Peter Gainsford

@kiwihellenist.bsky.social

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Kiwi Hellenist, Homerist, classicist, NZ. He/his/him/him.

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Peter Gainsford

Audibly screamed upon discovering that there is a new translation of Strabo's Geography that I don’t own. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Strabo's Geographypress.princeton.edu A lively new translation of Strabo’s complete Geography—an encyclopedic guide to the ancient world of the first century CE—connecting it with the world of the twenty-first century

"Researchers used Homer’s Iliad as a guide to find a number of ancient artifacts during a four-year survey off the coast of Kasos in the Aegean sea." Wondering how this relates to the Iliad. The Iliad only mentions Kasos once, and in passing, and the finds in the article are mostly post-Homeric.

MSNwww.msn.com

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Official publication day for my long awaited Hades chapter in this edited volume on classical reception (edited by Anastasia Bakogianni and Luis Unceta Gómez) is July 22, but the volume is out and available now! Lots of other great articles in the volume too: www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus in 'The Return' (forthcoming Dec. 2024). The aesthetic looks very similar to the 1997 miniseries 'The Odyssey', though Fienne's Odysseus is older than Assante's. (I bet the axes will have convenient holes to shoot through and will probably be made to look like bronze)

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Peter Gainsford

...and all the mods and posters will look up and shout "Apologize for a post!"... ...and I'll look down, and whisper "no."

What would be the manuscript collection to which a codex listed in sigla as 'Palmiacus', i.e. Palmyra, belongs? (At least up until ISIS came along?)

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Today I've started reading Scribes and Scholars by Reynolds and Wilson. Having only a cursory knowledge of the transmission of classical literature, I'm looking forward to this immensely. ClassicsBluesky 🏺

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Dogmatism and Skepticism existentialcomics.com/comic/554

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#blog Fact-check: #Eratosthenes (IBM, 1961) (video) - Kiwi Hellenist @kiwihellenist.bsky.social kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2024/04/fact...

Fact-check: Eratosthenes (IBM, 1961) (video)kiwihellenist.blogspot.com Video review/fact-check of the IBM short film ‘Eratosthenes’ (1961).

In 1914, the composer Sergei Prokofiev defeated José Raúl Capablanca in a chess game. At the time Capablanca was a contender for the world championship. lichess.org/uuLd0kvv#86 Prokofiev also defeated Alekhine the same year (albeit with piece odds). #chess #prokofiev

Correspondence Chess • Jose Raul Capablanca vs Sergei Prokofievlichess.org Jose Raul Capablanca played Sergei Prokofiev in a casual imported game of chess. Sergei Prokofiev won after 43 moves. Click to replay, analyse, and discuss the game!

Socrates and the ethics of criminals.

Socratic Hostage Negotiations existentialcomics.com/comic/547

The weekdays are named after the seven planets known in 1st century BCE Rome - or five planets plus Moon and Sun. They're in the wrong order, though. The reason is a bit of a mystery: there are some theories, but they're not exactly compelling. (Reading time: 14 minutes) #ClassicsBluesky #astro

Naming the days of the weekkiwihellenist.blogspot.com Ever wondered where the weekday names come from? The answer may go back a bit further than you think. But it’s also incomplete. The easy p...

Did you know the weekday names come from the seven planets? And that they're attested in graffiti at Pompeii? But do you know why they're in the _order_ they're in? That one's a bit harder. A dive into the ancient evidence, and some modern theories. (Reading time: 14 minutes) #astronomy #classics

Naming the days of the weekkiwihellenist.blogspot.com Ever wondered where the weekday names come from? The answer may go back a bit further than you think. But it’s also incomplete. The easy p...

Gold, silver, bronze, and iron. Two sequences of metals in Hesiod and in the biblical book of Daniel sound very similar. Coincidence? No. Did one influence the other? That's less clear. But the reasons in favour and against are quite interesting. (Reading time: 13 minutes) #classics #bible #greek

Did Hesiod influence the book of <i>Daniel</i>?kiwihellenist.blogspot.com Hesiod has races of gold, silver, bronze, heroes, and iron. The biblical book of Daniel has a statue where gold, silver, bronze, iron, and ...

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Priam And Achilles, Pity and Fear: A 'tragic' end to Homer's Iliad open.substack.com/pub/joelchri...

