Armand D'Angour
@ArmandDAngour
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Professor of Classics. Lover of cello. Larkin about. Often thinks in Latin and Gk verse. Classics Podcast “It’s All Greek (& Latin!) to Me” with Jimmy Mulville
London and Oxford
Joined May 2012
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Out today, the last episode of series 1:
SEX STRIKE IN ATHENS!!
Lysistrata’s cunning plan to STOP THE WAR
Listen and share
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Visiting an old friend in Luxembourg. She likes books.
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@mervatim
When we came from the US with an adopted baby aged 1 month on a temporary UK visa, the border officer actually asked “ Is she intending to stay in the country?”
I was so taken aback I failed to say that she was intending to work here too.
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Do people know what a shoemaker's last is?
The copy-editor of my book has queried my use of the phrase, wondering if a word is missing! "The shoemaker's last what?"
Thinking of a novel with the title "The Shoemaker's Last Shudders".
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'Despite frequent remonstrations, Persephone never accepted that she could not photocopy a whole book in one go".
Pinakes, legate al culto di Persefone dell'antica Locri, in questo caso rappresenta fanciulla (Persefone) che ripone un telo nella cassa, questa piccola tavoletta votiva del V sec. a.C. in terracotta è conservata nel Museo archeologico di Locri.
#Calabria
#arte
#Archaeology
#art
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Must be a German word for the satisfaction of not having the slightest interest in getting tickets for Oasis.
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‘What’s it all about?”
The question that stumped Bertrand Russell…
If you could have any question answered right now by an all-knowing-entity, what would be the one thing you'd ask?
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A crime worthy of a mythical recompense.
When Erysichthon chopped down Demeter's sacred tree, the goddess afflicted him with insatiable hunger. He ate everything he could, and when he ran out of food he started on his own body, and died eating himself.
Absolutely devastated to learn that some absolute c*nt has cut down the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall overnight. It’s barely a month since I visited it with
@ExcelPope
but it had stood for hundreds of years.
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There can be such a thing as too many books.
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@mikekofoed
Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on the plane?
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of …
Flight attendant: The pilots are debating whether the story of Daedalus and Icarus was based on any real ancient attempts to fly using wings.
Me: Okay. I’m here.
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When I got my position at Oxford 20 years ago, a former senior colleague thought he could deflect his envy by saying to me, as if in jest, “Ah, the scum always rises to the top”.
Not easily forgotten.
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It’s strange to think that for centuries educated Englishmen tended to believe that the ability to translate English into good Greek and Latin verse was a supreme intellectual goal.
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Aristophanes’ Frogs chorus compete with Dionysus as he rows across the lake of the Underworld: Brekekekex Koax Koax!
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A journalist friend asked if he might sit in on my Greek metre class.
Afterwards he said to me, beaming, “I didn’t understand much of it but it was a real privilege to hear you sharing your expertise on a topic which for all practical purposes is completely and utterly useless.”
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This headline would only have been improved by removing quote marks from ‘Holy Grail’.
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Time to repatriate the Parthenon marbles as a gesture of recognition.
1. No precedent need be set: the Parthenon is unique, and an icon of Greek identity.
2. Yes, they belong "to the world" - but belong *on* the Acropolis.
3. BM has vast numbers of other treasures to display.
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What if Latin opens the mind to a treasure-house of thought, poetry, art, beauty, history, fun, and wisdom, and only *incidentally* accelerates learners’ ability to think critically, speak eloquently, write grammatically, and master a dozen other languages should they so wish?
Why not just go straight to those other types of knowledge? Why waste time? It’s like Latin. “Oh, it can help you learn other languages.” Why not just go learn those other languages? It seems like an unnecessary obstacle, IMHO.
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Thucydides wrote his History "so that later generations might learn". Regarding the Plague he reported 1) high death of doctors and carers 2) dangers of proximity and 3) increasing lawlessness. So we should learn: 1) protect front line staff 2) social distance 3) support police.
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The moon has left the sky,
The Pleiades are gone.
Midnight. The hours go by.
I sleep, alone.
Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δέ
νύκτες, πάρα δ' ἔρχετ' ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
---Sappho, fragment 168B
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What’s the best translation of Domimina nustio illumea?
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I spent many hours learning Fortran in 1973. It was the language of the future.
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Astonishing viewing figures for such an abstruse topic.
How did ancient Greek music sound?
Listen to the first choral performance with reconstructed aulos of reconstructed ancient scores of Athenaeus Paean (127 BC) and Euripides Orestes chorus (408 BC), with the evidence presented and explained by Professor Armand D'Angour
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How strange that scholars have thought that the ancient comic poets who called Aspasia a prostitute and brothel-madam should be taken seriously, while the serious writers Plato and Xenophon, who depict her as a respected teacher of eloquence and expert on love, must be *joking*.
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Yes.
I learned Fortran and studied Latin in 1973-4.
One of them is now
effectively a dead language, the other provides constant inspiration!
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I guess it’s meant to say
Domi mi nan(n)us; tio illum ea.
‘Tio’ is clearly Grecizing early Latin for τιμάω, I honour.
So it means “At home I have a dwarf: I honour him (in respect of) those things.”
An early indication of Oxonian hospitality and inclusivity.
What’s the best translation of Domimina nustio illumea?
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Anyone who criticises my ancient Greek grammar can expect to be challenged to a dual.
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@irinibus
Right.
There is absolutely no need or pressure to listen to anything or anyone on Twitter that makes you unhappy or annoyed. You've got family for that.
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‘Acer’, Latin for sycamore, means ‘sharp’ or ‘bitter’. An elegiac epigram:
Arbor erat quondam, vallo stetit acer in imo;
Nunc iacet occisus, maeror et acer adest.
A sycamore once towered on the plain;
Now felled it lies, a source of bitter pain.
Death of a sycamore. The story of the human being who destroys his environment and himself through greed and wantonness is a fable for our times, as the Greeks and Romans knew.
@ArmandDAngour
on Engelsberg Ideas
@EngelsbergIdeas
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Just struck me that the phrase "Em—dash it, Jeeves" in P. G. Wodehouse is typographically very cunning.
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If I produced a simple progressive guide to composing Latin verse, would anyone be interested?
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Years ago a correspondent in TLS told how, as a boy, he once cut the nose off a slice of Brie. His elderly French hostess saw him and said "je n'ai jamais vu quelqu'un qui coupât le nez d'un Brie d'une telle manière".
"The sharp hiss of the subjunctive", he wrote "still stings".
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Russians will be furious snd alarmed that their cities are under attack. No one wants endless attrition, but the difference is that Ukraine must feel it has no choice but to fight to the end, while Russia can choose to withdraw at any time.
Vladimir Solovyov was furious about Ukraine's latest drone attack. Blinded by rage, he revealed that Russian experts are urging the Kremlin to end this war and came close to admitting that Russia can't win with conventional weapons.
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I used to understand the distinction between French ‘mot’ and ‘parole’ but now I’m not Saussure.
I used to think I knew the French for "shoes", but now I'm not chaussures.
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Augustus: "Can you write an epic on the founding of Rome?"
Virgil: "I sometimes wonder if perhaps Rome was started by exiles from Troy. It’s not completely out of the question. At some point in antiquity, a few ships of very competent soldiers (with almost no women) landed on..."
@UpdatingOnRome
I sometimes wonder if perhaps Rome was started by exiles from Troy. It’s not completely out of the question.
At some point in antiquity, a few ships of very competent soldiers (with almost no women) landed on the coast of Italy. Where did they come from?
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“Behold, we enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire. Behold!”
In Latin this is a perfect palindrome:
ECCE IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI. ECCE.
The sentence is also a dactylic hexameter.
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I was taught Latin and Greek at 7 and was immediately entranced by classical poetry and literature. Nearly 60 years later I feel I’m beginning to understand some of it.
You don’t have to absolutely, thoroughly, cognitively grasp a poem to be fascinated by it. When I was a little boy, already madly in love with William Blake and Hart Crane, I couldn’t possibly have understood what I was reading.
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Just received a scam email from someone purporting to be an academic friend. I was initially taken in, but I wrote back in Latin and have had no response...
