiness surrounding the only halfway famous Classicist still around.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@simongerman600 as with literally everything ever, @AntigoneJournal has an article on this which adds a lot of context.

Julius Caesar's Last Words

J.S. UBHI Beware the Ides of March

antigonejournal.com

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@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

Orange, of c, comes from Sanskrit 'naranga(h)'. We used to say 'a norange' but rebracketed it, the same way we did nick name from 'an eke name'. English has no widely accepted rhyme for it. #philology

Katy Kelleher

@KatyKelleher

6 years

I hate orange.

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@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

@sentantiq There are 8566 editions of the Homeric texts "I can fix this!" There are 8567 editions of the Homeric texts

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

#ClassicsTwitter whenever someone, usually @theo_nash , mentions that maybe it might be fair for people taking advanced degrees and teaching posts to...actually know the languages.

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@PhiloCrocodile

2 months

If you have the Latin, reading the Renaissance humanists (yes, including d’Ancona) is fascinating and will change the way you view “classics”.

Stone Age Herbalist

@Paracelsus1092

2 years

Renaissance Archaeology? Alongside books and texts, the late medieval world also became fascinated with the material remnants of the Classical world. What did this mean and what impact did it have in later centuries?

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@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

Old English references to Rom and Remus not *that* uncommon. Probs due to the native Hengist and Horsa myth. This one is taken from the Franks casket, a virtuoso 8th c piece of OE art. @holland_tom @llewelyn_morgan @DannyBate4 @ArmandDAngour @ClerkofOxford @DrFrancisYoung

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@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

@ghost_tropic_ @PaulSkallas is so right on this it is bizarre. I frequently show women monkey. responses "why are you showing me this?" "what is this?" "what does this mean?" "why? etc.

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@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

I learn from this fun episode that there was a late antique Rabbinical family claiming descent from Nero. Is there anything Ahenobarbus couldn't do? Holland's fairhanded treatment aside, I find @dcsandbrook an excellent interlocutor & wish I had his voice in my ear when writing.

Tom Holland

@holland_tom

3 years

Today's episode of @TheRestHistory is on that loveable scamp, Nero. Did he sleep with his mother? Did he fiddle while Rome burned? Was he all bad?

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@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

Whilst I pride myself on being too thick for advertising to work on me, @holland_tom 's GORRILA marketing for @peterfrankopan 's latest has somehow meant I ended up with lovely speckled-edged signed version to curl up with tonight.

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@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

Point taken (and appreciated), tho I like both covers. However, we're not that far away from a time many classicists had experience of either WW, many would have boxed in public schools/military (at least in UK). Classicist as pale unworldly nerd is largely a recent thing.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

9 months

10 book recommendations from 2023? Harder and harder to do each year due to poorer quality of printing, prose, and overall thinking, but sure. Not in ranked order! These will be brief because some will have full reviews once the clog is back on track...🧵

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

You need to be reading Latin and Greek everyday. You need to be chanting grammar, you need to inject obscure PIE sound laws into your veins, you need to ONLY write in palaeographic scripts. They can't take your texts if you MEMORISE them: κλέος ἄφθιτον

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

Please forgive knife bookmark, ran out of kettlebells. Marching through @holland_tom latest #PAX , which may well be one of the best #books published on #Rome this century. Avoids presentism in its analysis and therefore can tell us something. You must read.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

Apparently it's #WorldBearDay and to celebrate please read the only piece you will ever need on the so called Indo-European bear taboo. 🐻🐻‍❄️

*h₂ŕ̥tḱos gon give it to ya: Indo-European Bear Taboos

In which the croc disproves the notion that there was a Proto-Indo-European bear taboo, with zero recourse to memes whatsoever.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

Easy to joke about this ( @museumbums great gimmick account), but as @PaulSkallas keeps saying, the Greeks were talking about the glutes and posterior chain: muscles VITAL for hand to hand combat. deads, jumps, sprints, romanian deads, bridges, squats. Do them.

LJ Trafford

@TraffordLj

1 year

And for todays 'research quoted entirely out of context' I give you Philostratus: 'Narrow buttocks are weak, buttocks that are too wide are sluggish, well formed buttocks are suitable for everything.'

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@UpdatingOnRome Honestly if I had spent the fast few years in gruelling training and turned up teeth to tit to toes clad in the best weaponry Augustus could buy and these guys turned up naked I would just leave.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 months

@efikobaddie What’s hilarious is that I can think of at least two permutations of who this couple could be.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 months

I suspect the humanities revival has nothing to do with "academic" humanities. Nobody wants that shit.

Ted Gioia

@tedgioia

3 months

I've seen a very enthusiastic response to this proposed humanities program—even more than when I write about Taylor Swift. Go figure. But there really is humanities revival underway, and it's almost certainly a response to the overly-rationalized and techno-bullied quality of

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 month

Wondering about the extent/lack of engagement with Castoriadis by anglophone classicists. Opened up @Nakhthor POLIS and lo and behold, there it is. Phenomenal. Book must appear on every Ancient Greek history reading list or you are fundamentally unserious.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

@xphilosopher @dustintrampe The period of highest "chauvanism" (qua the current framework) was also the period of highest engagement with other langs and traditions. The people disfiguring classics nowadays don't even have Latin and Greek, let alone Sanskrit and Akkadian.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

@nrken19 This is basically everything you need to know about the PIE bear

*h₂ŕ̥tḱos gon give it to ya: Indo-European Bear Taboos

In which the croc disproves the notion that there was a Proto-Indo-European bear taboo, with zero recourse to memes whatsoever.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

Most wrote with something of an anti-imperial pro-senate bias. This often gets carried into modern accounts because academics unironically (if nowadays, unconsciously) associate themselves with the senatorial class and not the slaves. Source of much bad analysis.

britt.

@artistfuly

4 years

Sometimes I wonder if when Roman historians wrote about the Emperors, they would have made some stuff up or distorted some parts of history out of fear...

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

5 minutes with average German Classicist and I turn full blown Anglo-Imperialist (qua language). Rule Britannia plays, Alfred rises from the dead and raises the fyrd, Churchill talks to tables, Porson is building a bridge to invade, Jones writes a diss "whtver its antiquity"

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

I broke my usual custom of avoiding podcasts & this was very worth it. Brief thread? 🧵! because you must listen to it. You must read Herotodus.

Tom Holland

@holland_tom

1 year

Today, after 330 episodes of @TheRestHistory , I finally get to do my all-time favourite historian: HERODOTUS. Featuring everything from mummies to the battle of Marathon, & drunk-dancing on tables to giant ants, it's THE BIRTH OF HISTORY!!!!

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

@nntaleb : "Study something old but not visibly useful (classics), something modern and useful (accounting, coding), never something new and not visibly useful." One gives you access to languages, history, culture &c; interviews at banks, law firms. The other is media studies.

Cllr Dr Alex Powell

@APowellLaw

4 years

Media studies is a more useful starting point for critical engagement, political argument, and employability than classics. This is a hill I will absolutely die on.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

11 months

@holland_tom should any museum goers wish for a curated reading list about the period including, yes, Elagabalus and his passed over cousin Alexander...

Your Severan Rome Reading List

In which the Croc produces an entirely functional reading list to acquaint oneself with the Severan dynasty.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

@Paracelsus1092 To hear the susurration of the trees above the din of our machines.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

"relevance" is the brain dead buzzword that has killed the Classics as a discipline. What about worth? What about reality? What about truth?

Hellenic Society

@Hellenic_Soc

1 year

'How to Make Ancient History Relevant to Students in the Gulf Today'

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

Sanskrit Words in English

Some brief musings on Sanskrit words in our everyday spoken English.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 months

I don’t want to disagree with a good acc doing good work, but there is a fundamental difference between classical and later Latin. The latter is worthy, important, but not at all *Roman*. You need a lot of Greek to appreciate this, but it is there in the language itself.

Learn Latin

@latinedisce

6 months

Some people would like Classical Latin and Medieval Latin to be two different languages. The reason is that they deeply hate the link that unites ancient Rome with Western Christian civilization in a single golden tradition of history, philosophy and literature. I am (not) sorry

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

I read this from @holland_tom in the new @AntigoneJournal on Suetonius' Sopranos..er...Caesars. "To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world." some played the part better than others!

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

6 years

Oldest Odyssey fragment? No, but what is it?

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 years

CP Snow’s Three Cultures or why Wordcels should shut up and learn Ancient Greek

Wherein the Croc takes so long to respond to some twitter drama even the original tweeters have forgotten what it was originally about.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

7 months

Children of twitter, be ye informed of a most INCREDIBLE resource. Why, only recently I found myself reading some Terence & wanted to refine my grasp of metre...handouts ALONE are incroyable, yet there are free world class lectures as well. Be not swine ignorant of pearls.

Antigone Journal

@AntigoneJournal

7 months

Here's an introduction to Greek and Latin poetry: 10 open-access video lectures (with downloadable handouts) from @Cambridge_Uni . The course covers the rules of scansion, the principles and evolution of all major metres and genres, and plenty more besides!

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

Is Christianity so predicative of the horrid depths of man because it is true (pace Milton, your neighbourhood priest, @byzantinepower &c); because society rests on a (now unseen) Christian foundation ( @holland_tom &c) or because it is #Lindy ( @PaulSkallas &c). Does it matter?

Paul Graham

@paulg

3 years

Something I taught the boys on the way to school: one thing the story of the German concentration camps teaches us is how much potential for evil there is in so many apparently normal people.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

5 years

Who will win? The Leiden school of PIE Linguistics? Or one cheeky boi with some memes? @eeprodi @mattitiahu @annapjudson @benjcartlidge @lettlander @Katherine_McDon

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

1 year

I too am a classicist of working class extraction and will introduce my 5th Law: Johnson is invariably better at Latin & Greek than 99% of those excoriating him. (first of 3, others in pingback sections).

MAYNIN AYEDE TEA: On PM Johnson and his Homer

In which we attempt to discern why Eton and Oxford combined apparently can’t teach someone the first few lines of the Iliad.

philologicalcrocodile.wordpress.com

Frances Forbes-Carbines

@Forbes_Carbines

1 year

My piece for @WorkClassicists looked at how Boris Johnson is a wretched example of a Classicist: #ClassicsTwitter

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

8 months

There are meercat Iliads out there. Yet their lines are neither sung to the phorminx nor clad in hexametres; they are sounded in the spilt blood of heroes. Sing for us now goddess the rage of Psicharpax, son of Embasichytrus...

Stone Age Herbalist

@Paracelsus1092

8 months

Did you guys know that MONGOOSE WARFARE? They even draw up into battle lines and rotate through the front line like a phalanx.

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

3 years

Absolutely fascinating. #Aramaic was, time untold, the lingua franca of the East Med and the Achaemenid empire (even Ashoka used it!). It's the key to better understanding not just the #Greeks , but the #Persians too. IT'S HAPPENING #ARSHAMA @DrMichaelBonner @Nakhthor

Antigone Journal

@AntigoneJournal

3 years

In today's fascinating piece, Christopher Tuplin of @LivUni shows what Classics can learn from the Aramaic letters of a Persian satrap, recently re-edited from @Bodleianlibs .

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Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

4 years

@holland_tom Could you imagine the crest? a hedgehog with a corinthian atop his head like Pericles, clutching a cricket bat. Glorious.

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