i am not your answer

sara. infp. bi. she/her. sideblog. crybaby unable to accept her fav books have no more sequels

[dearorpheus]

what does your bio mean? "the sea was never blue" ?

Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.

— The Sea Was Never Blue, Maria Michela Sassi

What, from a cursory glance, appears blue generally has more to say. You lift a precious stone to the sunlight and it lights up, it refracts, but there’s always a side you can’t see. If you think you’ve thought of it all, think a little longer. There’s always more to consider. 

[minayrd]

i suppose…

[heartshop]

Margaret Atwood, ‘A Sunday Drive’

[woolfdaily]

“Virginia Woolf said that writing a novel is like walking through a dark room, holding a lantern which lights up what is already in the room anyway.”

— Margaret Atwood, from Negotiating with the Dead; “Introduction: Into the Labyrinth,”

[earthbcnder-archive]

@fandomaestheticnet gtktm » Favorite Characters: Adam Parrish

If he went in by himself, it was nothing but this: Adam Parrish. In a way, it had always been that. Sometimes the scenery changed. Sometimes the weather was better. But in the end, all he had was this: Adam Parrish.

[jonswno]

a hard pill to swallow: if an audience can pick up on where the story is going, it’s a good story.

[bumblebeebats]

A kinda related note i hope you don’t mind me adding on: one of the most life-changing bits of story advice i ever received was actually in a class on “Revenge and Vengeance in the Ancient World,” if you can believe it. The professor was talking about how everyone in ancient Greece knew all the Greek myths back to front and told them over and over again - and someone asked why they would keep retelling the same stories if they already knew they ended.

She explained that basically it wasn’t the ending that was the most suspenseful or exciting part, but how you got there. This is why The Iliad spoils its own ending in the opening lines. This is why we have so many different retellings of Shakespeare, of Arthurian legends, of fairy tales. 

There are no truly original stories or truly unpredictable endings. So, IMO, it’s better to focus on how you as a writer/filmmaker/artist/whatever can bring something new to the body of the story rather than trying to shock and mislead your audience. 

[elftwink]

i will defend improvised storytelling till the day i fucking die i think stories told by people under pressure to do it fast, stories told in collaboration…. that shits gorgeous and ALIVE. have you ever gone to a writing workshop and someone writes the rawest shit in the entire world during a ten minute free write? playing dnd and some dialogue is so moving it makes you wonder how it came from your dumbass friends? got really into one of those ‘one sentence at a time’ campfire story games and ended up making something— totally unrecorded, lost except to the people who were there— that should have been in the fucking moma?

people are full to the BRIM with stories and honing that storytelling into a specific practice (ex. writing) is for sure a learned skill that takes tons of practice to do effectively but…… it’s there. it’s there and anyone can tap into it if they’re given opportunity and an audience to say it to.

look, the point of telling stories is to connect with other people. and all we’ve ever done throughout human history is connect connect connect so is it any wonder when you put a human being in front of an outlet and you say ‘tell me a story’, no one stays silent? 

[dasfinanzamt-deactivated2026030]

hall of mirrors, silêmanî, kurdistan (x)

the pieces of broken mirror represent 182,000 victims of the anfal campaign, and the lights represent the 4,500 kurdish villages wiped off the map.

[africanaquarian]

me, learning about the greek pantheon in elementary: wow, I love athena, so brave and smart

me, after reading about the story of medusa: athena is a spiteful, dumb bitch who can’t direct her anger at the right people! wack ass hoe

[indicativeof-sideways-escalation]

Me, after learning than Medusas head was used as a sign of safety and female autonomy in women’s spaces because it was seen as a gift from Athena, to allow Medusa never to be harmed that way again: oh dope, Athenas on our side. Kill a man who dares to look upon you with possession in his heart.

Me, after learning that Athena holds herself to the ‘not like other girls’ standard and usuallys sides with whatever the nearest dick-toting diety says: what the fuck what a fake bitch

Me, after learning that most of the media depicting Greek Gods by the ancient Greeks that survives today was commissioned, designed, and made by men, and therefore does not depict female interpretation or telling of the myths, and is probably extremely biased towards a misogynistic portrayal of a strong woman: the canon Athena was in our hearts all along.

[buckmebuchanan]

Me, after hearing the myth about Athena cursing Arachne into the first spider because she beat the goddess in a weaving contest: What a bitch ? The Arrogance.