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I undertook to reveal the answer to the Homeric Question when I reached 12k followers. So I've now started writing the book that explains how and by whom the poems were created, when they were written down, and why they survive in the form they do. It should take at least a year.
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How does one train to get to Oxford? you ask.
Generally via Reading.
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Daughter who’s always hated Latin and sneers at my every pun, now doing philosophy A level, looks at me slyly and says “I’m learning about the summum bonum, I suppose you think I’m the summum malum”.
I’m still in recovery...
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Who says autocrats don't have a sense of humour.
PRC President Xi just called it the “White House virus.”
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Terence Young, the baker of Pompeii, and his wife, painted c. AD 70.
(Terentius Neo to his friends)
Love the timid expression of the couple posing for a formal snapshot.
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Recital for Classics for All - first minute of Brahms e minor cello sonata, Kobi Kremnitzer on piano
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The moon has set on high;
the Pleiades are gone.
Midnight; the time slips by,
and I – I sleep alone.
δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες· μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, παρὰ δ᾿ ἔρχετ᾿ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.
---Sappho fr. 52
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Three classicists (out of 4) at
@JesusOxford
just got First Class grades in Mods (the major mid-course set of exams). A record for the College - the first such result in around 30 years.
A stunning vindication of the use of Active Latin and Greek to teach the ancient languages.
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“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
Mark Twain
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Essay on the Aeneid cites the 'Carthaginian queen, Dildo'.
O autocorrupt, o mores.
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The existence of Α-μεν implies the existence of A-δε.
The prayer to open the 117th Congress ended with "amen and a-women."
Amen is Latin for "so be it."
It's not a gendered word.
Unfortunately, facts are irrelevant to progressives. Unbelievable.
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Bach D mi cello suite. A favourite. Starting to practice…
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Waiting for the obit that says “After retirement he spent most of his time on Twitter, and died peacefully 10 years later with nearly 4000 followers”.
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@mervatim
Ah but remember “the English keep their pets at home and send their kids to kennels”…
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Faux.
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Presumably they’ve just been to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat!
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Achilles and Patroclus
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You say nothing about reading history or learning to compose Latin and Greek verse.
Useless advice.
7 strategies to improve your confidence and attract all women to your bed:
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@thehistoryguy
Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans 219a6-8
"When Archidamus saw the missile shot from a catapult which had been brought for the first time from Sicily, he exclaimed " By Heracles, the prowess (areta) of a man is obsolete".
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Anyone else finding they are too distracted to work properly in this crisis and are turning to Twitter obsessively for news and entertainment?
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In Naples Museum, once more to gaze on ‘the face of Sappho’.
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Just discovered the ancient Greek word βαδάς.
You would never guess that it means... 'badass'!
(According to Hesychius' lexicon, it's a synonym of kinaidos).
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Why does Marcus Aurelius have to sound like a glib life coach? Is this translation not better?
“We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing, and to not let it upset our state of mind.”
“You always own the option of having no opinion.” — Marcus Aurelius
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Is it because you hadn’t heard of Xenophon’s thrilling story of what his weary soldiers cried out when they finally saw the sea in the distance, or simply that you wanted to read the words in Greek?
The latter, the latter!
Xenophon’s “Anabasis” should be required reading.
You’re telling me that almost 2,500 years ago 10,000 Greek mercenaries got trapped in Iraq and fought their way back home?
AND we still have the memoir their leader wrote about it?
Why haven’t you read it?
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iacet ingens litore truncus
avulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus.
He lies, a huge trunk, on the shore,
head severed from the neck, a corpse without a name.
Virgil on Priam’s death, a moment of deep pathos (Aeneid 2).
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Incredible. 3rd-year student
@YaamirBadhe
has just submitted his weekly tutorial essay on a Cicero oration - in fluent Latin.
Go Oxford!
Mirum est, nam discipulus qui tertium annum cursus agit pensum de Ciceronis oratione ben Latine scriptum modo tribuit.
Floreat Oxonium.
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The Aeneid reduced to a clerihew:
Aeneas the son of Anchises
Was tossed far and wide on the high seas.
He wanted a place to call home,
Unaware that all roads lead to Rome.
#clerihew
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I’ve taught for 24 years at my college in Oxford University but when I’m invited to give a talk at another college I have to fill in a heap of forms and bring my passport in again to have a Right to Work check. Surely a unified database could be created.
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R. Reeves in
@thetimes
below.
NB The entry level for Classics is high. Students work on wide-ranging and challenging material, then train to become experts in law, IT, etc.
It’s a base to approach other disciplines, computer science included, with imagination and innovation.
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They found the original!
One of the new frescoes uncovered at Pompeii. Helen and Paris lock eyes, but the dog and the maid seem to know it's a bad idea...
Photo: BBC/TONY JOLLIFFE
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Virgil, Sappho, Homer, Lucan.
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Doing gerunds with Latin class who are amused to learn that ‘Nando perfectum est iter’ doesn’t mean “Nando’s is the perfect eatery” but ‘you complete the journey by swimming’
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“You are what you eat”.
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Alas, how false is worldly wealth, how fleet
Our lives. This man, ere now a mighty king
And lord of many lands, now seven feet
Of earth confines. Who formerly did fling
About him raiments sewn with gems and gold,
Now lies attired by dirt, and dust, and cold.
Did you know we have an obituary of William the Conquerer in Old English? We know it was written by an Anglo-Saxon because it has lines like this↓
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Old Etonian replaced by Young Estonian.
Estonia’s Popular PM
@KajaKallas
Quits Job, Replaces Sinking Boris Johnson At Head Of UK Government
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I never imagined the film of my project of recreating ancient Greek music would get 30,000 views in a week, with ecstatic responses. Kudos to
@OxfordDigital
for putting together a video that has caught viewers' imagination so brilliantly.
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Twitter became X.
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Just been reminded of a humiliating episode when I was at school aged 13. I was asked to translate (‘construe’) some Xenophon in class. We’d been set it as homework.
Not coming from a traditional prep school, I was unaware it was forbidden to use translations when preparing.
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The great painters of the age were famed for their naturalistic representation. The classical Greeks’ music was glorious, their literature infinitely nuanced, their sculptures superbly lifelike.
Why on earth would one assume that their colour sense and skills were this unsubtle?
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At last, offered a fee for the use of one of my translations! How much?
I suggest a sum.
24 hrs later: sorry, we've decided to use another version.
Is it the cost, I ask? If so, use it for free, rather than an inferior one.
They gratefully accept!
What a great negotiator I am.
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Struck as often that the windows in my Oxford office have the strange capacity to suck light out rather than let light in.
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Off to Istanbul today. Looking forward to seeing this among other sights.
The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul is an ancient subterranean water reservoir, famed for its 336 marble columns and mystical ambiance. Built in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian, it’s a marvel of Byzantine engineering, now a museum.
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In 2012 I was seated next to Eddie at the London Olympics event where my ancient Greek Ode was to be read out. He said "tweet it", but I didn't have an account. So he set one up on my phone and followed me.
12 years on, he has 4.1m followers, and follows 582. I'm still there...
‘Eddie Izzard's one-person Hamlet is a solo tour de force.’ - Tickets:
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Shakespeare and Robert Graves were both educated in the classics.
Nowadays those who are not classically educated must rely on Google for this kind of thing.
Yesterday I discovered that Augustus (I, Claudius) and Octavian (Shakespeare) are apparently the same person??? I am furious that no-one explained this to me sooner. And/or that I didn't work it out for myself...
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solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (Tacitus)
they create a desert and call it peace
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“Yass Queen” is a fine updating of “Sing, Muse”. It has a ‘Hwaet’ quality about it.
Can't believe the beggining of Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey:
“Yass Queen, tw: rage, sing the rage of Pelias’ son Achilles (he/him),
Problematic, how it gave the People of Greekdom trauma
And cancelled many heroes who had ableist tweets"
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Writing about the wonderful Homeric passage when Odysseus strings his bow and tests it 'and the string sang like the voice of a swallow' (Od. 23.403-11) - the ominous prelude to his slaughter of the suitors. My translation:
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