#classic caesar indeed

[whencyclopedia]

Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander

"Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander" by Paul Cartledge offers a detailed yet accessible exploration of the legendary figure's life and legacy. The author's expertise and engaging storytelling provide fresh insights into Alexander the Great's conquests and their historical significance. This book is recommended for scholars and general readers alike.

Alexander the Great's profound impact on Roman culture is undeniable, particularly when considering the fusion of Greco-Oriental influences during the Hellenistic era, which permeated Rome and, subsequently, Western Europe. His conquests paved the way for cultural diffusion and laid the groundwork for religious and imperial ideologies. His ideological legacies include figures like Pompey and Caesar. The territories Alexander the Great once controlled formed the foundation of Rome's eastern dominion, often considered the culturally and economically richer half of the empire.

However, understanding Alexander himself proves challenging due to conflicting ancient sources and continuous reinterpretations throughout history, often reflecting the agendas of interpreters.

In Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander, Paul Cartledge offers a captivating and comprehensive new examination of Alexander the Great. With his trademark storytelling prowess, Cartledge, chair of Cambridge University's Classics Department, guides readers through the life and conquests of Alexander with precise detail and an engaging narrative that balances discussion on Alexander's achievements with acknowledgment of places where we lack historical evidence.

Cartledge challenges prevailing notions about Alexander's motivations, particularly regarding Alexander's aim of spreading Hellenism. Cartledge argues that while Alexander was indeed attached to Hellenism, his driving force was personal glory and conquest. This nuanced perspective adds depth to our understanding of Alexander, presenting him as a complex figure driven by ambition and a thirst for success.

Central to Cartledge's exploration is Alexander's military genius. Through detailed chronicles of Alexander's battles with the Persians, Tyrians, and Babylonians, Cartledge highlights the young leader's strategic brilliance and innovative tactics. He demonstrates how Alexander's love of hunting served as a metaphor for his approach to warfare, as he adapted hunting strategies such as the surprise attack to achieve military success. This analysis sheds light on Alexander's mindset and sheds new light on his military achievements.

The book is enriched by many appendixes, including a glossary and an extensive bibliography, which enhance the reader's understanding and provide valuable resources for further exploration. Cartledge's skillful storytelling brings history to life, making the ancient world feel vivid and immediate. His vivid descriptions and storytelling make for an absorbing read that will appeal to both scholars and general readers alike.

Overall, Alexander the Great: A New Life of Alexander is a masterful biography that offers fresh insights into the life and legacy of one of history's most iconic figures. With its diligent research, engaging narrative, and nuanced analysis, this book is sure to become a definitive work on Alexander the Great for years to come. Whether the audience is a seasoned scholar or a casual reader with an interest in ancient Greece, this book is a must-read.

Continue reading...

[haggishlyhagging]

Money, like writing, seems to have originated in the temples of the ancient world. The word money comes from the Roman Goddess Juno who in one of her forms was called Moneta meaning She Who Gives Warning. Her temple in Rome was the center for the finances of Rome and so her name Moneta became the word money. The same word became also mint because that same temple was the place where coins were minted. According to Barbara Walker silver and gold coins manufactured there were valuable not only by reason of their precious metal but also by the blessing of the Goddess herself which was believed to bring good fortune and healing magic.

Money was indeed a magical invention. Folk tales are full of magic lamps and genies and beanstalks, of magical ways to have our every wish granted. We would all like to be able to snap our fingers or twitch our noses and have our purposes accomplished. And that is almost exactly what happens with money. It can be exchanged for every conceivable kind of real wealth. Magic. Pure magic. So enamored were people of this magical invention that it became over time the primary measure of real wealth in Westem society.

Why then do three quite diverse philosophical or intellectual traditions agree on the idea that money is somehow unclean or something to be despised?

One of those traditions is Christianity. About one third of the parables of Jesus are about money. He is reported to have taught that being rich is a barrier to salvation and to have told the rich young man to sell everything and give his money to the poor. The one time he is depicted as angry is when he turns over the tables of the money changers at the temple. His advice on taxes is to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, to separate money and worldly concerns from one's religion. Classical Christianity has preached, if not practiced, that money and this world are to be renounced in favor of an other-worldly kingdom of heaven. The love of money, said St. Paul, is the root of all evil.

Classical Marxism also renounces money as responsible for the alienation of human beings from their labor. People no longer work to create or produce, but only to make money. This situation Marx considered to be disastrous. He felt it was labor which was of essential value and that all monetary valuations were to be discarded. Those who seek only money he saw as exploiting those who work.

Finally there is Freud who thought money was anal. He equated money with feces, excrement. It is therefore filthy and messy. Withholding money is a kind of constipation. Money is related to the bowels and is dirty. And indeed, we do refer to money sometimes as "filthy lucre."

Christianity, Marxism and Freudianism all agree on despising money. As a psychologist I have learned to pay careful attention to those things another person protests most vehemently against. And as a woman I have learned to pay close attention to those things which our great patriarchs preach most loudly against. Because, of course, what is loudly despised is often what is covertly desired or feared or worshipped. So if Jesus, Marx and Freud are all in agreement on something, we women had better take a careful look.

Women are socialized to live out the Christian ideals of self-sacrifice and martyrdom and men are socialized to give lip service to them. The same hypocrisy would seem to apply to what is preached about money. Filthy, despicable, and barrier to salvation it may be, but the fact is that in general, men have money and women don't. According to the United Nations Labor Organization, women put in 65% of the world's work and get back only 10% of all income paid. The female half of the world's population owns less than 1% of world property. Women in our Western society may have access to money through their husbands or fathers, but until recently women rarely accumulated or controlled their own large fortunes.

Men may philosophize about the distinction between money, which is "merely" a measure, and "real wealth," the goods and services into which money can be changed. They can say that the pursuit of money leads to an unhappy, hollow existence. They can urge upon women the virtues of simplicity. But for most men the ultimate appeal is to the "bottom line," that is, to money. How much money will something cost? How much financial profit will be gleaned? Mae West cut through this hypocrisy with great clarity when she said "I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better."

-Shirley Ann Ranck, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven

[pureamericanism]

It's an almost banal truism that classic science fiction was largely a projection of the Frontier Experience - and, more broadly, the whole world-shaking events of the European Age of Discovery - onto an imagined outer space. Less frequently remarked is that the reverse is also true.

I grew up devouring Golden Age science fiction novels, and was a fervent believer in Mankind's Destiny Among The Stars. Well, the Space Age - like all the great dreams of thr 20th century - has turned out to be something of a damp squib, but I still want stories of fantastic voyages of exploration, adventure, science, discovery, and intrigue in a vast new world of far-flung outposts separated by titanic distances. So to scratch that itch, why not just...go back to the source?

If you want something like a story about an isolated asteroid mining colony, you can just read the memoirs of a surgeon at a Hudson Bay Company outpost! Why bother with Heinlein when you can just read the diaries of pioneer women, the tales of Yankee filibusters in Latin America, the authentic exploits of desert-island buccaneers, or the early adventures of the Portugese in the Indian Ocean? Do you want fraught tales of inteigue and war and high politics that extend to the farthest reaches of known space? A good book on any of the big 18th century wars for empire will satisfy. And can Star Trek remotely compare in imagination and excitement to the voyages of Cook and La Pérouse? "Strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations?" Boy howdy, we got 'em! If you look at these things with fresh eyes, with the eyes of a science fiction fan rather than those of someone with access to an infinitide of pictures of them online, nothing could be more surprising than a dugong, a platypus, a redwood, a southern continent of solid ice.

All of this is really just an overly long preamble to my main point, though. Which is that I believe the story of Hernán Cortés, Montezuma, and the Conquest of Mexico to be possibly the greatest one ever told. The themes...bro, the themes! There is here a richness, a complexity and depth surpassing almost anything I can think of in legend or literature.

It is, of course, a science fictional First Contact story, in which two shockingly different civilizations who know nothing of each other suddenly find themselves facing each other down. And indeed, like any good First Contact story, one of the principal characters, La Malinche, is an interpreter! See how the resulting clash of civilizations eludes simple stereotyping - sure, it's easy to see the Spaniards as brash young interlopers into the sophisticated and urbane world of the Aztecs, whose capital was perhaps as much as an order of magnitude more populous than any city in Spain. But equally it is possible to see the Aztecs as provincials, isolated from a wider, older world that suddenly irrupts into their narrow one. Consider that Cortés supposedly got practical advice on political machinations and military strategy by - studying Caesar! Access to ancient wisdom penned by dead hands in far-off lands provides material aid to him.

Then there are the religious themes. It can be seen as a story about the triumph of Christianity, of the Church Triumphant, but what does it mean for a religion founded by a suffering martyr to become militarily triumphant? And what does it mean for thr religion of a suffering martyr to become triumphant over a religion of human sacrifice to the gods? This is a complex and multi-layered irony that spares no one. And consider the strange foreshadowing of the legend of Quetzelcoatl returning from over the sea. Shades of Frank Herbert, here, even (especially?) if the tale is a post-conquest invrntion.

And the role of technology in the tale. Yes, the steel and shot, the horses and hounds, the ships and sails were all powerful allies for the Spaniards, but these would not have sufficed without the smallpox virus - a reversal of Wells that still underlines the power of biology and of the very small even in the face of all our mastery over the brute world. But the conquest also would not have been possible without the alliance with the Tlaxcala and other local rivals and adversaries of the Aztecs. There are very pointed lessons in the social, political, and diplomatic sciences being demonstrated here. Some are obvious, and others very subtle - look at the ways these differing civilizations reacted under the extreme stress of this brutal war to see what I mean about the subtle ones.

I could go on, I could mention the strange aesthetic touches, such as the similarity in climates between the Valley of Mexico and inland Spain, and the parallels between Spain's role to Rome and Mexico's to Spain; or I could talk about the fascinatingly ambiguous characters of all the major players in this story, and the surprising arcs they go through; but not only am I already going on rather long, but I fear I may be making too light of what were, after all, real events, real events that resulted in piles of corpses, and whose tremendous human consequences are still felt deeply by tens of millions of people.

But I stand by my statement that it is one of the richest, profoundest stories I know of. The gods may be cruel, monstrously cruel, but they are artists, too.

[robotnik-mun]

Man, you know what I'd love to see one day?

Planet of the Apes media that focuses on what kind of Ape civilizations arose outside of North America.

Whether its the classic or modern series, the civilizations we bear witness to are those that emerge in North America, and that is indeed neat... but I always wonder about what became of the Apes on the rest of the planet. Like, how influenced by Earth's other societies are these apes? How do their environments influence the development of their cultures? How much do they inherit from humanity? For that matter, what of the wild ape populations in Africa and Indonesia? What languages and cultures do THOSE apes develop, without the presence of humans to influence either?

Most importantly... what happens when these disparate apes finally meet one another? What do they make of each other? Do all ape species integrate with one another the way that Caesar's apes do, or without a similar figure to rally behind, do they instead stick with their own respective kinds? And do they share the same hostilities towards humanity? Is that the tie that binds, or is even that up in the air?

I dunno, it's just one of those things that feels a bit underutilized in a lot of PotA related media, and I'd really love to see it examined at some point in the future.

[aphroditelovesu]

Hello! Just wanted to say a few things!

firstly, I really love your works!! and also, I want to ask if you can recommend your favourite books/articles/shows/etc about mythology/history :)

Hii!! ☺️☺️

Thank you so much, anon! I'm very happy to read this. This kind of comment always cheers me up when I'm going through a difficult time. Thank you very much! ❤️

And yes, of course I can! 😊

Mythology books that I really like are: Percy Jackson/The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan, Pegasus and the Flame of Olympus by Kate O'Hearn, the book Greek Myths and Norse Myths.

And of course the Iliad and the Odyssey. Two classics that are totally worth reading, if you haven't read them yet.

Of books, although it is not considered a history book, but rather a period romance, I recommend Julie Quinn's books. Like Bridgertons, which is set during the Regency. Maybe you like it.

When it comes to history books, I don’t have a specific one to recommend. But I would say that it depends on the topic you prefer, whether it's Antiquity or the French Revolution, it really depends.

As for articles, I usually read from a Brazilian site called Aventuras na História, but it's not in English :( but you can automatically translate it on Google, if you're interested :)

These are my favorite series:

Rome: Very good indeed! For those who like the history of Rome and how the Roman Empire was created and a little of the history of Julius Caesar and Augustus, I highly recommend it.

Reign: It's not historically accurate, but it's very good for those who love a royal drama. I remember that when I watched it I was hooked.

The Tudors: very good for those who like the life of Henry VIII and his six wives. There's a lot of drama involved.

The Great: again not historically accurate, but it's very fun! It tells the story of the Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great.

The Spanish Princess and The White Princess: these are very good series that deserve more attention. The Spanish Princess tells the story of Catherine of Aragon and The White Princess tells the story of Elizabeth of York.

Outlander: fits both as a book and a series and I really recommend it. It's not about history per se, but it shows Scotland during that period while a lot of drama and angst surrounds the story!

I watch a lot of historical documentaries that you can easily find on YouTube! :)

I would say these are my favorite series and book recommendations. I hope they please you!

[tfw-no-tennis]

one piece liveblog 807-810

yayyy

807!!

them just cutting to a feast and still not telling us what happened to sanji 👀👀 like I know what happened to sanji but its still juicy af

BROOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok brook legit has one of the best character designs in one piece (and that's saying a lot w/the competition), simply can't be beat

still w/the sanji remarks...the drama!!!!!!!!!!

everyone is accounted for EXCEPT sanji

HAHAHA the super foreboding 'corpse' wanda mentioned was just brook lmfao

hahahaha and the dog minks love brook, of course. and zoro is just like Tell Me Less Please.

law just fucking off to the forest lmao mood

oooohohh the offscreen explanation oooohhhh

goddd I love that nami recognizes how bad the situation is - how this is actually WORSE than if sanji had Actually been physically kidnapped

but okay pretending idk where sanji went the tension is insaaaane and The Plot Thickens when u hear sanji left a note and left on purpose HMMMM so juicy

ITS ONLY BEEN 11 DAYS.....JEEEEESUS LOL

didn't dressrosa take like 5 years irl lmfao

flashback babeyyyyy

ooooh I love big moms flagship. so creepy. I love the whole 'evil-er willy wonka/disney' schtick she has going on

omfg I forgot abt caesar, just like luffy did

yeessssss I love seeing the crew fight together sooo much I wish it happened more instead of individual fights. It should be like DND where they take turns lol

namiiiii I love her and her weather powers sm

HAHAHAHA nami acting all humble but saying 'I admit, the credit's all mine' I love her SO MUCHHHH lmao

also I LOVE the rest of the straw hats hyping them up :')

chopper getting to do Dr stuff yayayayayay

nami and wanda gay asf js

OUGHGHGHGH LAW REUNITING W/HIS CREW OUGHHHHHH

also I was CONVINCED that law was doomed to die sometime after dressrosa (for multiple reasons, one being that his power is so OP lmao) so seeing this I was like OH NO HE DOESN'T HAVE LONG LEFT...lmao

I thot he'd die in wano but now that he didn't I'm like okay he's fine actually lol

oooh it's crazy to get to see all this wano-related stuff now that wano is like. actually over lol

and we still don't see what happened to sanji yet lol

chapter 808!!!

KAYA AND THE KIDS W USOPPS POSTER WWWWWWWWWWWWWW

oh shittttt jack

wow they have a lot of themes going on huh. you have the cards thing, and the mythical/prehistoric animals thing, and the 'calamities' thing. extraaa

this man is named sheepshead....that's a fish bro

gin-rummy...more card game names lol

apparently sheepshead is also a game but idk I think everyone's first thought would be Fish (

them arguing over terminology w/samurai vs ninja lmfao not the time dudes

oh shit fuck it up minks

luffy not reading the room at all and being excited that there's a mammoth hvhbajdfvshjbfbajdsdf I love him sm did u know

I love usopp and luffy's relationship sm ooooobh

HAHAHA NOOOO LUFFY JUST BLOWING BY ALL THE SUBTLTY

classic

everyone just whaling on luffy hvbjadkfbskjdfn

inuarashi!!! I was actually so confused by the english translation names lmao

caesar just fucking things up lmao

chapter 809!!

omfg inuarashi wanting to chew on brook too bc he's a dog mink lmaoooooo

'not later either!!' LMFAOOOOOOO

luffy going CAESAAAAAAAR is giving me jojo part 2 flashbacks

omg they met shanks :D

luffys like OH SHHIT MY DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

inuarashi falling asleep mid convo lmao

luffy like prying his jaw open while chopper tries to stop him. classic

omg fellow nocturnals<3

flashbackkkkkk!

ooooh musketeers

inuarashi badass moments

jack's the first person we hear about w/a billion+ bounty, right??

nekomamushi fuuuuck yea

i love one piece fights ngl

chapter 810!!!

ooooh we see the baratie w/sanji's new 'only alive' wanted poster!! 'lots of questions' indeed...

jack kinda looks like axe hand morgan w/that jaw hvjddhskbjlf

oomg bepo and the heart pirates fighting for zou 😭😭😭 wuv them

damnnn they fought for 5 days

luffy just sitting on inuarashi lmao

luv that luffy is Just A Little Guy and its more and more obvious as the series progresses bc everyone starts getting larger like the story is advancing along some sort of megafauna gradient

damnnnn they're out here breaking the geneva convention

nekomamushi cursing jack as he 'dies' is dope as fuck

this is starting to feel like a christian creation myth lol. 'and on the sixth day, the devil left our lands...'

inuarashi saying that doflamingo and jack 'must be bound by some deep connection' makes it sound like they're gay married lmfao

awww luffy defeating doflamingo indirectly made jack leave and stop murdering everyone on zou, nice

OH SHIT FLASHBACK!!!! sanjis there 👀

that shot w/brook chopper nami sanji momo and caesar like lmao caesar rlly thinks he's on the team....

caesar saying 'you will rue the day!'....neville icarly moment

brook's outfits are always cool as fuuuuck

nami immediately jumping into action to help the squirrel girl <333

and telling brook to fight the guy chasing her and brook is like sure thing <3333 ilove them

brook is so fucking cool I wish he got more to do in the story. I'm glad he gets to be dope in wci

oh hi pedro! everyone looks like they've seen better days huh

damn especially inuarashi and nekomamushi...I forgot the had limbs chopped off 😬 ouch

exciting flashback developments!!!!! more to come 👀

[transgenderer]

RE: calling ancient greeks antisemetic

I think that the attitude of pre(second)exilic Alexandrians as described in the acts of the pagan martyrs (essentially a document about how the Romans were so so so mean and so so so unfair to Alexandria by being insufficiently antisemitic) is pretty cleanly antisemitic? The diaspora predates the exile, as can be seen by Alexandria being, like, half Jewish Quarter, and the hatred those jews faced in Alexandria before the fall of the temple wouldn’t be very unfamilliar to, say, jews being attacked in England in the thirteenth century. There are some differences, in that Alexandrian jews were very able to put up a fight in the way that no community of jews would really be ever able to after the end of the jewish wars. Like, “‘My Lord Caesar, what do you care for a twopennyhalfpenny Jew like Agrippa?’ and

‘My Lord Augustus, with regard to your interests,Balbillus indeed speaks well. But to you, Agrippa, I wish toretort in connexion with the points you bring up about the Jews.I accuse them of wishing to stir up the entire world. .. . We mustconsider the entire mass. They are not of the same temperamentas the Alexandrians, but live rather after the fashion of theEgyptians. Are they not on a level with those who pay the polltax?’ are both pretty classically antisemetic. 

Admittedly, the document containing these was written after the exile, but by less than a century!

----

hmm, this is a good point, i hadnt thought about the pre-exile diaspora. i mean, its not exactly the same, but this does bear more similarity

[seraandthebees]

OC question (not really a question but whatever): pick a work written in classical Greek or Latin to recommend to each of your OCs! What would they enjoy reading or which works would include valuable information for them?

Ohhh this is a good one!! Thanks Vanamo!! You know me well so you’re not gonna be surprised when this is a long answer 😅

I think Herah would really love the poetry of Sappho. I know this is kind of an obvious choice but I think the personal nature of lyric poetry would suit her well. The sense of community and the performance context are things I think would remind her of her Tal Vashoth community. I’ll probably do a post on this at some point but, since it’s relevant here, I think that the Vashoth probably have an oral tradition given that that’s an important part of almost all communities ever. It’s a way for members of a community to connect to one another over common stories/experiences, a way to impose a moral code, and to define how we ought to treat each other and what happens when that goes wrong. Connecting with those ideas and exploring how another culture is similar/different to her own would be really rewarding for Herah.

Also hearing Sappho communicate directly with Aphrodite, reading her symptoms of love, listening her play into existing myth and look at it in new ways would be really appealing to Herah. The differences in language and metre would also give her the opportunity to get stuck in and do the kind of close analysis that she loves so much. She’d really be able to dig her teeth into it and see all the nuances of word order and emphasis, and admire how compact and economical these poems are.

I know this is cheating but I just wanna add that I think Herah would really love to read some Athenian comedy with Sera. They’d have so much fun with the Cyclops with all its sex jokes and taking the absolute piss out of Odysseus as this self-important war hero whose fame means nothing without a social framework in which to operate.

After much debate, I think I’d recommend to Naerselle the Iliad. She’d really like the close descriptions of battle (I almost said Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars for that reason) but I think she’d really understand the sorrow of Achilles, his attempt to defy destiny, how his action (or inaction) hurt a lot of people, but in time he realises just how much that cost him on a personal level. Not only that though, I think she’d also relate to Hector at times, not because of his nobility (in the moral sense) but because of how alone he is at times even when he has such an extensive family. She and her own family are mostly at odds and I think she sees something of them in Paris making her by extension a Hector-like figure.

Given that she’s Andrastian (probably my OC with the strongest sense of faith), I think she’d enjoy how present the gods are in this text, even if they are perhaps portrayed as ambiguous at times. Her faith doesn’t necessarily mean that she thinks that the Maker has a strong sense of right and wrong which he imposes upon the world. She sees it more as he has an overarching plan (like Zeus’ Βουλή in the proem) which may indeed require suffering along the way.

I know Senna would love historiography so I think I’d recommend Sallust’s War on Catiline or Jugurthine War. Sallust’s style is moralising and very self-conscious as his discussion of events often reveals either explicitly or implicitly where he himself lies politically. It’s also pretty important to him to justify why he’s taking the time to write history when he maybe should be dedicating time to politics. The position of being stuck between personal pursuit and political duty is something Senna could relate to, being at the centre of politics for as long as she can remember. Sallust, in my opinion, has this surface view of binary morality, but also his deeper ambiguity on whether we are right to accept the official narrative (particularly in the Catiline). I think that’d feel familiar to Senna, especially after her exile from Orzammar.

I also think it’d be helpful for her from a rhetorical and political point of view as seeing the shades of grey and how people might do bad things for good reasons or vice versa would give her perspective on how she herself should or could view the world around her. The end of the Catiline is particularly striking because all of the remaining supporters of the Catilinarian conspiracy fight valiantly and to the death — notably within no wounds to the back (ie they didn’t flee from battle). Seeing a political opposition be so sure that what they’re doing is right might make her question her own actions and think about how she’ll be remembered in history.

For Nesiril, I’m stuck between either Euripides’ Medea or Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. I think they’d like to see how gender roles can be pushed and even totally disregarded at times and she’d definitely take the reading of extreme support of the women in these plays in the face of the abominable actions of the men around them. Moreover, I think they’d see Jason and Agamemnon as parallels for the Templars in the Circle — controlling, power-hungry, and neglecting their duties or outright contradicting them.

I think she’d also see herself in Medea in particular from a gender point of view because there’s this scene in which Medea renounces her femininity and basically steps outside of the gender binary. Given that Nesiril is non-binary, I think she’d find this a really powerful moment and really gender affirming.

[hvbris]

𝐌𝐘𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐓 & 𝐂𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐀𝐑: @governmentofficial​ from: “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

After his shameful display at the event that Caesar had so kindly invited him to, Mycroft had been avoiding his friend. His memory of what exactly had been said was fuzzy at best, but he knew that he had made a fool of himself. Alcohol, he had decided, was a terrible thing indeed.