 Me, after hearing there are three versions of the myth, and the others have Arachne hang herself in shame so Athena brought her back to life as a spider and the third version having Zeus curse the loser to never touch a spindle wheel and when Arachne lost Athena took pity on her and transformed her so she could weave without breaking her oath: Goddess just wanted this fine artist to weave forever, doing what she loved. she ain’t that bitch

[smooththegoofyshark]

In conclusion: We stan

[adriles]

AGAMEMNON who leads the ACHAEAN FORCES continues to claim that he must have ALL my war prizes. Both he and his brother Menelaus drive VERY EXPENSIVE CHARIOTS. His son Orestes EATS! YOU DONT NEED ANY WAR PRIZES, YOU HAVE ENOUGH! YOU’RE A FRAUD!!!! A PHONY!!! STOP

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I’ve never been afraid of loneliness because I’ve never felt the need to justify my feelings to myself. I accept the muteness of feeling too. I have huge respect for my own silence. I let it speak. I allow time to do its trick and lead me back to myself. I don’t want just anyone to share life and myself with me. But I want life. Life, at all cost. And I want to feel wanted, needed and loved by someone as alive in spirit as me.”

— Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955

[mariacallasantos-deactivated202]

Also it’s almost 3am so you get my opinion but. Don’t donate to a site like ao3, when Wikipedia needs money. Like really people would rather throw money at a site notoriously founded on the principle of being able to write nasty fic than give to one of the most revolutionary sites ever created. Everybody jokes that Wikipedia is easily edited and “oh it’s full of mistakes”. Do you know how expensive curated information used to be?? Do you realize what Wikipedia does for people?? If you’ve never used Wikipedia you’re lying and they deserve your money more than a bunch of scorned ex livejournalers.

[peelingmandarins]

“Any discussion of women writers in Greece and Rome - of Sappho and her less well known followers - must focus on the nature of that ‘woman’s voice’. The dominant ideology of most of the ancient world offered women no place in public discourse. The exclusion of women from politics and power was simply one side of that much greater disability - their lack of any right to be heard. As Homer’s Telemachus put it to his mother Penelope in the Odyssey (when she dared publicly to interrupt a bard’s rectation), ‘talking must be the concern of men’. How, then, within this insistent ideology of female silence, could women writers find any space for their own creativity? How did they interact with the overwhelmingly male literary and cultural heritage? Did they succeed in appropriating and subverting male language for a distinctively female form of writing?”

— Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics (via flores-et-dracones)

[die-rosastrasse]

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”

— Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters (via phantomwidow)

[theancientgeekoroman]

Hey sorry to bother you but I recently went to a classics uni taster course and sat there completely overwhelmed because whilst the actual lessons given were tailored to potential students who have never studied classics before (me), nearly everyone else there had and were engaging with the material in a way I simply couldn’t understand. Do you have a recommended reading list I could use over summer so that I don’t completely go in the deep end? :) thanks so much !

You’re not a bother at all, friend! 

It is really overwhelming when you’re not used to it - and don’t worry, I have a whole degree in Classics, and I still get overwhelmed! It’s perfectly normal. There’s a lot of information and the Classical world spans so many locations and time periods, it’s a lot to take in. Everyone is going to be at different levels and remember - you can always learn. Your point of view and your voice is important, so if you have trouble engaging in the material how others are presenting it, think of how you engage with the material and how you would present it to others. You might be giving a lot of people another aspect of the material that they themselves had not considered. 

Anyway! 

So, before I went into my Classics degree, I had only read The Iliad and The Odyssey, and I didn’t even read them all the way through, but that’s where I would begin! 

The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid are the “big 3″ that I had to keep reading over and over again, no matter what level of Classics I was in. However, there is a lot more reading! 

