Theo Nash @theo_nash Twitter profile

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

This was a lot of fun to put together: do have a read!

Antigone Journal

@AntigoneJournal

2 years

Why do we study Ancient Greece? To expand our shared knowledge of the past or for personal enrichment? Is research a primary or secondary aim? Today, @theo_nash of @UMich revisits 1930s Oxford to see how rival views of scholarship were keenly thrashed out:

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Last Seen Profiles

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@PILIDIAZ5

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@tweeth_mitchell

Theo Nash

@theo_nash

25 days

The evolution of the Mycenaean octopus is just progressive stages of a drug trip.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

22 days

The etymology of apricot is quite a journey.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Anakin's decline.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 months

Great questions in Ancient History:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

'A Song of Ice and Fire', the 21st century narrative saga, survives only partially; a prose recension covers the first half in great detail, as does an audio-visual one for roughly the same extent; after this we have only the audio-visual in an epitomated and much corrupted form.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

The political spectrum of Ancient Greece.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

11 days

A Linear B tablet displayed upside down in the National Archaeological Museum 🙃

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 months

The gods never really left.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Contracted omicron and not sure what to do? Follow this simple guide:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Some Greek verbs are just unforgivably irregular. The third person plural of οἶδα? It literally is a sin.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The Mycenaean bridge at Kazarma, quietly doing its job these 3000 years.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 months

Weird English conditionals: 'I'll be in town tomorrow if you'd like to grab coffee'. Being in town is not in fact dependent on the correspondent's desire for coffee.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

Twitter interactions, as described by a Hittite king:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 months

I don't honestly know how to process this. Is there any reason now to doubt that we'll get complete scrolls soon enough? Papyrology — if that's even the right word for this — could once again revolutionise Classics.

Nat Friedman

@natfriedman

5 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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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

Schliemann's daily routine during the 1884 Tiryns excavations.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

After three weeks of writing papers Latin puns are the only joy left in my life.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

Minoan Crete was a peaceful wonderla-

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 months

Would a CS major be able to understand this?

florence ☧

@morallawwithin

4 months

Would a philosophy major be able to understand this?

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

8 months

Tolkien to his son Michael: 'It takes at least 15 years to make a good Greek scholar.'

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

The problem with the Latin ablative is that it isn't so much a single case as two and half cases standing on each other's shoulders in a trench coat.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

Casual reminder that the Romans had a verb equivalent to 'can't even'.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

Being a classicist is living in a constant state of fear that a 19th century German beat you to your brilliant idea by 100 years.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

No idea how Odysseus managed it.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 years

They just don't choose translators like they used to.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

25 days

Like a lot of dreams, there's a monster at the end of it.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

Been sitting on this for a bit, but it looks like I'll be in Athens next year!

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

Post-Mycenaean sites can be cool too, I guess.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

The Linear A (l) and B (r) sign AB23 had the value mu in LB. It's also used as the ideogram for ox, suggesting Myc. and Min. cows went mu.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 months

Blackwell's are now selling those dreadful print-on-demand copies of old books digitised by Google:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

I still can't believe I got away with this footnote:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Wait, whoops, let's zoom out.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

A letter in the TLS that gets more interesting the further you read...

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

25 days

Thought you'd seen it all?

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 months

Tolkien on the Ancient Greeks:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

I've seen the tablets in Athens and Heraklion before, but before I knew anything about it; today I really saw Linear B for the first time. Still not over how a) small, and b) three-dimensional and real the signs are.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

You, a dolt: I love the duels in the Iliad. Me, an intellectual: I love the duals in the Iliad.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

Joining the party:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Between the Old Hittite and New Hittite recensions of the Laws, the penalty for biting off a man's nose increases 30x. This may be a scribal error, but I prefer to think people got very tired of noses being bitten off and getting upping the penalty in hopes it would finally end.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

10 months

The Vulgate is, no doubt, the widest-read Latin text historically, and now almost completely missing from modern curricula. It is both accessible and familiar (if decreasingly so): a much better starting point than Caesar.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

Pardon me for thinking there were racial interactions, colonialization, and homosexuality in the ancient Mediterranean.

LindyMan

@PaulSkallas

6 years

No, "critical race theory, post colonial theory, psychoanalytic approaches and queer theory" won't teach you anything about Greek literature. You're just committed to the fallacy of anachronism.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

'Squirrel', of course, comes by way of Latin from Ancient Greek σκίουρος -- the animal which shades itself with its tail (lit. shadow-tail).

Dr Kate Wiles

@katemond

5 years

THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST PICTURE I HAVE EVER SEEN

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

'Greece is part of Asia; Greek literature is a Near Eastern literature.' M. L. West, 1966.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

It's only a marathon if it's from the Attica region of Greece; otherwise, it's just sparkling jogging.