Priam And Achilles, Pity and Fearopen.substack.com A 'tragic' end to Homer's Iliad

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Andrew Jacobs (he/him)

Sigh. acoup.blog/2022/12/30/m... @bretdevereaux.bsky.social said it awhile back too.

Miscellanea: What’s the Problem With Antigone?acoup.blog A bit of an editor’s note before this post, since this is going to involve some ‘inside baseball’ for Classics and some necessary background (also, this is not going to be a ̵…

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Twitter has been, since ~2015, an almost weekly revelation of “true colours”. Of course, this abysmal excuse for an April Fool’s joke comes as little surprise. But it’s good to have it on the record. Receipts. More shameful is that serious scholars choose to publish in this venue

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"Blow Up Your TV" Thetis, Achilles, and Life and Death in Iliad 24 open.substack.com/pub/joelchri...

"Blow Up Your TV" - Painful Signs, Or, Joel's Substackopen.substack.com Thetis, Achilles, and Life and Death in Iliad 24

1/10. Early Christians sometimes had a taste for naturalistic explanations of things that we today would regard as supernatural. A topical example: Luke 23.45 specifically and explicitly states that the darkness at Jesus' death was a solar eclipse.

ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ 23:44-45 (THGNT)www.biblegateway.com Καὶ ἦν ἤδη ὡσεὶ ὥρα ἕκτη, καὶ σκότος ἐγένετο ἐφ᾽ ὅλην τὴν γῆν ἕως ὥρας ἐνάτης τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος. ἐσχίσθη δὲ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ

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The Greek word for 'spirit', pneuma, had a meaning before Christianity came along: 'intangible fluid that mediates physical interactions at a distance.' A look at the Stoic and Orphic background of some key terms, finishing with a survey of pneuma in the book of Acts. (Reading time: 12 minutes)

The Stoics and the Holy Spiritkiwihellenist.blogspot.com Stoicism, the ancient school of philosophy, had some excellent ideas. Here’s their explanation of how sound works. We hear when the air...

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Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus seventy years, right? But according to Barthes, the author died in 1967. So that means in 2037 all literary works will enter the public domain. If any of you want to raise objections, just know I will be sticking my fingers in my ears.

Agathe Thornton, one of New Zealand's most prominent 20th century classicists, taught at the University of Otago from 1948 to 1974. When she was hired, at age 37, she had one article in print. In a different field. And three pages long. Her second publication came 14 years later. Different times.

The Stoics and the Holy Spiritkiwihellenist.blogspot.com Stoicism, the ancient school of philosophy, had some excellent ideas. Here’s their explanation of how sound works. We hear when the air...

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Peter Gainsford

You have a group of ancient Greek thinkers that includes Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, and you call them the pre-Socratics instead of the Anaxi-bros?

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Kottabos VR https://store.steampowered.com/app/2626890/ This is a VR trip into the ancient world – playing Kottabos, the all-time favorite Greek party game. Prove your skill by throwing the dregs of wine from your cup at the metal disk on the pole in front of you, or fling your drops at...

The idea that the earth goes around the sun has an ancient precedent: the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos. A look at what he thought, why he thought it, and what other people thought of it. #classics #astronomy #aristarchus

Aristarchus and the heliocentric theorykiwihellenist.blogspot.com The earth has orbited around the sun since 1609. At least that’s when Kepler’s book on the subject came out, Astronomia nova (‘The new astr...

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There are many fabulous frescoes of women in Pompeii but I remain absolutely captivated by the face of this particular one recently uncovered in the House of Leda and who I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of seeing slowly emerge from the pumice. Celebrating International Women’s Day.

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The earth going around the sun took the world by storm in the 1500s-1600s. But there was an ancient precedent. Why did Aristarchus of Samos propose his heliocentric model, what did people think of it, and why did it end up being neglected? (16 minutes' read) #astronomy #classics #ancientgreece

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"The general argument of the Iliad...is that humans receive glory because they sacrifice what they have in short supply. Human life can have morality, shame, duty, and meaning because there are consequences that cannot be surmounted by time." joelchristensen.substack.com/p/theyre-jus...

They're Just Not That Into Usjoelchristensen.substack.com On Mortals and Gods in Iliad 21