The recommended reading list for Classics undergraduates from Yale University is found here (https://classics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/downloads/YaleUndergraduateReadingList.pdf) and is as follows (and please remember that this is for the whole of your undergraduate career, not what you should have done before you start): 

Ancient Greek:

Homer’s The Iliad: 1, 6, 9 (Ancient Greek), all of it in English

Homer’s The Odyssey: 4, 9 (Ancient Greek), all of it in English

Homeric Hymns: Demeter in Ancient Greek; Aphrodite, Apollo, and Hermes in English

Hesiod’s Works and Days 1-247 (Ancient Greek), all of it in English

Hesiod’s Theogony 1-232 (Ancient Greek), all of it in English

Archilochus 1, 2, 3, 6, 22, 74 (Ancient Greek), the English recommended is A. Miller’s Greek Lyric (I have never read this author at all, myself)

Sappho 1, 16, 31, 44 (Ancient Greek), English: A. Miller’s Greek Lyric is listed here again, and I would also recommend The Love Songs of Sappho, which is what I used in my course and enjoyed (https://www.amazon.com/Love-Songs-Sappho-Literary-Classics/dp/157392251X/)

Solon 1, 24 (Ancient Greek), A. Miller’s Greek Lyric selections in English (I have never read this author, either)

Simonides 542, 121D, 92D (Ancient Greek),  A. Miller’s Greek Lyric selections in English (I have never read this author, either)

Bacchylides 3, 18 (Ancient Greek),  A. Miller’s Greek Lyric selections in English

Pindar Ol. 1: In English: selections of Odes in A. Miller, Greek Lyric: Olympian 2, 12, 13, 14, Pythian 1, 3, 8, 10, Nemean 5, 10, Isthmian 5, 6, 7

Aeschylus’s Eumenides (Ancient Greek)

Aeschylus’s Oresteia (English)

Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (Ancient Greek)

Sophocles in English: Ajax, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus

Euripides’s Medea (Ancient Greek) - one of my favorites

Euripides in English: Hippolytus and Bacchae

Aristophanes’s Clouds (Ancient Greek)

Aristophanes in English: Frogs, Birds, and Lysistrata (I performed Lysistrata when I was an undergraduate and played Kinesias. It was amazing and one of my favorite plays.)

Herodotus 1.192 (Ancient Greek), 6-9 in English

Thucydides 2.1-65 (Ancient Greek), 1, the rest of 2, 6, and 7 in English

Plato’s Republic I, Ion, Crito (Ancient Greek), Republic, Apology, and Symposium in English

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1 (Ancient Greek), all of Poetics in English

Lysias 1 (Ancient Greek), Lysias 12 in English

Demosthenes’s First Philippic (Ancient Greek)

Apollonius’s Argonautica selections in N. Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology: 1.536-58, 1.1153-71, 3.744-824, 4.1629-88 (Ancient Greek); all of the Argonautica in English

Callimachus: selections in N. Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology: Reply to the Telchines (fr. 1), Acontius and Cydippe (frr. 67+75), The Bath of Pallas (Hymn 5), The Hymn to Zeus (Hymn 1) (Ancient Greek)

Theocritus 1, 15 (Ancient Greek), 7 and 11 in English

Plutarch’s Alcibiades (Ancient Greek) and in English: Alexander, Coriolanus & Comparison of Coriolanus and Alcibiades

Additional English Readings:

Lyric poetry, selections of Alcman, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Theognis from A. Miller, Greek Lyric

Tetralogies by Antiphon

Dyscolus by Menander

Lucian: selected Dialogues of the Gods in L. Casson, Selected Satires of Lucian, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 20, 24; The Dream or Lucian’s Career, The Death of Peregrinus

Daphnis and Chloe by Longus

That sure is a lot! But, again, remember, this is the reading list from which most undergraduates would be working off of for their final and comprehensive examinations, if your university conducts those types of requirements. This isn’t a list of things you should know before you’re in your program, but moreso what you should know at the end of it. So, here’s my recommendations from that list that I would suggest for you to read before you begin your program (in English, but if you have some knowledge of Ancient Greek, it would be good to give it a go for the recommendations listed here! But don’t worry, you don’t need to know everything before the first day of class). 

Ancient Greek Readings (My Recommendations from the List Above): 

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Homeric Hymns

Theogony

Sappho (all)

Oresteia

Oedipus Rex

Antigone 

Medea

Clouds and Lysistrata

Argonautica

These are the ones I would start with; it’ll get you familiar with the type of readings you will have, it’s a little less overwhelming than the first list, and I’m going to be perfectly honest with you that I’ve not read a good chunk of the people on the list myself. But, I think that my recommendations are a little easier to digest and easier to get through than trying to read the whole list recommended for undergraduates. Onward we go! 

