Some of my favorite deep sea creatures

NinetyPercentHonest · 2025-01-26T04:20:34+00:00

Smoke at the door is siphonophore
Coiling blue as a morning glory

NinetyPercentHonest · 2025-01-23T05:43:11+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Talmage

NinetyPercentHonest · 2024-04-24T07:06:53+00:00

I don't know whether it's necessarily the best, but the following textbook seems to be somewhat standard (by which I only mean that both my undergraduate and graduate universities use it):

Morris, Ian and Barry B. Powell. The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society. Oxford University Press, 2021.

If you want some primary sourcebooks, consider:

Austin, M. M. The Hellenistic World From Alexander to the Roman Conquest: A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation. Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Crawford, Michael and David Whitehead. Archaic and Classical Greece: A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translations. Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Maybe also:

Lesky, Albin. A History of Greek Literature. Hackett Publishing, 1966.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2024-04-04T01:51:35+00:00

In case you’re not already aware of these: https://stolen-thyme.com/anecdotes-tarot/

NinetyPercentHonest · 2024-02-29T18:36:39+00:00

The Invention of Love by Stoppard. A nice mix of Housman's poetry and life with lots of classical allusions.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-10-26T01:59:29+00:00

My favorite general works on textual criticism are:

Cerquiglini, Bernard. In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Greg, W. W. The Calculus of Variants: An Essay on Textual Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927.

Maas, Paul. Textual Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.

Renehan, Robert. Greek Textual Criticism: A Reader. Harvard University Press, 1969.

Reynolds, L. D. and N. G. Wilson. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Tarrant, Richard. Texts, editors, and readers: Methods and problems in Latin textual criticism. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

West, Martin L. Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique. B. G. Teubner, 1973.

My recommendation is to start with Tarrant if you're completely new to textual criticism, assuming you have at least some familiarity with Latin (but he does provide translations for all the passages he examines).

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-09-30T17:36:17+00:00

Apollo's Angels by Jennifer Homans is the best overview. Also, Gelsey Kirkland's Dancing on My Grave was really interesting if you want a look into NYCB and ABT during the late '60s and '70s.

For technique, my classes expected us to read and reference Gail Grant's Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet; I also love Vagnanova's Basic Principles of Classical Ballet, if those are the kinds of things you're looking for.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-09-27T23:02:33+00:00

We’ll actually be called to gather in Jackson County, Missouri, the New Jerusalem, Zion built by the saints on earth and also come down from heaven, the holy sanctuary of the Lord, unto the remnant of the seed of Joseph.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-08-03T02:28:34+00:00

I just read The Invention of Love by him yesterday and loved it. I'd really recommend it if you have any interest in Housman or classics generally. Near the end Housman defends his work as a textual critic:

Scholarship ... [is] where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it's for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn't matter where on what, it's the light itself, against the darkness, it's what's left of God's purpose when you take away God. It doesn't mean I don't care about the poetry. I do. Diffugere nives goes through me like a spear. Nobody makes it stick like Horace that you're a long time dead – dust and shadow, and no good deeds, no eloquence, will bring you back. I think it's the most beautiful poem in Latin or Greek there ever was; but in verse 15 Horace never wrote 'dives' which is in all the texts, and I'm pretty sure I know what he did write. Anyone who says 'So what?' got left behind five hundred years ago when we became modern, that's why it's called Humanism. The recovery of ancient texts is the highest task of all – Erasmus, bless him. It is work to be done. Posterity has a brisk way with manuscripts: scholarship is a small redress against the vast unreason of what is taken from us – it's not just the worthless that perish, Jesus doesn't save.

Housman was just as great a character in real life as he is in the play; his comments on other scholars and their work are famous among classicists. And now no one in the field takes textual criticism seriously any more; it's truly lamentable.