Atticist

@Atticist

5 years

If you don’t defeat the Persians and announce that fact while literally expiring at the end of 26.2 miles, it is NOT a marathon.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 months

A quirk of English development: 'ominous' and 'auspicious' are both etymologically neutral, for omens and auspices may be either good or ill; but each has taken one province for itself and excluded the other.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

The joy of discovery in secondhand books:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

There was once at Harvard a conference that asked 'What is Philology?'. A colleague inquired of Shackelton Bailey whether he would attend: 'No,' responded Shackleton, 'I already know what it is. I shall be in my office, doing it.'

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

So, how did Pliny get it wrong? A thread.

New Pompeii Graffiti May Rewrite History In A Major Way

A charcoal graffito from Pompeii may put an end to a longstanding debate about the date of the eruption of Vesuvius.

www.forbes.com

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The English word 'fart' derives from an onomatopoeic Proto-Indo-European root *perd — so some guy 6000 years ago heard a fart and we've been using his impression to describe them ever since.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The trick to pictures of Tiryns is including people — otherwise your brain will always try to assume the rocks are a reasonable size.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

1 year

For the budding scholiast.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

How to explain procrastion to your Latin professor:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

11 months

A remarkable survival of Persian usage: Ionia was already Yauna in the Behistun inscription. Just as the Romans called all Hellenes Greeks after the first tribe they met, so too the Persians called them all Ionians.

КЕЙДИН

@Cayden_Cline

11 months

The OP was highlighting the difference in syntax from English. I want to highlight how Greece’s name would be indecipherable to the average Anglo lol

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Incredible to see my name in (digital) print for the first time. The whole volume (edited by @PhilipJBoyes , @crewsproject and @natalakiou ) is available open access here:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

Strikingly enough, the sign 'mu' in Linear B is also the the logogram for 'cow' — so they did indeed go mu!

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The use of cuttlefish ink for writing in the Aegean is evidenced as far back as the Middle Minoan III period: two cups found at Knossos bear inked inscriptions on their interiors.

Greek Etymologies

@GreekEtymology

5 years

Modern Greek καλαμάρι ("squid") derives from Medieval Greek καλαμάρι(ο)ν ("pen," "pen case," "inkwell," "squid"), from Ancient Greek κάλαμος ("reed [pen]"). 🦑🖊 καλαμάριον is given as a gloss for τευθίς ("squid") in the scholia to Oppian.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The Pevensie children begin 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Warbdrobe' in London. This was obviously a real place, so how does it make sense to deny Narnia? Why include London at all if the other places were fiction? It makes more sense to argue all were real.

Oliver D. Smith

@oliveratlantis

5 years

@DimitriNakassis @e_pe_me_ri Odysseus is described as being blown off course near Maleas, see Hom. Od. 9.80. This was obviously a real place, so how does it make sense for you guys to deny other locations? Why include Maleas at all if the other places were fiction? It makes more sense to argue all were real.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 years

Different words, different image, both tweeted based on the date. So much for Quellenforschung.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

It still staggers me that no one could come up with anything better than "Old Latin" and "Very Old Latin".

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

Tiryns, a coastal site, was the first centre on the Argolid to be fortified in Mycenaean times. Later expansions included extensive use of corbelling in passageways and the famous galleries. The same principle still holds up the nearby tholos tomb, later used for olive pressing.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

We don't talk enough about how the proper plural of dilemma is dilemmata.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

A remarkable Linear B discovery, just in time for Christmas.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

12 days

Multimedia: Athena striding forward to fight a giant, both in monumental sculpture from the Old Temple on the Acropolis and on a fairly quotidian oil jar.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

9 months

I've read this sort of essay written by undergraduates: they're clever enough to make an argument, but can't see that their ignorance of the source material defeats them.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

1 year

The Cyclopean wall of Athens: hidden around the Acropolis are traces of a past much deeper than Pericles.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

1 year

You don't do that every day.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 years

Yesterday, after delays due to both COVID and last month's strike, I finally completed my PhD qualifying examinations (with just a bit of help from these two).

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

Henceforth I am only accepting absences justified in trimeters.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The only honest abstract: 'I have some thoughts on <topic x>. If my paper is accepted, I will try to figure out what exactly they are.'

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

The Linear B evidence suggests that it's the other way around - Athena was named after Athens.

British Museum

@britishmuseum

7 years

Athens was named after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Her symbol was an owl and was used on coins for over 300 years!