Latin: 

Plautus’s Menaechmi (Latin), Aulularia and Amphitryo in English (the first time I read Amphitryo was as a graduate student)

Terence’s Adelphoe (Latin) (another one I didn’t read until I was a graduate student)

Ennius's Annales 34-50, 72-91, 96, 268-286 (as numbered in O. Skutsch’s Annals of Quintus Ennius) (Latin) 

Catullus 1-16, 22, 28, 30-36, 44-46, 49-51, 58, 62-64, 68, 70, 72, 75, 76, 82-87, 92, 93, 95, 96, 99, 101, 109 (Latin), (I love his poetry ngl)

Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura I.1-448 (Latin)

Caesar’s Bellum Civile I (Latin)

Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae (Latin)

Cicero’s In Catilinam 1, Somnium Scipionis, Letters 1, 3, 6, 15, 18, 19, 20, 24, 27, 33, 34, 38, 52, 63, 67-69 (ed. Shackleton Bailey) (Latin), Brutus, Penguin Classics On the Good Life (Trans. Grant) in English

Horace’s Satires 1, Odes 1, Epistles 1 (Latin), Ars Poetica in English

Virgil’s Eclogues, Aeneid I, IV, VI, XII (Latin), Georgics and Aeneid (all) in English

Tibullus I.1, 3, 5 (Latin)

Propertius I.1, 3,5, 6, 11, 18-20; IV. 7-11 (Latin)

Nepos’s Atticus (Latin)

Ovid’s Amores 1, Metamorphoses 1 (Latin), Ars I and Metamorphoses (all) in English

Livy praef., I.1-16 (Latin), Books I and XXI in English

Res Gestae Divi Augusti

Seneca’s Phaedra, Letters 7, 47, 56 (Latin), Apocolocyntosis, Octavia in English 

Lucan’s Bellum Civile I.1-182 (Latin); Books I and VII in English

Persius’s Satire 1 (Latin)

Petronius’s Satyricon chapters 26-78 in Latin, the rest in English

Martial’s De Spec. 31 and 34; Book I.1-4, 13, 16, 29, 32, 38 (Latin)

Pliny’s letters I.9, VI.16, VII.33, X.96-97 (Latin)

Tacitus’s Agricola 1-4, 42-46 and Annales I (Latin), Annales (all) in English (I’m literally reading these right now lol)

Juvenal’s Satires 1, 3 (Latin), 6, 10 (English)

Suetonius (in English): Augustus, Nero, Domitian

Apuleius Metamorphoses 1 (Latin), Metamorphoses (all) in English

Ammianus XVI.1, 5, 10; XXXI.16.7 (Latin), XIV.5.6-XV.8.16, XVI (all) in English

Augustine’s Confessions I.VIII(13)-XIV(23) (Latin), Confessions I (all) in English

Claudian’s In Eutropium I (English)

Boethius Consolatio Philosphiae 1 (English) (I never read this for a Classics course, but did have it in a Medieval Literature course in English)

Quintilian Instit. X.1.85-131 (English)

Quite a lot here, too! From what I had to read in school as an undergraduate, I will give you a few recommendations for the Latin readings you might want to explore in English before you dive in to the works in Latin (again, if you are familiar with Latin, feel free to try and work through some of the recommendations above!) 

Latin Readings (My Recommendations from the List Above):

Ennius’s Annales

Catullus (all)

De Rerum Natura

Bellum Civile

Bellum Catilinae

In Catilinam

The Aeneid

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Pliny’s letters

Remember, these are all to start you off, and if you complete all of the readings I recommended, you can explore the expanded list and see what’s interesting to you. The recommendations I’ve made on what to read before you go into your program is based on what I read as an undergraduate and whether I had read it at all before I began graduate school. If anyone wants to specifically recommend anything I didn’t list as a must before beginning a program, please add it! 

Here are the best places to find translations of these works, in case you cannot find them in your local library or don’t have the money to invest in all of them:

http://classics.mit.edu/index.html

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

https://www.sacred-texts.com/

I hope this helps and please let me know if you would like me to expand on anything else for you. Happy reading! 

All the best, 

The Ancient Geeko-Roman

[starrywisdomsect]

Visit Original Link

Book Recommendation: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is Donna Tartt’s debut novel published in 1992. Set in New England, the novel tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at a small Vermont college who murder a fellow pupil. This mystery is about uncovering the motive for the crime, as the guilty party is revealed in the first chapter. 

“Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.” - Plato

[catilinas]

turns out that technically, julius caesar is agamemnon’s very distant cousin,