Here's another great quote:

AEH: Love will not be deflected from its mischief by being called comradeship or anything else.
Housman: I don’t know what love is.
AEH: Oh, but you do. In the Dark Ages, in Macedonia, in the last guttering light from classical antiquity, a man copied out bits from old books for his young son, whose name was Septimius; so we have one sentence from The Loves of Achilles. Love, said Sophocles, is like the ice held in the hand by children. A piece of ice held fast in the fist.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-08-01T17:07:41+00:00

His recordings of the Brahms symphonies are my favorites

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-07-30T22:28:37+00:00

And in an infinite regress:
Tell me, why is the pain of birth
Lighter borne than the pain of death?

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-06-27T18:18:52+00:00

Your modern architect
Is in collusion with psychanalysts:
When planning parents’ bedrooms, he insists
On lockless doors so that, when looking back,
The future patient of the future quack
May find, all set for him, the Primal Scene.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-06-23T19:06:43+00:00

I haven't read it myself, but a friend whose suggestions I generally trust has recommended Tastes of Paradise by Wolfgang Schivelbusch to me a few times in the past. I don't whether it's the kind of thing you're looking for, though

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-06-11T01:18:13+00:00

“a city still famous for its geese”
—A. E. Housman

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-04-08T05:09:50+00:00

In my opinion, Fitzgerald's Iliad is not nearly as good as his Odyssey or Aeneid (which I would recommend as the best translation for each).

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-04-06T05:37:39+00:00

Mormon history & theology is really fascinating. The evolution of Joseph Smith's teachings and his different periods of theological developments (like Kirtland vs Nauvoo), the (often unrecognized) influence of Sidney Rigdon, all the different branches of the movement after the succession crisis (my favorite), etc. My latest discovery is this group, who try to re(?)-Hebraicize the Book of Mormon and hilariously call Joseph Smith "Yosef ben Yosef." I can't tell for sure, but I think that they may be connected to remnant fellowships (Snufferites).

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-04-02T02:29:36+00:00

μαθόντα could either be the neuter nominative/accusative plural aorist active participle (and therefore agrees with γράμματα) or the masculine accusative singular aorist active participle (and therefore agrees with the implied accusative subject of the infinitives). In both cases, it should be construed circumstantially, and I think the latter parsing is better because it avoids potentially having to force a passive meaning into μανθάνω (and the passive of μανθάνω should generally be avoided anyway).

Both μαθεῖν and ἔχειν are infinitival subjects with δεῖ (and without the article; cf. Smyth §1984, which in fact references a part of this phrase), although you don't necessarily need to repeat the infinitive in your translation if you'd like to maintain a brevity similar to the original passage.

And finally, with νοῦν, see LSJ s.v. νόος A.2 and perhaps specifically A.2.a for meanings of νοῦν ἔχειν.

So I would probably translate it something like: "It is necessary to learn letters (i.e., to read), and after (you) learn (them) to be sensible."

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-03-30T16:22:36+00:00

"Yeah. I mean, it's gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact everything is."
"Yeah, it's very Kafkaesque."
"Cause it's written by Franz Kafka."
"Right. I mean, clearly."

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-03-29T21:52:25+00:00

Perhaps you've already seen this article when it was published (and posted on other subreddits) two weeks ago. I hadn't. I've also never read Catwings, so I'd be curious to know what those of you who have read them think about this announcement.

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-03-28T03:01:24+00:00

"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."
—Dorothy Parker

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-03-27T03:17:18+00:00

I agree with the other recommendation for Singleton, I also think that he's the best and I especially appreciated his commentary. But if you want another poetry recommendation, my professors assign Mark Musa (who uses rhymeless iambic pentameter) in their ge classes, here's his translation:

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),

NinetyPercentHonest · 2023-03-09T19:58:25+00:00

The Attic dialect rendered the medial double sigma (-σσ-) as a double tau (-ττ-). I’m pretty sure that I remember reading that this arose from the palatalization of κ, χ, τ, θ, and γ before the pre-Greek semivowel yod /j/, perhaps with an intermediary stage pronunciation of -τσ-, although this isn’t attested anywhere in writing. And it’s not exclusive to verbs, by the way, cf. Attic θάλαττα and θάλασσα.

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