non enarrabile textum

'aut inveniam aut obdormiam' 20/cis/she studying classics @ oxford

[grecoromanyaoi]

ive seen ppl using /gen, but what abt /nom, /voc, /acc, /dat and /abl?

[starsandsteelandbrokenglass]

Jason, having seen Medea kill and dismember her brother and also kill Pelias for him: Probably I can just divorce her

[fluentisonus]

I love when lekythoi are painted to show graves with their own little lekythoi on them

[fluentisonus]

like so

[x x x]

[mountaingoatsfirstlineaday]

obsessed with the way that zopilote machine has no track listing. anywhere. the back of the cd case just says "kid you fell in the milk". the booklet is mostly latin

[mountaingoatsfirstlineaday]

@catilinas HOLD ON. THATS what that means??? Wait wait please explain

[catilinas]

the orphic gold tablets are these 4th century bcs tiny sheets of gold leaf found in burials, inscribed in greek with Mysterious Instructions for navigating the underworld?? becoming immortal?? reincarnation?? unfortunately the texts themselves are all scholars have to go on and they are super cryptic. no-one really knows what's going on with them. but several of them mention the 'kid falling into milk' image. i was thinking of this one (translation by sarah iles johnston):

if you want to know more i recommend the book 'ritual texts for the afterlife: orpheus and the bacchic gold tablets' by fritz graf and sarah iles johnston :-)

[hortensius-deactivated20240909]

*cicero voice* i hope you die i hope we all die

[hortensius-deactivated20240909]

still thinking about this. i am gonna incorporate τότε μοι χάνοι εὐρεῖα χθών into my daily vocabulary actually

[finelythreadedsky]

hm. the way anne carson plays with eurydike in antigonick-- her monologue that ends with the line "exit eurydike bleeding from all orifices" and then the stage direction [eurydike does not exit], and after the messenger's lines the messenger says "exit eurydike" and then the chorus repeats "exit eurydike" and then eurydike repeats "exit eurydike" and then the stage directions repeat [exit eurydike]-- i think she's translating jocasta's last words in oedipus actually.

ἰοὺ ἰού, δύστηνε: τοῦτο γάρ σ᾽ ἔχω/ μόνον προσειπεῖν, ἄλλο δ᾽ οὔποθ᾽ ὕστερον. "oh, oh, awful! this is the only thing i can say to you. there is nothing more." (1071-2)

it's a sort of performative way of speaking silence. in sophocles, eurydice leaves quietly without a word, like deianira does, which the chorus takes as a bad sign. jocasta and carson's eurydike comment on the fact of their exiting without comment. and the chorus in oedipus takes this as the same sort of bad sign, they say "i am afraid some sorrow will break from this silence" even though jocasta has left not silent but speaking a silence.

[starsandsteelandbrokenglass]

i am Normal about ancient texts

(for those wondering, the Greek translates to something like “May I not perish without effort and ingloriously, but rather having done something that will be heard even by those yet to come.”)

[nathanielthecurious]

several related points

i think tumblr would like the Roman comedy character names Milphio and Peniculus

Roman comedy characters' names were also funny in Latin, if you know the etymology. for example, Peniculus would later mean "little penis" but in Plautus' time it meant, among other things, "sponge" (like a kitchen sponge)

as a comedy character whose name means sponge, "Peniculus" is the only valid Latin translation of Spongebob

[homeric-hymnist]

big naturals this big naturals that. the word you're looking for is βαθύκοπλος.

[plasmapop]

01/11/22 • catullus 51 via sappho 16 via new scientist issue 3397

Some say aircraft and helicopters and some say telescopes and batteries and some say fuels and flight technologies are the most lovely thing on this dark Earth,

but I say it is the aim of holding you skin-to-skin, human-to-human, text-to-text, without any reflection of a god written between us.

this isn't the real issue. you smile, and your mirror image in history looks away, and I watch and lose focus and all communication systems fail—

(I have been running out of the words for this story for the past 2000 years.)

We need surgery to repair a broken silence. We need pulses of electricity, coursing through bone and muscle and skin. to replace the malfunctioning solar panels of my eyes.

and I remember. I would rather see you again than all the emergency luminescence of a major spacefaring nation, burning through the future like jet fuel.

[en-theos]

im not like other girls i like et nos cedamus amori better than omnia vincit amor

[nathanielthecurious]

the feminine urge to put a dactyl before the caesura

[ancient-rome-au]

Latin grammar is a social construct. The Romans honestly just made that shit up as they went along.

[ancient-rome-au]

This thread is so bonkers, y’all.

[ancient-rome-au]

[ancient-rome-au]

Cicero really said “Haha idk lol”

[garbage-empress]

time smells bad.

[chrome--horse]

what Synesthetic bullcrap is this now

[garbage-empress]

Listen

I accidentally leave the milk out overnight.

Milk smells bad the next day.

Why does milk smell bad?

Time gets in it.

[garbage-empress]

@ryanthecynic

[finelythreadedsky]

if i were writing a feminist myth retelling centered around a female character mostly overlooked and denied interiority in the ancient texts that mention her, i would simply not throw helen under the bus to do so

rip to margaret atwood and madeline miller but i’m different

[finelythreadedsky]

μηδ᾽ εἰς Ἑλένην κότον ἐκτρέψῃς, ὡς ἀνδρολέτειρ᾽, ὡς μία πολλῶν ἀνδρῶν ψυχὰς Δαναῶν ὀλέσασ᾽ ἀξύστατον ἄλγος ἔπραξεν.

don’t turn your bitterness onto Helen, as if she were the murderer, as if she and she alone robbed so many Greek men of their lives and dug you a bottomless despair.

Clytemnestra in Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1464-7

[notmanthelessbutnaturemore]

[fluentisonus]

aaaaa