The idea is to create something – anything – for the prompt. Like other October prompt lists, it can be an illustration, but it can also be text, reference, historical artefact, video, story, translation, pretty much anything you’re interested in from the Ancient Med World that fits with the prompt. There’s no pressure to do every single one, just the ones you like.
This year it’s an ANCIENT HISTORY TAKEOVER! We asked Classicists, Ancient Historians, Archaeologists and Authors we know and love to suggest an ancient personage that they think everyone should know about! And, to combat misinformation and encourage research, we invite you to share your sources with your submission, whether that’s image references, texts, or even a whole bibliography!
✨NO AI USAGE ALLOWED✨
See the ClassicsTober24 Details page for background on each of the names chosen by our friendly Classicists, Archaeologists, Historians and Authors, to get your creativity going! https://greekmythcomix.com/classicstober-24-details/
Need a bit of background on or inspiration for the names we’ve chosen for this year’s prompts? We hope these brief* descriptions will be use
THE LIST:
1 Regina of South Shields
2 Eumachia
3 Thucydides
4 Cleopatra Selene
5 Pliny the Elder
6 Meleager of Gadara
7 Harmodius and Aristogeiton
8 Boudicca
9 Eritha
10 Vitruvius
11 Julia Felix
12 Homer
13 Zenobia
14 Kallistomache
15 Aesop
16 Elagabalus
17 Iphikrates
18 Tacfarinas
19 Vespasian
20 The Trung Sisters**
21 Marcus Aquilius Regulus
22 Martial
23 Corinna
24 Cleopatra Thea
25 Sappho
26 Vitellius
27 Menander I Soter
28 Crassus
29 Phryne
30 Flavius Cerialis
31 Sejanus
*Ancient Greece and Rome and other near-Mediterranean Ancient cultures
No better way to gear up for Classicstober than to finally finish a prompt I started last year 😅 Read below for more details on Regina of South Shields!
I was immediately drawn to the complex story of Regina of Arbeia or South Shields and I hoped to reflect the implications we can draw from her tombstone. I’ve imagined her spinning wool, showing a calm yet pointedly annoyed expression as her husband (and former enslaver) looms behind her, holding a jewelry box yet his face out of frame. He feels he is providing for her; Regina has a more complicated reaction.
It is evident that Barates, a Palmyrene immigrant, thought he cared for her, possibly naming her “Queen” despite her being a local Englishwoman and definitely having her own indigenous name at birth that has been lost to time. He also went an extra step and expense to include an inscription in his native language as well as the Latin. Yet, she was freed “only” to be made his wife. It is impossible to know their true dynamic, though a power imbalance is unavoidable.
I’ve included the original grave marker so you can try to catch the details in my piece such as her clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, wicker chair, crescent moon brass details on her jewelry box, spinning tools, etc. Thanks for reading!
Day 14 of Classicstober is Kallistomache. She was a woman of Athens, who dedicated a white chitoniskos with a battlement pattern on it, to Artemis at Brauron.
I decided to draw the chitoniskos, and was going to do a completely different pattern that I imagine would've been for battlement, but got carried away sketching little stick figures fighting.
thanks for tagging me @run-for-chamo-miles @that-disabled-princess and @orange-peony!
classicstober 2024's prompts have been announced and i'm super excited because it's historical figures! my obsession with Roman non-fiction and biographies has finally paid off!
i thought it would be a good opportunity to jumpstart my writing brain by writing lots of short and snappy things. and so today, i've written 1000 or so words for Regina of South Shields, who i've had the pleasure of visiting!
i'm about to ramble, so i'm putting it under a cut. also warning, i've included photos of a tombstone and a human skeleton. if you just want to read the six sentences and not see them, scroll fast right to the bottom.
so, this is Regina. or rather, her tombstone, discovered by builders in 1878, and a reconstruction of how it might have looked when it was erected. if you haven't heard of her, which is understandable, she was a British woman from modern day St Albans (near London) during the Roman occupation of Britain. she was sold as a slave (did her family need money? was she born a slave? we don't know) and bought by a man named Barates, from Palmyra, a city in modern day Syria, who was either a soldier or at least travelling with the Roman army. they moved to a garrison close to Hadrian's Wall in what is now South Shields in the north east, and Barates fell in love with Regina. he freed her and they got married.
her tombstone is mostly important because it tells us that a Syrian man was in Britain during this time, and since her tombstone has Palmyrene script on it, and the chances he engraved his own wife's tombstone are slim, there was likely at least one other Syrian person who could engrave headstones around. which suggests that there was a whole group! the name of the Roman fort in South Shields was Arbeia, which could even mean "the place of the arabs."
it's estimated that a third of people in Britain during the Roman occupation were long distance migrants, and most were not slaves, as is often assumed. Ivory Bangle Lady, who I have also visited in York Museum and who lived around the same time, is believed to have come from Africa. and she was a wealthy free woman!
but what about Regina? well, we know she was from the Catuvellauni tribe, and that she died aged 30. we can assume she spun wool as she's depicted doing so on the tombstone, which was a respectable pastime for Roman women, and she's shown wearing lots of jewellery, so she probably led a comfortable life.
but we don't know how she felt about her marriage, as her tombstone is in Barates' words. did she love him back, or was she under duress to marry him to improve her own prospects? did they have children? did she have friends in Arbeia? did she have to learn Aramaic or Latin to communicate with Barates, or did he know Celtic? we simply don't know. so much of her personality has been lost to time.
so my challenge was to write something that pieces together various possibilities to create what could be an approximation of who Regina was. to give her some life, a voice, and at least a bit of agency.
okay. enough preamble. here's six lines:
I had grown and reached my twentieth year, and as the dark circles beneath my eyes disappeared and the warmer months led me to abandon my woollen cloak, I noticed men's behaviour towards me change. I am not the type to play at being coy- I knew they found me attractive. With my white skin, red hair, and pale blue eyes, I was exotic to them. I stood out.
I noticed Barates' behaviour change too. I realised I had a choice to make.
if you want to know more about Regina, my main source is this podcast by Mary Beard, but i also took inspiration from the book Roman Woman by Lindsay Allason-Jones.
I love coming across Pliny the Elder in historical fiction. I first met him in Caroline Lawrence’s The Secrets of Vesuvius, then played by Tim Pigott-Smith in the docufilm Pompeii: The Last Day, and then again in Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den. I was thrilled to get to draw him for CSCP to illustrate Caroline’s prequel novel for them, Amarantus and his Neighbourhood, advised by Dr Sophie Hay. (Can you tell Pigott-Smith was still an influence?)
Here he is, granting a slave’s manumission as he cuts through Pompeii on the way to Misenum.
And you might recognise some other Cambridge Latin Course characters…