There was no long-term plan. He knew that he could not avoid Caesar forever, but perhaps he could keep away long enough that he would forget? Or, at the very least, have something else on his mind? Either way, the friendship was surely over and, with that, so was any idle dream of anything more than that - not that it had been anything more than a dream in the first place.

What Mycroft hadn't expected was for the other man to track him down only a few days later. Still mortified by his own behaviour, he had attempted to excuse himself and escape with a claim that he needed to get back to work. Despite that, he'd still allowed Caesar to stop him from scurrying away. Perhaps some small part of his brain had stopped him, hoping that the inevitable was not about to happen?

But the inevitable hadn't happened. Instead of informing him that he never wanted to see him again, Caesar had... Asked him to dinner? What?

Mycroft blinked, and then he just kept blinking. For a long moment, he did nothing but continue to blink rapidly, silent as his mind whirred away in an attempt to process what had just been said. Did he mean dinner between friends, or something more? And, either way, why was he offering? Surely he should be telling Mycroft that he never wanted to see him again?

He had to be offering as friends. It wouldn't make sense for him to want something else - not after Mycroft had been so stupid, and not when Caesar could have his pick of anybody he wanted. Everybody adored him; he could have dinner with whoever his heart desired, and there were far better options available than Mycroft.

"I... Ah. Are you sure you want to ask that?" Mycroft eventually asked once he managed to snap himself out of his moment of feeling frozen. "I thought that you may think less of me now."

“After the party, I assumed...” Assumed what? That they were dating? Well, yes, kind of! Caesar supposed that usually, after a confession of love, dating was a very sensible course of action. But Mycroft had avoided him so carefully these past days, thus terribly confusing the young man. 

But always the optimist, Caesar had decided he would not see this as a bad omen, instead simply taking the matter into his own hands. Maybe Mycroft was busy! They both led very busy lives, after all. 

“I assumed it would be nice to go to dinner together,” he finally said, thinking it was a very reasonable way to phrase it (Mycroft liked reasonable things). He wanted to say things more clearly, but wasn’t asking someone out clear enough already? 

Hm. Maybe not, after all.

Well, as positive and upbeat as ever, he tried to make his intentions more... obvious. “I think you and me would have a lovely time, and after what we discussed at the party, I figured it was acceptable for me to ask you out on a date.” Caesar explained with his brightest smile, refusing to feel defeated by Mycroft’s terribly puzzling behavior. 

“There is this new place that opened, it’s very trendy. We could go there? Or someplace more classic, if you prefer,” continued to say the young man, who had now decided that if he was enthusiastic enough, then surely his enthusiasm would rub off on Mycroft, and he would stop acting so strangely! 

[king-of-men]

Correcting Macauley

As we all know, in classical Latin 'c' is pronounced hard, as a modern 'k' - hence "Kaiser" from "Caesar". In the nineteenth century this was no doubt less well known, and I therefore propose that Macaulay, in translating his lay of ancient Rome into English, made an error. I will attempt to correct this by providing an alternate reconstruction, with my amendations indicated by italics:

And now hath every kitty fluffed up her tail, a-men! The paws are forty thousand, the hisses, thousands ten.

Of course one cannot simply replace 'city' with 'kitty' and call it a day - what is the sense in which a kitty has a "tale of men"? No, no, we must reconstruct the rest of the stanza similarly. A kitty does very clearly have a tail, and once you allow the initial 'kitty/city' error then 'tail/tale' is a very natural further error for Macaulay to make, as is "of men/a-men". Then Macaulay has "the foot are fourscore", and this makes no sense - eighty thousand men (and that's not even counting the cavalry!) is a vast army for the time and place, entirely impractical to feed or coordinate. On the other hand "foot" is of course just another word for "paw", and if we assume ten thousand cats each with one hiss (not horse, pace Macaulay!) then indeed they have forty (not fourscore) thousand paws.

Now, an army of ten thousand kittens is no doubt easier to feed than one of ninety thousand men, some with horses; but it is still a rather absurd image. I therefore propose that the original, now-lost text that Macaulay translated as a heroic epic was actually nothing of the kind, but instead, a parodic, comic text in the style of the Batrachomyomachia - the "Battle of the Frogs and Mice". Alas, the critical approach of correcting plausible errors based on an obvious one does tend to break down the further one gets from the obvious error. Clearly we have Lars Pawsena of Clawsium", but otherwise even the cast of characters is not very easy to correct, much less the action. If Horatius is a cat, he cannot well jump in the Tiber, but this is not obvious - the kitties who fluff up their tails are the allies of Lars Pawsena, and Macaulay's "Romans" may well be some other animal entirely. Indeed this would explain why the Tiber (Tiger?) is so formidable an obstacle.

Still, while this is only a start, it suggests that searching for obscure feline puns in Latin may be a fruitful direction of research, and I would like to urge the grantmaking institutions to take up this fascinating field as soon as practical.