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

Grad school bound: I'm excited to say that this September I'll be headed stateside to pursue a PhD at the University of Michigan's Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 years

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims that the way we experience the world is based on the language we speak. Since there are no first-person verb forms recorded in Linear B, we can therefore posit that the Mycenaeans had no sense of self.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The Mycenaean cemetery at Dendra is famous for its wealth of finds — not only does it have the only known unlooted tholos, but multiple horse burials were found (left in situ), and chamber tomb 6 yielded the only full set of Mycenaean armour, now on display in Nafplio.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

You've heard of the Areopagite court, now get ready for the Areopagite cat.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Call me jaded, but eventually we'll have to stop acting like polychromy is new and interesting.

Harvard University

@Harvard

3 years

People tend to think of ancient sculpture as colorless, but they were often vibrantly painted. Join @harvartmuseums to learn how scientific analysis can help reconstruct original colors on works of art. Tuesday, 9/21, 12:30pm:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Irregular plurals.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

No, you're immature.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

11 months

Classicists are generally required to learn Ancient Greek (and indeed Latin) to a much higher level than anyone else studying a language for purely academic reasons.

Tim the Shitposting Linguist

@LinguisticsShi1

11 months

Thinking that Ancient Greek of all things is a hard language is the linguistic equivalent of needing to get out more

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

Wilamowitz had, 100 years ago, a much better conception of what Classics (though he called it Philology) should be than many do today.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

My wife: 'Why on earth is a ten cent coin called a dime here?' Me: 'Well if you think of the PIE word for ten, *dekm, it's really quite easy to remember...'

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

In entirely other news, I discovered yesterday that sheep can wag their tails.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

8 months

Prudence Smith on the special challenge of Greek prose composition:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

8 months

Peter Brown on archaeology.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

10 months

This is complete hogwash.

Hannah Lucinda Smith

@hannahluci

10 months

The Chronicles of Narnia are strewn with Turkic references, but nobody really knows why: CS Lewis did not speak Turkish, nor did he ever visit the country For @EngelsbergIdeas , I wrote about the mystery that has preoccupied me for years

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 years

This is fun ()

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

Rare evidence for a Mycenaean sport much resembling modern tennis. (From the Preface of Vermeule and Karageorgis 1982, Mycenaean Pictorial Vase Painting.)

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

Chandler's preface to the second edition of his Greek Accentuation is something else:

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

3 years

The trouble with translations of Hittite texts is they they give the entirely mistaken impression that we have any idea what is going on.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 years

MY V 659, a record of women receiving bedding at Mycenae; among the names are Alexandra (a-re-ka-sa-da-ra) and Theodora (te-o-do-ra), still in fashion over 3000 years later.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

10 months

Knowing multiple languages is probably the most basic prerequisite for being an academic.

Hands off Rafah 🇵🇸

@FeyeraBender

10 months

academics who speak and read multiple languages are so obsessed with saying u can’t engage with ideas properly without speaking and reading multiple languages. funny

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

And they say Linear B isn't fun.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The beach at Voidokilia — between the 'Cave of Nestor' on one headland and a tholos tomb on the other, the feeling of being at the Homeric 'Sandy Pylos', ἐπὶ θινὶ θαλάσσης, is quite impossible to shake.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

7 years

Dress for the job you want ( @ancientimpress )

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

4 years

It's only a pandemic if it's from an Ionic region of Greece; otherwise, it's just sparkling plague.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

2 years

It takes almost no training to recognize all but one word here, and the grammar is transparent except at the end. We always use Beowulf as our standard example of Old English, but that does a disservice to the real continuity of the language.

Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril

@PhiloCrocodile

2 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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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

5 years

The citadel of Mycenae, home to the greatest architectural achievements of the Greek Bronze Age, and not a few of its richest graves.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

6 months

Mild disappointment in reading the new edition of Tolkien's letters: OCR (presumably) has done a number on Latin and Greek, and no one at Harper Collins has the wit to correct. So we read nolo efiscopari, δημοχρατία, sub specie aeternitaris, etc.

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Theo Nash

@theo_nash

1 year

Latin 'cum' more typically comes before its noun, and the Romans weren't quite sure why it acted differently with personal pronouns. Cicero had a theory, of course: good Romans say nobiscum because cum nobis comes squirmingly close to cunno bis, 'twice in the cunt'.

Yoïn van Spijk

@yvanspijk

1 year

In Spanish and Portuguese it's 'para ti' (to you) but 'contigo' (with you), not *con ti. Why this '-go' part? It's a remnant of Latin 'cum', the ancestor of 'con': it was 'tēcum' ("you-with"), not *cum tē. This became 'tigo', but later a pleonastic 'con' was added. Here's more: