Classics Prof./cultural historian keen on Aristotle, visual art, Greek theatre/pots, labour/anti-racist history, Parthenon reunification. All views my own.
Partly inspired by Albert Camus' insistence that we must imagine Sisyphus happy and embrace rather than evade life's absolute, risible incomprehensibility, my new motto and emblem, "In Absurdity, Laughter"
Vincent van Gogh was born March 30 1853. Here's no painting but a page he wrote in a cafe in Laken in November 1878 which shows him declining ancient Greek demonstrative pronouns. Enjoy!
Incredible shipwreck find off Bulgarian shore, complete with rowing benches! Euripides speaks of sailors' terror of the coast of what was then Salmydessus in Thrace. ?
I know I'm always going on about treasures in unfamiliar Greek vase fragments. For all my many friends who don't want children but love them, here's Athena receiving baby Erichthonius with such love from Gaia in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Once you've seen Greek Sea-Goddess Thetis arrive for her wedding in a dolphin-car, attended by 2 Nereid-bridesmaids on a giant squid and a hippocamp respectively, on this vase for wedding-bath water in Madrid, you'll never be impressed by a silver Mercedes again.
Amber-eyed Aristotle as reconstructed by Alessandro Tomasi from a Roman statue bust which copied a lost bronze work by Lysippus, who had almost certainly met Aristotle in the Macedonian court. Gives me goose-bumps.
If you think the Parthenon sculptures should be returned, get to the British Museum tomorrow 18/6/2023 by 1600 to hear Simon Callow, Janet Suzman, Bill Nighy & Stockard Channing perform Byron's CURSE OF MINERVA. It will be inspirational!
@BCRPM
In 1912 London tube management deliberately pumped ozone throughout thr system to make it smell fresh like a beach. Passengers got nauseous. Policy abandoned. Bizarre uses of antiquity in adverts no. 14
I am a 63 year old woman eating alone in an Italian restaurant in Bloomsbury and getting stared at (true) for (I speculate) being sad, lonely, ugly, not entitled to the table/space, or an ageing prostitute. And I do not care!
WHAT IS SHE DOING? Why would a girl painted in Corinth in 5th c. BCE on a flat wine cup twirl a cup of same shape on her finger menacingly at a duck sitting on a washing bowl? I have studied the Greeks for forty years and have absolutely no idea. BM site unhelpful. Help!
And a new MP who overturned a massive Tory majority in Bracknell,
@PDJSwallow
, has a PhD in Classics supervised by yours truly. He also campaigns to get people-friendly Classical Civilisation and Ancient History into STATE secondary ed.
@ClassCivAncHist
Sorry to have kept a low online profile for most of August. I've just finished the most technically and emotionally difficult book of my life, an edition of Aeschylus' Agamemnon with trans., intro, commentary. It really was like giving birth from my head to a rectangular boulder
OH PLEASE
@britishmuseum
get your house especially the Parthenon room in order! "The antiquated infrastructure...is crumbling. Roofs leak, the climate control is failing, paint is peeling, and floor tiles are cracked". Read all about it
@BCRPM
On Unesco
#WorldArtDay
2021, the extraordinary fresco from Pompeii showing a woman painter making a portrait in the company of another woman (the commissioner?) Tiny bits of evidence from small corners of antiquity that speak volumes about erased experience...
My father the Revd. Prof. Stuart G. Hall died a few hours ago, just into his 95th birthday. Some of my friends knew him as a distinguished Church Historian. He longed to meet his maker and is now at peace.
@19Averil
Winter Solstice in ancient Greece meant the Haloa festival centred on Poseidon, randiest Olympian of them all. It featured nudity and dances around and with giant phalluses. I am not sure whether the Twitter censors will allow these images but giving it a go
Has anyone else ever walked their dog for 20 minutes after a snooze before realising they still have an obscene eye mask on their head? I did wonder why I was receiving funny looks
Look what arrived today. I've been researching it since 1982. It's published on Wednesday. I'm short of ideas for what to do with the rest of my life. Thank you thank you Comrade
@henrystead
Just lectured on Homer at Kardamyli-Benaki festival in Peloponnese: next up my old mate, the goddess
@bettanyhughes
, on Aphrodite. Wish you were all here!
"Wrath--Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles". Line 1 of Iliad written out four times on Coptic ceramic chunk from Egyptian Thebes, c. 600 CE for a schoolchild to practise their cursive script..
Just to show that it can be done! One evening class a week isn't much effort from me given I'm supposed to know ancient Greek. 11 Londoners from 18 to nearly 80 will get their A-Level in 2021. Let's fight back against the profiteers who've taken over running our universities!
I'm not the biggest fan of Cicero, born 3 Jan. 106 BCE, but have been greatly helped twice in my life by this from 1st speech v. Catiline: “I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity [invidia] earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all, but honour.”
Thanks to everyone for advice on font for the cover of my forthcoming book. The graffito style looks perfect on the Roman mural, as if telling the Furies of ancestral misery where to get off. Coming out next spring with simultaneous audiobook.
To those who've asked me to comment on the PM's Homer recital: 1) Here is Henrich Schliemann boring his wife to death at Troy reciting the Iliad. 2) Please read Plato's ION. Socrates proves that just because a rhapsode has memorised Homer doesn't mean he's fit to be a statesman.
There are dozens of ancient representations of Artemis holding her bow, but this tiny fragment signed by the potter [Nik]osthenes captures the precise moment, her eyes intent on prey, when she reaches backwards to get an arrow out of her quiver. Lovely long fingers
My hopes for 2018 summed up: 14th-c. image of Aristotle riding Rationality & leading his army against the Castle of Untruth, occupied by Wickedness, Inactivity, Ignorance, Weakness, Confusion, Pettiness, Hatred etc. “In the dungeon, truth was incarcerated, longing to be free..."
I love ancient Greek vase-painters' attempts to visualise preposterous myths concretely. If Helen was born to Leda from an egg after the Zeus/swan incident, how big did the egg need to be to accommodate a full-term baby? No wonder Leda looks baffled. Pergamon Mus. Lekythos F2430
Awww... Well my retirement project is going to be a totally free university for everyone with open access to everything classical, so I could eventually get to teach anyone who actually wants to hear me.
"It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world". This, rather than anything to do with gender, is my favourite quotation by Mary Wollstonecraft, English philosopher born on this day in 1759.
Just to boast that my latest PhD student to be viva-ed has passed with flying colours. She came from a Yorkshire comprehensive where she did Class. Civ., has learnt perfect ancient Greek & is now world expert on Odysseus in democratic/imperial Athenian art/lit. Go DEVAN TURNER!
New book arrived! Ultimately it's a tribute to my late mum, Brenda Hall nee Henderson,who faced down her family's transgenerational Furies, by way of Greek tragedy, Aristotle, personal memoir, suicidology, the history of Ethics and lowland Scottish history. Audiobook soon
Preparation for making short film today with Paul Cartledge about Parthenon sculptures makes me more scandalised than ever about the British Museum's continued insistence on keeping this great artwork divided & BM pieces in the dingy squalor of the leaking Duveen Gallery
@BCRPM
Goat Of The Day. Wine-jug made 650-625 BCE in Rhodes or on nearby mainland. The in-fill motifs are beautifully varied but suggest running through flowery woods to me. There was a whole category of ceramics now known as 'wild goat style'. Rhodes Archaeological Museum
Mark Chagall was born 6 July 1887. His illustrations of the Odyssey never cease to delight. Here are Athena protecting Odysseus' ship from Sirens and a very watery Poseidon.
A Continental uni needs a scan of my PhD certificate. I amazingly found it in the bowels of long-forgotten cupboard. But one of my children seems to have scrawled all over it when small & unimpressed with Oxonian heraldry. It costs £30 to replace. So it's getting sent anyway.
In Our Time radio programme on March 11is on Euripides' Theatre of Cruelty masterpiece BACCHAE, with me, the wonderful
@RosieWyles
& champion Homer translator
@EmilyRCWilson
. Can Melvyn Bragg cope with three women at once AND tales of menacing Maenads who tear men to pieces?
On
#FathersDay
2022, let's remember that alongside all the terrible fathers of ancient myth, Homer gave us Hector, who takes off his terrifying crested helmet so as not to frighten his baby.
On
#WorldSandDunesDay2024
(this is A Real Thing), I discover that ancient Greek themes dominate traditional sand sculpture festivals in Great Yarmouth and Norfolk. Who knew?
I have rarely been so excited by a perfume bottle. This was made in the late 7th century BCE and was found in Thebes. It is HOPE (ELPIS) deciding whether to escape from Pandora's Jar or stay inside it. We all need that bright smile. Now in Boston
@officialnhaynes
@MaryWL1
I've decided to film all the talks I've given over the last 30 years for a new free People's Classics Channel. But I'm a technological amateur. Comments on this trailer gratefully received!
This fantastic news is true. I am so thrilled to be rejoining the best and kindest department I've ever worked in after 15 years in London. The North-east rules OK!
We are absolutely delighted to announce that Professor
@edithmayhall
is returning to us and will be re-joining the Department in January 2022. This is phenomenal news for
@durham_uni
@Durham_Classics
and for Classics within the North-East
Welcome home, Edith!
Older woman stabs younger one having grabbed her by a ringlet. Almost certainly Clytemnestra and Cassandra. Bronze plaque in Athens National Archaeological Museum c. 700 BCE
British Library reading room is totally deserted because the continuing Internet outage of several days' duration means nobody can order any books. I'm just keeping out of the rain and finishing my OUP Very Short Introduction to Sophocles in isolation like Philoctetes but happier
LOOK AT THE COLOURS! Some lucky Greek in Tarentum, south Italy, in the 4th century BC owned this terracotta ornament of women with water urns on their heads chatting at a well-head. MMA.
"Any man will come to life...when you wear Max Factor's Italian Touch Roman Pink Lipstick!" Who wants to flirt with a stone Augustus & reverse the Pygmalion trope? [Not me-my favourite Emperor is Julian who would've despised cosmetics] Bizarre use of antiquity in adverts no. 8.
Off to British Museum to join others who want it to Do The Right Thing and let the Parthenon sculptures reunite in their homeland. Join me outside at 1435
@bcrpm
@JTasioulas
Confused by Greek vase names? Here's a three-in-one lesson. The youth is using a wine-jug (oinochoe) to scoop wine out of a mixing-bowl (krater) to refill his wine-cup (kylix). The whole scene is at the bottom of a kylix, to remind you how to get a refill when you've emptied it
Fact for
#Valentine2020
. The ancient Greeks would have put a liver not a heart on romantic cards as they thought it was the organ of eros. That's why Euripides' Medea threatens to stab her cheating husband and his new woman through the liver.
On UNESCO World Logic Day 2021 let's thank Aristotle as founding father. He says, "In the case of Rhetoric there were many old writings on which to draw, but in the case of Logic we had absolutely nothing at all to say until we had spent much time in laborious research"
I'm excited to be kicking off my free A-Level Greek course for adult learners today at King's College London. Over the next twenty months we're reading Plato's Phaedo and Euripides' Medea, two towering landmarks of world literature. Pure joy.
@ClassCivAncHist
@kingsclassics
When you are outnumbered 7 to 1 by the opposite sex you feel like this Heracles, surrounded by at least six armed Amazons. I was once interviewed at Liverpool Uni by a panel of 12 men; even in 2021, I have a meeting this week that is not dissimilar. Time to locate my inner Amazon
Those were the days! BBC broadcast all three of Sophocles' Theban plays in September 1986 with world-class actors. Here are Anthony Quayle as Oedipus in the Colonus play and John Gielgud as Teiresias in Antigone. Please could they re-broadcast soon?
I've just finished reading the entire Iliad AGAIN to see how far gods=forces of nature (not much). I'll tweet on a different god for 12 days of Xmas starting tomorrow. As intro, the Athenian vase-painter Oltos' stunning Zeus' drinking party with Aphrodite & Ares, Hermes & Athena
Today I poured a libation to Nemesis, goddess of retributive justice, on her altar in her.most hallowed sanctuary at Rhamnous, the best preserved ancient deme of Attica. So satisfying. Committers of perfidy and injustice beware!
Delighted to make my annotated translation of Aristophanes' Frogs free for public use at . It will shortly become the official text for use in the OCR Classical Civilisation A Level
It's impossible to overstate the contribution made by Marsilio Ficino (born 19 October 1433) to the development of interest in, and studies of, ancient philosophy when he translated the complete works of Plato from Greek (which hardly anyone could read) into Latin, published 1484
In Aeschylus' AGAMEMNON Clytemnestra tells the chorus to use a "barbarian hand" (καρβάνῳ χερί) if necessary to get Cassandra to go indoors. Most learned commentators have quaintly said this means sign language suitable for a non-Greek. Diana Rigg v. Helen Mirren knew better
Flirtation, c. 410 BCE. Youth offers to swap cat for maiden's duck while showing her his manhood. I would accept the cat. Made in Athens, now in Agrigento.
So proud that we are democratising & have made our Classics MA at King's, full- or part-time, available to any suitable applicant (i.e., with a 2:1 or equivalent BA degree with no ancient language requirement). Please write to our MA Admissions tutor Dr Ioannis Papadogiannakis
On
#WorldTunaDay
an ancient Greek fisherman who at least uses a line not a trawling net to acquire his supper. The octopus, being highly intelligent, knows how to evade capture.
WANTED! people to interview who ever took UK school qualifications in Classical Civilisation or Ancient History for AHRC-funded research project on the past & future of Classical subjects in schools . Please retweet widely/reply
@ClassCivAncHist
@ahrcpress
On
#WorldRadioDay
have a listen to this two-hour BBC Radio version of the Iliad with the amazing voices of Derek Jacobi, Iain Glen and Christopher Eccleston (2002). It made my spine tingle then and still does today
So excited to be on my way to Athens after being starved of Greece for 3 years. Giving lecture on the chorus of Aeschylus' Agamemnon at National Theatre tonight. Best poet, best play, best city. Whopee!
Preparing for BBC Radio IN OUR TIME on Thebes soon. Here's my favourite Theban, Crates the Cynic, born into an oligarchic fortune. He gave it to the poor and married Hipparchia, a brilliant philosopher, who carried all she owned on her head.
On
#SummerSolstice2024
, here's a stunning Helios, with two white and two bay horses driving his quadriga, on a dish made in Puglia c. 320 BCE, found in Calabria, now in Louvre. The waves, shells and dolphin show he's skimming over the ocean. Great headgear spokes.
I'm teaching Ancient Greek A Level to a group of ten (all ages) who've got to GCSE level, from September for two years. I have 3 spaces left. Cost £4 each a session just to cover my commute. Starts mid-Sept. 2019. If interested please email me via website edith
@edithhall
.co.uk
Today 1630, BBC Radio 4, I talk about Hypatia of Alexandria with Yanis Varoufakis and Matthew Parris. Try describing the parabola of a cone on radio! Last time I talked about Hypatia on a programme I got bizarre and harsh tweets from male whackademics, so a bit nervous today.
This sort of portrait of Pericles surrounded by his building projects makes me more than ever convinced that he kept his helmet on at all times to function as a construction worker's hard hat
Italian colleague Emanuele Sereti has drawn attention to this ASTOUNDING mosaic in the Museo Campano, probably depicting a sacred chorus singing for the goddess Diana. Nottingham High School choir never looked as good as this, but then we were sadly not allowed to worship Diana.
Advice please. This is the proposed cover for my memoirish book on Classics, suicide and my sad maternal ancestors. Image from Museo Nazionale Romano. I love it except the font doesn't look right to me. Any suggestions of font?
I thought I'd seen every Athenian vase-painting of barbarians in existence, but get this Dionysus riding his camel as he leads dancing revellers, male & female, in Oriental costume. c. 405 BCE so same time as premiere of Euripides' BACCHAE & a great accompaniment. BM 1882,0704.1
For Father's Day, the Best/Worst Dads in Classical Mythology. For best, I'm torn between Priam, who risked his life to recover Hector's corpse, and Daedalus, who tried so hard to win freedom for Icarus. For worst, there are hundreds in the running, but baby-eating Cronus must win
I'm unbelievably proud of my brilliant PhD student Hardeep Dhindsa, himself a talented artist (see pic)
@_HardeepDhindsa
who has won a Leverhulme Fellowship to study whiteness and the neoclassical art market in Rome. He is the future of Classics
Gasp-out-loud at the emotional immediacy of looking so directly into the beautiful, speaking eyes of Aththaia, a Greek woman from Palmyra, daughter of Malchos, who has been dead for 1800+ years and is now in Boston, MA exile. One of my top ten ancient faces.
It's Heinrich Schliemann's 200th anniversary. He may not really have 'discovered' Troy or found 'the mask of Agamemnon'. But he is unarguably the founding father of self-promoting celebrity classicists!
A surprisingly joyful farewell to my father on Friday. The flowers included a single rose from the house he shared with my mother for so many years. Instead of a speech I got the church to play George Harrison's The Answer's at the End
I love Klimt's "Sappho" because it portrays her not as dying nor looking lovelorn but as a mother with her "fine daughter with a form like golden flowers, Cleis the best beloved" (ἔστι μοι κάλα πάις χρυσίοισιν ἀνθέμοισιν/ἐμφέρην ἔχοισα μόρφαν Κλέις ἀγαπάτα... (fr. 132 L-P)
On
#InternationalCatDay
here's an Eternal Kitty who thinks that the foot of Constantine in the Courtyard of Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Capitoline Museums is as good a place as any other for a siesta.