certamen-the-novel

[certamen-the-novel]

feeling called out today

credit: _ADWills

[certamen-the-novel]

augustus and marcus agrippa

[certamen-the-novel]

do you guys know about lio gangeri's statue of fulvia with the head of cicero.

[certamen-the-novel]

Aeneas’ perpetual and noticeable absence of active participation in what are arguably his most important relationships (Creusa, Ascanius, Dido, Pallas, Lavinia). The conspicuous places where he goes to speak to one or more of these people and a sign of divinity cuts him off. I am going to gnaw my leg off.

[certamen-the-novel]

01/11/19

[certamen-the-novel]

memento yuri

[certamen-the-novel]

I have to add my cousin’s print of this rhino. I’ve had it on my wall for 10 years.

halloween cat shiiiirt :-) + dubious rhinoceros for scale

[certamen-the-novel]

[certamen-the-novel]

Night in Pompeii. Photos taken last week by Marco Macri

Night in Pompeii. October 2024

© Marco Macri

[certamen-the-novel]

Vestal Virgins OC’s.

I recently studied the little that is known about these priestesses, and they really interested me. In particular, the fact that in most paintings they are usually depicted as a group of young women, although logically this cannot be so. The service life of a Vestal is 30 years, during the first 10 she studies, then 10 years serves and the next 10 teaches the younger ones. That is, if they were all the same age, then after finishing the service, it would be necessary to hire six children)

[certamen-the-novel]

have to say that it's extremely funny to imagine diogenes of sinope saying I've Had Enough and just. holding his breath until he died. truly the epitome of if it sucks hit da bricks

[certamen-the-novel]

bdsm stands for

Bees Do So Much for the environment

[certamen-the-novel]

[certamen-the-novel]

I pulled up the sketchy online Old English version of Beowulf and yeah it has 3,182 lines. If you took 5 seconds per line you’d need four and a half hours to recite it (or specifically to recite the one version that got both written down and preserved for a thousand years) (only a little charred). But I mean 5 seconds per line is for chumps who don’t want to unlock the Beowulf speedrun.

Also ok for SCIENCE I timed myself and quickly reciting the first 5 lines took 16 seconds, let’s call that fifteen because I mispronounced meodosetla. At that pace (if you could keep it up consistently and I mean never cough never take a drink) you’d be looking at 2.65 hours, or 2 hours and 39 minutes (or 159 minutes). This is actually 20 minutes shorter than the theatrical run-time of Peter Jackson’s Two Towers (179 minutes).

Now, the original post was about reciting Beowulf in an hour, so 2 hours and 39 minutes is not gonna cut it, and is so far over time that even doubling your pace can’t save you. You’re gonna lose this speedrun and Æthelflæd’s new scop poet is going to laugh at you. However, there’s a cheat to exploit here. In the period when Old English (language of Beowulf) was spoken, people often just said there were 12 hours in a day and 12 hours in a night, no longer how long or short daylight actually was. This made the concept of a daylight hour stretch in summer, when daylight lasts way longer than 12 hours. There’s a good article on this I’ll find it if anyone wants it. I don’t actually expect anyone to have read this far.

ANYWAY, the longest day in Jarrow (furthest north Old English speaking town I could think of) in 2024 (sorry this data is not calibrated for the 10th century) was of course midsummer: June 20th, at 17 modern hours 22 modern minutes and 1 modern second. This means each early medieval hour that day actually lasted 1 hour and 26 minutes. Still not nearly enough lads, but this is when it becomes a skill game. Because I wasn’t going ALL that fast. We need to squeeze 159 minutes of Beowulf (aka basically Two Towers) into 86 minutes. If you could half my pace-per-five-lines from 15 seconds to 7.5 seconds, you’d be able to do it, one day of the year, in Jarrow. Iceland is cheating. Good luck.

[certamen-the-novel]

i need the colleen mccullough megalopolis novelisation soooooooooooo bad

[certamen-the-novel]

>looking for a new retelling of ancient myth

>ask the reviewers if the book is classical reception or modern tropification

>they don't understand

>i pull out a diagram explaining the difference between what engages with ancient sources and depictions of the story and what relies on reduction of the story to its most marketable aspects

>they laugh and say "it's a good retelling"

>read the book

>its tropification

[certamen-the-novel]

he went through a whole odyssey to make this shitty ass movie. almost 50 years of trying to make this shitty movie.