#<- you KNOW lucan would have been weird and sexy about that

[catilinas]

pharsalia 4.43-50 trans. wilson joyce

you know they were eating one anotherrrrrr

[catilinas]

I'm currently reading lattimore's iliad, and I'm planning to read an oresteia translated by Anne Carson. What are some other works you'd recommend/love? And the translation you like. I want to read up on the classics as I didn't really go to school past 14, and I love how passionate you are about them, so I thought I'd ask, thanks either way!

hi! sorry for taking one million years to reply to this :/ every time i try to make a Brief list of my fave texts i explode. also please bear in mind that this is a list of Texts I Personally Really Like and not a list of Texts That Are The Hashtag Classical Canon.

if you enjoy(ed. it's been a while) the iliad and An Oresteia then probably try the odyssey? i like emily wilson's translation and also ive said this before but her introduction is soooooo good. she has a translation of the iliad coming out next year and i'm probably more excited to read her introduction to it than like. the actual translation

also in the genre of epic (the best genre) i actually prefer latin epic so. definitely the aeneid (post on different translations here!) which is also very uhhh foundational for so so much of subsequent latin literature. including my other favourite epic poem, lucan's pharsalia (post on translations again!) which is a historical epic about the civil war between caesar and pompey.

this is where the list gets very much into things i personally like. the pharsalia is so cool to me because it's not a history/historiography but it Does do weird things To history and gets away with them because of its genre. veryyy similarly, aeschylus' persians is a tragedy (the only surviving tragedy based on historical events!) about the persian response to defeat at the battle of salamis. i don't have a preferred translation for this one just read whatever! but definitely read some sort of introduction or the wikipedia page because it's weird for a Lot of reasons. also necromancy happens. and there's boats. what more can anyone want!

i've also been really into livy's ab urbe condita atm. it's a history of rome but the first 5 books especially are very. well i just don't think that actually happened. BUT the early roman like. political myth making is cool actually! (if only because if you read it then when lucan is like oh and the ghost of curius dentatus was there you can be like oh i know who that guy is! a Lot of latin lit involves invoking historical exempla and livy is a major source for a Lot of those.) i actually care very little about greek myth (and the take that the romans just 'stole' greek religion. like what) because i think the romans' mythologisation of e.g. lucius junius brutus is way more fun. but ALSO livy was writing a history starting from the Foundation of rome at a time when augustus was 'ReFounding' rome so you're always a bit like. hmmmmmm. or like you read about coriolanus in livy and you're like oh wow foreshadowing of the political situation that would later lead to the civil wars! but then you remember that livy was writing it After the civil wars and then you fall into the livian timeloop and then you explode.

ok now ignore livy because my favourite historian is actually sallust. would recommend william batstone's translation of (and introduction to) the bellum catilinae. Catilina Is There. sallust's catiline is soooooo sexy like his countenance was a civil war itself! enough eloquence but not enough wisdom! animus audax subdolus varius! he's haunted by sulla's ghost! he's didn't cause the fall of the republic so much as he was a symptom of it! he's an antihero! he's cicero's mimetic double! he probably doesn't drink blood! he would have died a beautiful death IF it had been on behalf of his country (except that quote is actually from florus maybe via livy lol)! He Did Nothing Wrong. you want to read the bellum catilinae soooooo bad. also it is v fun to read alongside with cicero's catilinarian orations (the invective speeches against catilina). i think i read the oxford world's classics translation of those but i Cannot remember who it is by.

also you know what i really like what i've read of florus' epitome of roman history which is maybe kind of a summary of livy but also florus is totally doing his own thing (he is sooo influenced by lucan! nice!) highly recommend the (relatively brief) section on the first punic war. it does cool things with boats.

i also love plutarch's life of cato the younger!!! one of my favourite ancient texts of all time ever. like a) it's plutarch and he is fun. would recommend the life of alexander the great as well tbh. and b) it's cato the younger and he is so so so fucked up.

finallyyyyyy bcs this is getting long. the poetry of catullus (and a post on translations is here!) like It's Catullus. the original poor little meow meow. what more can i say

[catilinas]

I was gonna be a dick and send in big c for the ask game (and I get it, I hate him too), but actually. Can I get your opinion on the Pharsalia? What is it you like so much?

OHHHHHH the pharsalia...... my beloved...... it just has everything i love in one poem! like it is about the crisis of the roman republic it's an epic poem it's a fucked UP epic poem that can't really be isolated from other parts of the epic 'canon' bcs part of the Vibes come from its divergences from them.... it's got ghosts and necromancy and fate being real but the source of that fate is history already having happened and the author's (unwanted!) knowledge of the disastrous future rather than like. divine machinery. it's got WEIRD syntax where you kind of have to hold the broken parts of sentences together in your mind like YEA the universe machine broke and that broke the very fabric of the poem like WHAT an choice to make. as a poet. it also just has such a distinct way of writing abt violence particularly in war like i think ive posted a quote abt people being reduced to either weapons or wounds? which makes Me think abt the poetry of wilfred owen where people are dehumanised while the Machines of war are personified...... wilfred owen has been one of my favourite poets since like 2013 so anything similar Will make me Lose It. ALSO the syntax needing the reader to constantly hold it together applies to the poem as a whole too like it's deliberately contradictory it hates both sides of the civil war but the narrator wants desperately to believe in pompey but his narration clearly Doesn't and he wants to despise caesar but the narration is like. fascinated by him and his Demonic Energy. in an evil way. i fully support bartsch's takes from ideology in cold blood abt the narrator wanting himself and You The Reader to fix the political Schism by believing not in one side's ideology but in the ideology of believing in anything at all. it's sexy and weird the poem is like hashtag his countenance was a civil war itself. also the poem is literally a headless corpse. it's an empty tomb that WOULD contain cato the younger if lucan had got to his death before dying himself. (speaking of which the poem IN the context of lucan's actual life and particularly death? insane. thematic even). also cato the younger! i know this is catilinas dot tumblr dot hell but cato the younger is actually one of my favourite historical figures of all time he sucked and was awful and i enjoy it. and lucan's takes on cato are Very fun also when he has to not get killed by Many Snakes. epic. ALSO as much as lots of the coolness of lucan comes from his interactions w other texts he does often do stuff that is deeply weird and? maybe new? like what's up with the WOMEN alison keith says in her book on women in latin epic "no latin epic is complete without the death agony of a woman" but. professor keith please explain where the woman who dies in lucan IS. julia? who is a ghost? bcs imo if you die before the plot starts and Then come back as a ghost that is the Opposite of a woman dying in epic. that\'s a woman coming back to life/undeath. or like w phemonoe the narrative hypes up oooooooo every pythia who does a prophecy immediately dies! she doesnt want to do the prophecy bcs she will immediately die! and then she DOES do the prophecy and...... doesn't die? like she falls over but then she gets back up? what does it MEAN? (i know what it means this was my undergrad d*ssertation.) like yes every female character in lucan (except maaaaybe cleopatra) is deeply associated w death....... but they are all not even just alive. like unkillable. it's weird and cool! or like lucan does ye olde trope of Marriage To Death but he makes it WEIRD. he's like no the women do not marry death. they ARE death. which puts their husbands in the usually female role of Being Married To Death. what does tHAT mean? polla argentaria if you are out there i would like to discuss any edits you may have made to the pharsalia after your husband's death,