Rebecca Posner-Hess

this week I finished knitting a sweater that I started in spring 2023, so honestly three years seems like a pretty reasonable time frame for Penelope to be weaving a shroud

a dark blue sweatshirt with the text "ΣΕΛΕΥΚΙΔΟΙ ΕΡΧΟΝΤΑΙ ΟΙΚΟΣ", portions of which are crossed out and corrected to read "ΣΕΛΕΥΚΙΔΑΙ ΕΡΧΕΣΘΕ ΟΙΚΑΔΕ". above and below the text are borders of menorahs and six-pointed stars stylized to look like intarsia knitting on a holiday sweater.

the text "ΣΕΛΕΥΚΙΔΟΙ ΕΡΧΟΝΤΑΙ ΟΙΚΟΣ", portions of which are crossed out and corrected to read "ΣΕΛΕΥΚΙΔΑΙ ΕΡΧΕΣΘΕ ΟΙΚΑΔΕ". above and below the text are borders of menorahs and six-pointed stars stylized to look like intarsia knitting on a holiday sweater.

since we're coming up on that time of the year again
www.redbubble.com/i/sweatshirt...

I think for my 8 am Tereus paper I need the screeching whistle sound from the Sweeney Todd cast album

gnocchi seauton

talking about "the turn of the century" and I mean the late 400s and early 300s BCE

LIVE - Classicist reacts to BMCR Books Received list for October

in what follows i will reinvent the wheel

A cross-stitch sample in orange thread on a black background. At the center is the text ἀλλ᾿ ἴσθι τλήμων οὖσ᾿ ἀπ᾿ εὐτόλμου φρενός / οὐδεὶς ἀκούει ταῦτα τῶν εὐδαιμόνων. Above and below the text are rows of heart-shaped palmette motifs.

a periodic illustration of what I mean by "rhapsode in the most literal sense" (ῥάπτω+ἀοιδή)

once again watching videos of bird noises for research purposes, desperately trying to hear the acoustic similarity to the aulos

Fall is approaching which means it's almost time to read "The Pumpkinspiceification of the Divine Claudius."

'Phoenicians mentioned' version of the 'Brazil mentioned' or 'Chicago mentioned' meme with an anime-style girl in a pose and expression of celebration. She holds an amphora in one hand and a wine glass in the other and wears a bronze helmet, a necklace of Phoenician glass and gold beads, and a sweatshirt with the sign of Tanit on the chest. The background is a watercolor painting of the city of Carthage in its prime. Text below reads "Phoenicians mentioned".

I figure this image should come in handy

You want me to roll out the red carpet? The thing that killed Agamemnon?

underrated implication of the recognition tokens in the Libation Bearers is that Orestes and Electra don’t just have the same hair, they both have their MOTHER’S hair

standing and staring at the artifacts in the museum for so long that the motion-sensor lights go off and it's just you in the dark with the iron-age coinage

neither iota subscript nor iota adscript but a secret third thing

I would ask who the market is for the €1800 cithara in the museum shop but I know. it’s me. I am the target market for that.

ah the good old days when scholarly monographs could be 50 pages long

desperately searching for a contemporary adaptation of the Oresteia that's brave enough to include Apollo's theory of reproduction

I try not too read to much into accidents of textual survival, but it's so great that the first extant Greek tragedy involves a man coming out of the grave and the last involves a man walking directly into it

'new evidence' and it's just Plato

this chapter on the Oresteia and the interplay of double-casting and the cyclicality of revenge can have a little Dionysus-dressed-as-Heracles-in-the-Frogs. as a treat.

Indiana Jones and Putting Up a Small Plaque Acknowledging "Controversial by Modern Standards" Acquisition

Version of the Scooby-Doo "let's see who this really is" unmasking meme. The hooded figure in the first panel is labelled 'Oresteia adaptation.' The same figure in the second panel is labelled as 'Sophocles' Electra,' and its hood is removed to reveal, in place of a head, an early 19th century neoclassical painting of Orestes attempting to take the urn from Electra

I genuinely love how Sophocles keeps sneaking into works that are purportedly based only on Aeschylus

a little concerning how there's a copy of Parable of the Sower sitting in my block's little free library alongside the end-of-year drop of textbooks and MCAT prep books, as if it's equally instructive

"i asked chatgpt" yeah well i went to the doctor, i went to the mountains, i looked to the children, i drank from the fountains there's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line and the less I seek my source for some definitive closer I am to fine

"i asked grok" "i asked chagpt" yeah well I inquired unto Urim and the Thummim and found that my own son Jonathan was he who breached the oath to refrain from food until nightfall

working on something about two Oresteia adaptations that use different spellings of names has me SO close to writing a sentence like "both Electra and Elektra try to grab hold of their respective fathers as those actors transition into other roles"

thankfully working with 21st-century classical reception usually rules out the third possibility. usually.

if I'm asking myself "how has nobody written about this" the possibilities are either 1) it's so painfully obvious nobody needed to or 2) I've fully rewired my brain by thinking too much about actors and role distribution and no longer know what's obvious. or 3) some German guy in 1922 actually did.

yeah it's going to take me a while to get used to having a grad-school to-do list that's just "write chapter 1"