[techniche]

Intelligence and sterility are allied in old families, old peoples, and old cultures, not merely because in each microcosm the overstrained and fettered animal-element is eating up the plant element, but also because the waking-consciousness assumes that being is normally regulated by causality. That which the man of intelligence, most significantly and characteristically, labels as "natural impulse" or "life-force", he not only knows, but also values, causally, giving it the place amongst his other needs that his judgement assigns to it. When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard "having children" as a question of pros and cons, the great turning point has come. For Nature knows nothing of pro and con. Everywhere, wherever life is actual, reigns an inward logic, an "it", that is utterly independent of waking-being, with its causal linkages, and indeed not even observed by it. The abundant proliferation of primitive peoples is a natural phenomenon, which is not even thought about, still less judged as to its utility or the reverse. When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable. At this point begins prudent limitation of the number of births.

In the Classical world the practice was deplored by Polybius as the ruin of Greece, and yet even at his date it had long been established in the great cities; in subsequent Roman times it became appallingly general. At first explained by the economic misery of the times, very soon it ceased to explain itself at all. And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free" - free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroin fo a whole megaplotan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"...

At this level all civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally, the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the fellah type.

If anything has demonstrated the fact that causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possesed in emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The marriage-and-children laws of Augustus - amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions -the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents-nothing availed to check the process

- Oswald Spengler - The Decline of the West Vol. II, Chapter: World-historical Perspectives, pg. 104-106, 1922

[transthomastaylor]

I mean, if we call a language dead when it no longer changes, then Latin isn’t really dead. Latin has been changed immeasurable throughout the ages, and any modern Latin writer or speaker owes a debt to various authors from various times — many of which wrote Latin in a way completely foreign to the likes of Cicero or Caesar! Add to this Erasmus and other humanists’ efforts to bring more Greek proverbs into Latin, or the scholastics philosophising using words like liberum arbitrium or, rather weirder, ipsitas. This tradition is kept alive by places like the Neo-Latin Lexicon, which does indeed collect and even makes up modern words for the modern world.

Even when you write or speak Latin, you are doing so in a context, and that context is not the same as an ancient Roman who was raised speaking it as their native language. Therefore the things you say and the ways you say it will necessarily be different. This is evolution! It’s no longer done by communities of native speakers, but it is being done, nonetheless.

Generally, however, excessive novelty is frowned upon in Latin communities (at least the ones that I can stomach), but the fact remains that it can’t be avoided entirely. The use of the ablative supine is noticeably greater in Neo-Latin communities than in classical texts, and so is the disparity between use of vel and aut. Discere often acquires a fourth principal part, something it didn’t have in ancient times (as far as I’m aware). Pellicula (‘little pelt’) now means movie or video. The syntax and vocabulary a person uses can sometimes tell you which era of literature they’ve engrossed themself in the most. These things may all seem like mistakes, and that may be true, but for those who end up studying 20th-21st century Latin literature hundreds of years from now, it’ll all just be a part of this era’s peculiarities :)

Can we un-dead-language-ify latin? Like can I learn Latin with my friends and then we make slang and now Latin is an alive language? Like technically? Just learn Latin and make slang & sayings and now there's new Latin sayings and slang and then bam! People are using Latin as a modern language it's not dead anymore!

Linguists let me know please

[n0tname]

Intelligence and sterility are allied in old families, old peoples, and old cultures, not merely because in each microcosm the overstrained and fettered animal-element is eating up the plant element, but also because the waking-consciousness assumes that being is normally regulated by causality. That which the man of intelligence, most significantly and characteristically, labels as "natural impulse" or "life-force", he not only knows, but also values, causally, giving it the place amongst his other needs that his judgment assigns to it. When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard "having children" as a question of pros and cons, the great turning-point has come. For Nature knows nothing of pro and con. Everywhere, wherever life is actual, reigns an inward organic logic, an "it", a drive, that is utterly independent of waking-being, with its causal linkages, and indeed not even observed by it. The abundant proliferation of primitive peoples is a natural phenomenon, which is not even thought about, still less judged as to its utility or the reverse. When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable. At that point begins prudent limitation of the number of births. In the classical world the practice was deplored by Polybius as the ruin of Greece, and yet even at his date it had long been established in the great cities; in subsequent Roman times it became appallingly general. At first explained by the economic misery of the times, very soon it ceased to explain itself at all. And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"

At this level all civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the fellah type. If anything has demonstrated the fact that causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. II. Perspectives of World History

[teamhippoftw]

[interretialia]

Salve! Is there a certain thought process you use when choosing how to form modern English phrases into Latin?

How do you choose which form of a verb/noun to use and decide between a plethora of synonyms?

Salve et tu!

Those are some good questions.

When I go to render modern English into Latin, the first thing that I do is think about the overall meaning of the English text and then try to think of some corresponding ideas according to the Latin idiom. I almost always consult Meissner’s Latin Phrasebook when I am at the “Latin idiom” stage of the process. This Meissner’s Latin Phrasebook is very helpful because it contains idiomatic Latin phrases (from the works of Cicero, Caesar, Livy, and others) which serve as translations of English phrases and terms which are relevant to many areas of life (e.g., parts of the body, the arts and sciences, and war). Unfortunately, this book is more than one hundred years old, so its usefulness is limited. If I cannot find the right phrase in this book, I usually then go to the Loeb Classical Library’s site and search for the English phrase, and then I see if I can find any place in Latin literature which corresponds to an English translation which contains the phrase. If this does not work, then I consult the latest edition of John Traupman’s New College Latin & English Dictionary, which contains many Neo-Latin terms. If I am still stuck, I look at Meissner’s Latin Phrasebook again to find a phrase which is similar in meaning to what I want to say in Latin and then change it a little to fit my needs. I might instead simply render the basic meaning of the English into Latin, using the “Preliminary Hints” section (comprising the sections “Avoid poetic, unusual, or late words” and “Use words in their normal Latin meaning” and “Translate thoughts, not words” and so on) of Bradley’s Arnold Latin Prose Composition as a guide. Sometimes there are instances where I just translate the English into Latin verbatim because the individual English words appear to be as important to the presentation as the ideas which they express.

Deciding on a particular word among several synonyms is often not too difficult. Latin has many synonyms, but almost none of them are truly interchangeable. (Lumen and lux, for example, might be interchanged in poetry, but that comes about due to poetic license, and there is indeed a difference: lux is light itself and lumen, which has the instrumental suffix -men, is a light source—a luc-men—like a lamp or the sun.) If I have trouble deciding on a particular word, I might consult Dumesnil’s Latin Synonyms or Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonyms. They are helpful, but again they are more than one hundred years old, so their translations do not always correspond to contemporary English (e.g., they might use the word passion to mean “suffering” rather than “strong feeling or emotion”). When it comes to more modern terms, I typically look at what Vicipaedia, the Latin Wikipedia, has to say about them. I also consult the latest addition of Traupman’s Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency because this has a large Latin term list near the end. I also search through various other Neo-Latin sources like:

The Morgan-Owens Neo-Latin Lexicon;  

Morgan’s Lexicon Latinum;  

Lexicon Latinum Hodiernum;  

Philosophia Latine Disserenda;  

Latinitas Recens.

If I find variant translations of something, I decide on a translation according to these criteria:

whether the term is morphologically or syntactically valid according to the formation procedures which the Romans themselves employed (e.g., possestrix is good but the “possessrix” which appears in the Lexicon Latinum Hodiernum is garbage);  

whether a variant of a term shows up in more than one of the sources;  

whether the term comprises a single word or more than one word;  

whether the term employs just Latin word elements or non-Latin elements like those from Greek or the modern Romance languages;  

just plain euphony.

You might wonder how Neo-Latinists create neologisms. The first thing to realize is the fact that Latin is quite adverse to neologisms in general. The Roman writers and their later counterparts have been avoiding the creation of new words. They instead are more likely to write circumlocutions or paraphrases. (Writers are not always as steadfast about avoiding new words as Tacitus is at Annales 1.65 where he avoids calling spades spades, but sometimes they do come close.) Still, there might be times when neologisms are necessary. Fortunately, Latin is robust enough to have several options to coin new words. The options that we have are:

We can take an already-existing word and give it a new meaning (e.g., pellicula, originally “little hide,” but having the Neo-Latin meaning “movie” or “film”).  

We can import a non-Latin word into the language and give it a Latin form (e.g., kimonum, from kimono, and the adjective iazzicus, from jazz). The Romans were doing this with Greek words for centuries, as seen in words like philosophia and polypus.  

We can use the rules of Latin composition and derivation to create new Latin-form words (e.g., interrete, from inter and rete, for “internet,” and basipila, from basis and pila, for “baseball,” and even caeliscalpium, from caelum and scalpere, for “skyscraper”).  

We can look to certain modern languages, like Greek and the Romance languages, to find modern phrases and then invent Latin calques of such terms (e.g., pomum terrestre for “potato,” which is a calque of the French phrase pomme de terre).

I believe what determines which of these to use in a particular situation has to do with the ease through which someone can deduce a neologism’s meaning according to its morphological or syntactical resemblance to modern terms.

Perhaps you noticed that although I create a lot of Latin compound words and derivatives, I rarely use any of them in my actual translations. That is intentional. I am following the typical Latinist procedure of creating and mentioning neologisms only when they are needed while at the same time working primarily with already existing and familiar Latin words. Most of the neologisms that I create exist because they are meant to demonstrate my skills in linguistics and wordsmithery. I want to see how these new words look and sound. And I create these words for fun. When I do my translations, however, I want to make it so that as many people as possible can understand what I want to say without having to rely too much on the idiosyncrasy of my neologisms. I think that anyone who knows how to read Latin should be able to work out the essential meanings of my translations.

Utinam hoc tibi prosit! I hope this is helpful!

Vale.

[coriandher]

If there's anything I'm pissed about this comic getting reposted around is that first image is apparently funny on its own right as a punchline so a lot of times reposts don't have my ode to the Big Caesar

Ave true to pizza