Tullia Daughter of Cicero @tulliolaciceronis - Tumblr Blog

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westiec

I joked about this earlier but I'm curious now:

have you ever studied Latin?

yes

Voting ended onDec 26, 2025

doesn't matter if you remember any of it now

westiec

See yeah, 200 people (at the time of this reblog) is obviously neither definitive nor likely representative of tumblr at large, but I do not think I would get a 45% yes rate to this question in many other forums. 😂

#is it biased #to reblog this specifically #on my classics sideblog?#probably #do I care?#absolutely not #let me live in a world #where nearly half of all people have studied at least some Latin

en-theos

feminist classicist readings from the 70s-90s are sometimes truly insufferable though i mean

'To read through the images then, as the "bloom" is plucked from the "meadow," the virgin is deflowered and the genitalia open to disclose the yawning chasm which is the original place of birth and death, the womb of mother earth from which we all come and to which we all return.'

we get itttttt

#pictured here my tradcath antivax terf nemesis #classical scholarship #heavy sigh #terf shit #sexual violence cw

en-theos

also very interesting that saylor characterizes cicero as irritating and overbearing (in his own words, so grain of salt) as well as pretentious, pompous, and utterly without charm, despite his rhetorical skill. i don't think you can really have rhetorical skill without charm?that's one of the things you need to master to convince your audience, and resding cicero joking in the courts and appealing to feeling and pride and so on makes me think he mustve possessed at least a little charm, he can't pull it off without

tulliolaciceronis

I think it’s so fascinating that Saylor originally planned to write Roman Blood from Cicero’s POV, and then something stopped him, and we got Gordianus instead. Why? It’s hard to tell exactly; all Saylor tends to say is “I found I didn’t want to spend 24 hours a day with Cicero.” I have a couple of theories about why, from most to least charitable:

1. Most Charitable: Cicero’s a posh snob, and Gordianus was created to give more of a working class man’s perspective. — This is the best possible reason for why Saylor pivoted: it’s true, and accurate. Of course, Gordianus is still a free male Roman citizen with enough cash to buy slaves, so he’s not exactly giving us a real subaltern voice, but Cicero was in fact absurdly wealthy compared to the average Roman. For a working-class male reader, this is perhaps enough to make Gordianus relatable and Cicero a bore; valid enough.

2. Middling Charitable: Cicero’s evil, or at best purely spineless and self-serving. — We can’t truly know why Cicero made the political moves he did: Cicero himself gives us noble reasons, but we each have to decide whether to trust that those explanations are true. Saylor clearly doesn’t trust Cicero, and that’s an understandable historical reading. I happen to disagree, but I do see how Saylor came to the conclusion that Cicero only ever cared about his own ambition rather than the stability and integrity of the republic.

3. Least Charitable: Cicero’s too gay. — Okay hear me out: I know that (A) Gordianus is bi as all hell for (e.g.) Tiro and Catiline, and (B) Saylor is himself gay. However! Saylor (and by extension his self-insert Gordianus) seems to have some pretty clear ideas about how gay men should present themselves: men, queer or not, in Saylor’s writing are expected to be physically strong and uncompromising. Cicero was not, during his lifetime, the Platonic ideal of Roman masculinity, and things only got worse after his death when queerness and effeminacy became inextricably tied to his legacy. I think Saylor looked at those less-than-fully-masculine traits and said “Oh I don’t want that,” and wrote Gordianus about it.

That being said! Saylor seems fully aware that his reaction to Cicero is not universal: one thing I genuinely like about Roma Sub Rosa is how many characters (including members of Gordianus’s family) are deeply in love with Cicero. The man was in fact good at rhetoric and that did absolutely require being charming! I think Saylor knew that, but for a combination of the reasons above, decided to portray that charm as purely false manipulation, through the eyes of the one character (Gordianus) who isn’t fooled…

…because he (Saylor/Gordanus) doesn’t personally find Cicero sexy.

#sorry I clearly still have #pent up Cicero feelings #steven saylor #roma sub rosa #marcus tullius cicero

mikeybooch

Medea saving Jason from the Dragon of Colchis for @classicstober Day 7: Pharmakis. This is based off of a 5th century BCE kylix of Jason being expelled from the mouth of the dragon of Colchis as witnessed by Athene. The scene is a strange one, and may elude to plays that are now lost where Athene has some sort of involvement in Jason’s retrieval of the Golden Fleece. I wanted to recreate the scene with Medea, who, in sources that have survived to the present day, puts the dragon to sleep using her magic so that Jason can steal the fleece.

#MY FAVORITE KYLIX #this is absolutely stunning #medea #greek mythology

saltiecattoz

i had a vision of evil version of that dolphin picture i thought it was funny

tulliolaciceronis

Delightful to see that tumblr has reinvented the Roman/Renaissance dolphins vs. Greek/Etruscan dolphins binary.

(Left) the ancient Greek poet Arion riding a deeply distressing bewhiskered(?) and betusked(?) dolphin, by Albrecht Dürer, 1514, vs. (Right) the ancient Greek poet Arion riding a very normal dolphin, on an Etruscan stamnos, c. 360–340 BCE, now in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.

