it’s briseis, bitch

Reviving this page after 5 years (and 2 classics degrees!) Missed you dweebs

[briseisbitch]

so I’m reviving this after 5 years away, sorry it’s been so quiet around here!! i’ve been doing classics the whole time, and while the Iliad and tsoa were so, so important to me and still are, my interests now are much more about establishing the ancient world as a multicultural and multiethnic space, confronting the false whiteness of the classics and prioritising black, poc, and of course female voices and characters from history and mythology

i know this is quite different from what a lot of you followed me for, so unfollow if that’s not the vibe, but i hope some of you will be interested!!

[bisulla]

reading histories from the ancient world can be really fun because sometimes you get killer lines such as: “Thus Gaius [Caligula], after doing in three years, nine months, and twenty-eight days all that has been related, learned by actual experience that he was not a god” like fucking drag him Dio Cassius

[hortensius-deactivated20240909]

reading catullus definitely does something irreversible to your gender. i’m not sure what exactly it does to it but it Does

[neapolis-neapolis]

Artemide efesia (II sec.), Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli.

[labentiasidera-deactivated20210]

Horace (starting a poem): The beginning warmth of spring, so lovely, earth released at last from winter's white hoarfrost, the breezes so pleasant and the young goats playing in the grass...

Horace (ending a poem): you're gonna die really fucking soon you know that? any day now. in the grand scheme of things. so drink up that wine while you can bc when you're in HELL you won't BE ABLE TO.

[boy-and-girl-crazy123456]

The fact that Israel and Australia are part of Eurovision I think actually says a lot about the whole conception of what a "european" is and how's it necessarily tied to a colonial relationship

[thoodleoo]

yknow the story of odysseus tricking polyphemus by giving him a fake name and then blinding him is great, but i think a lot of people really sleep on the hilarious fact that, after odysseus reveals his name to polyphemus and polyphemus remembers the prophecy that a man named odysseus would blind him, polyphemus is like “WOW when i heard that prophecy i thought odysseus was going to be tall and sexy and strong but turns out you’re just short and an asshole”

[thoodleoo]

loving that polyphemus had pretty much accepted his fate as long as someone sexy and badass blinded him and seems more pissed off that odysseus is just some bitch than anything else

[coolancientstuff]

Fragment of an ancient Greek Attic white ground kylix showing a Thracian woman with tattooed arms. Pistoxenos Painter, 470-460 BC.

[onomatopriya]

i just read virginia woolf’s essay on charlotte brontë. at one point, she writes: ‘to write down one’s impressions of hamlet as one reads it year after year, would be virtually to record one’s own autobiography.’

i can’t stop thinking about it? i love being reminded that literature is as much about the interaction between the reader and the text as it is between the writer and the text. not just the fact that, as we go through life and grow, we find literature increasingly commenting on the experiences we’ve had. but also the fact that we come to books with our own life experiences and thoughts, and we work retroactively with a writer to almost create a slightly new book from what they wrote - their book through our eyes. as readers, we are as essential to the literature-making process as the writer.

my copy of hamlet is probably very different to yours. i might’ve related more to hamlet’s musings on death and morality. you might be more interested in shakespeare’s questioning of power or revenge. same story, different notes, different eyes, different lives.

[mapsontheweb]

Map showing the homeland of every character in Homer’s Iliad.

[loeilballon]

Red-figure kylix (drinking cup), by the Sosias Painter (c. 500 B.C.)

Achilles is taking care of Patroclus’ wounded arm, during the Trojan War.

[reverseracism]

But Greek Gods and Greek Heroes ARE WHITE. I hate it when characters get changed just to please others. If there was a movie about Haile Selassie and he was played by Bill Skarsgård I would be equally pissed. Why is it suddenly Greek Mythology so interesting, because they made chararcters black? Sorry to say the only blacks in Ancient Greece were slaves. Fucking hypocrites.

Sorry to say you ain’t know shit about Greek mythology. I mentioned Memnon in my last post bruh. As in the Ethiopian King/Demigod who’s strength almost matched Achilles. As in suck it up and deal with it, maybe you’d learn a thing or two about the fact that black people weren’t just slaves and won’t be regulated to slave roles anymore for your ugly ass comfort.

Eon

[briseisbitch]

not only Memnon, but other figures such as the extremely beautiful princess Andromeda, and many other, ranging from demigods and giants (Atlas) to even some gods (potentially Athena) are canonically black in ancient mythology

even more importantly, black people rose to prominence outside of myth too, including many of the Egyptian pharaohs, potentially mixed figures such as Cleopatra, and even Roman emperors (Septimius Severus)

there is no basis to the claim that black people existed in the ancient world only as slaves; famously, the Greeks and Romans enslaved indiscriminately, taking captives of all ethnicities from conquered cities - of course, some black slaves will have existed, but to reduce all black figures to slaves is to be willingly ignorant, projecting your own modern racism onto the ancient world, ignoring figures of myth and history because they doesn’t fit into your outdated and self-serving view of the classical world

take your racism elsewhere, pls stay the fuck away from the classics

[effulgentpoet]

mythology aesthetics

MEMNON

In Greek mythology, Memnon was an Ethiopian king and the son of Tithonus and Eos. As a warrior he was considered to be almost Achilles’ equal in skill. During the Trojan War, he brought an army to Troy’s defense. Memnon’s army is described as being too big to be counted and his arrival starts a huge banquet in his honour. As per usual the two leaders (Memnon and Priam) end the dinner by exchanging glorious war stories, and Memnon’s tales lead Priam to declare that the Ethiopian King will be Troy’s savior. Despite this, Memnon is very humble and warns that his strength will, he hopes, be seen in battle, although he believes it is unwise to boast at dinner. Before the next day’s battle, so great is the divine love towards Memnon that Zeus makes all the other Olympians promise not to interfere in the fighting. In battle, Memnon kills Nestor’s son, Antilochus. Despite his age, Nestor tries to fight Memnon but the Aethiopian warrior insists it would not be just to fight such an old man, and respects Nestor so much that he refuses to fight. Eventually, Achilles stabs Memnon to death, causing his entire army to flee in terror. The death of Memnon echoes that of Hector, another defender of Troy whom Achilles also killed out of revenge for a fallen comrade, Patroclus. After Memnon’s death, Zeus was moved by Eos’ tears and granted him immortality.

[briseisbitch]

Socrates, about to die: to separate the soul from the body is the pursuit of the true philosopher, to be closer to god and to true knowledge

me, disassociating: you wish you had this power, bitch boy

[fromunderdreamingspires]

Going back to college after Christmas feels a lot like Persephone being pulled back into the underworld for the rest of the year

[ginnyws]

“He is dead,” she says, in her flat voice. “Hector is dead,” he says. “Tomorrow.” “You have no armor.” “I do not need any.” His teeth show; it is an effort to speak.

[briseisbitch]

Odysseus: What are you gonna bring to christmas dinner?

Achilles: My negative attitude and sparkling personality