#delphines!!!

mcaelius

hn.

#this one inspired its own column #in the cannibalism spreadsheet #lucan #marcus annaeus lucanus #pompey the great #gnaeus pompeius magnus #cannibalism cw #blood cw

clodiuspulcher

Etruscan Husband: We need some banquet vases bc my uncle Larth just died

Greek Merchant, handing over symposium pottery: of course sir here’s a batch fresh from Athens,

Etruscan Wife, examining the gay sex heavy pottery : …. Where are all the women on these…

Greek Merchant, knowing he won’t make the sale if he says wifes not allowed: Well…. They’re watching.

#screaming

femmenietzsche

Banger idea: a city park called "Replica Park" which has a bunch of replicas of world famous statues but because they're all replicas you can be a lot more playful with them

femmenietzsche

sonbr

the Victoria and Albert museum

The Cast Courts (originally called the Architectural Courts[1]) of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, comprise two large halls. Unusually for a museum, the Cast Courts house a collection not of originals, but copies. Here are to be found reproductions of some of the most famous sculptures in the world. Most of the copies were made in the 19th century and in many cases they have better resisted the ravages of time, 20th-century pollution and over-zealous conservation than the originals. In a few cases, such as the late 15th century Lübeck relief of Christ washing the Apostles' feet, the original has been destroyed and the cast is a unique record of a lost work.[2]

Yes! That is quite close to the vibe

ancient-rome-au

this feels like a more intimate way to view Trajan's column. they've got it broken up into two pieces, much closer to ground level. i've gotta check this out!

ancient-rome-au

no disrespect to Trajan but this seems like a smarter way to present those super detailed scenes to a mass audience

tulliolaciceronis

This seems like a smarter way to display this column because it's actually not at all far off from how this column was meant to be displayed! If you walk through Rome now, sure, the column stands in the middle of a what looks like a huge, empty forum, but the Forum of Trajan was originally FULL of buildings. See, for example, this plan:

The column (3) is set in between the Propylon (1), the Greek and Latin libraries (2), and the Basilica Ulpia (4), all four of which were multi-story structures. From any of these buildings, you would have been able to get up high and look at the column up close, like in this reconstruction:

Also! Cast collections where not as rare and unusual as the Wikipedia article on the V&A cast court implies: during the late 18th and 19th centuries, it used to be very common to find museums with large collections of casts of classical sculptures. These objects were used for teaching, and YES you could be more playful with them, because they weren't originals. Unfortunately, many of these collections were scattered or destroyed during the twentieth century, making the V&A's collection rare due to its remarkable state of preservation.

Here's a short bibliography on cast collections if you want to read more:

Alexandridis, Annetta, and Lorenz Winkler-Horaček, eds. Destroy the Copy — Plaster Cast Collections in the 19th–20th Centuries: Demolition, Defacement, Disposal in Europe and Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.

Basile, Joseph. “Facsimile and Originality: Changing Views of Classical Casts in Arts Education and Art History.” The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review 8 (2014): 11–30.

Beard, Mary. “Casts and Cast-Offs: The Origins of the Museum of Classical Archaeology.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 39 (1993): 1–29.

Born, Pamela. “The Canon Is Cast: Plaster Casts in American Museum and University Collections.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 21, no. 2 (2002): 8–13.

Frederiksen, Rune, and Eckart Marchand, eds. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.

McNutt, James K. “Plaster Casts after Antique Sculpture: Their Role in the Elevation of Public Taste and in American Art Instruction.” Studies in Art Education 31, no. 3 (1990): 158–67.

Nichols, Marden Fitzpatrick. “Plaster Cast Sculpture: A History of Touch.” Archaeological Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 114–30.

Payne, Emma M. “Casting a New Canon: Collecting and Treating Casts of Greek and Roman Sculpture, 1850-1939.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 65 (2019): 113–49.

Payne, Emma M. Casting the Parthenon Sculptures from the Eighteenth Century to the Digital Age. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

#oops my two areas of expertise #roman monuments #and #cast collections #column of trajan #forum of trajan

roycohns

top 100 gordianus the finder gay moments

#the way he only exists #because Steve doesn’t find Cicero fuckable #roma sub rosa

fluentisonus

do you think ancient authors can feel it when something funny happens to the textual transmission. when holes open up or pieces go missing or a gender gets confused or a scribe sticks their fingers into the lacunae of their corpus as it were. do you think they can feel themselves being passed around & touched by so many hands. do you think they can-

#hnnnngh

mcaelius

theyre getting rid of romans tomorrow

tulliolaciceronis

#rip cavafy u wd have loved tumblr

mcaelius

"dancing was considered effeminate, to the extent that cinaedus... meant both 'dancer' and the passive partner in a male homosexual relationship" didn't know that. listening and learning

tulliolaciceronis

YES for more exploration of this, I highly recommend Tom Sapsford’s Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures (2022).

#love when Tom was on a zoom call #and translated cinaedus as #twerking twink