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Classics - Blog Posts
— the secret history, donna tartt.
The Secret History
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
“I prefer to think of it, he had said, as redistribution of matter.”
“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”
“Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.”
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly the ones i did not.”
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”
Totally didn't make this like a year ago but posting it just now what definitely nott
You know how Julian says the divine comedy is incomprehensible to someone who isn’t a christian; the secret history doesn’t make sense if you don’t read it as Richard Papen. To truly appreciate the book you must be Richard as long as you read it.
i feel like there are two types of people in the world: the ones who connect with the birth of venus and the ones who connect with caravaggio’s medusa.
i do NOT like horror except for whatever the fuck mr naso is doing with the metamorphoses
cicero's letter where he complains about "penis" being turned into a dirty word truly is the gift that keeps on giving
i want to see an adaptation of the iliad that accurately portrays achilles’ grief over the death of patroclus.
i don’t want to see achilles act out in anger and violence as he realizes that patroclus died in his armor.
i don’t want to see achilles remain stoic and emotionless as he carries patroclus’ body back to camp.
show me achilles collapse to the ground when he hears the news. show me achilles sob so loudly that his mother on the bottom of the sea hears him and thinks him dead. show me how another warrior must hold down achilles’ hands so that he does not cut open his own throat to join patroclus in death.
show me achilles carrying back patroclus’ body and sobbing into his chest. show me achilles refusing to leave patroclus’ side to eat or sleep because he can do nothing but cry. show me how achilles looks his mother in the eye and say how he no longer cares if he dies when only a few days prior he said that nothing is worth his life.
i want to see achilles, the most powerful warrior of the greeks, to be completely undone by grief.
The fact that Dante created the most popular image of the afterlife with absolutely no theological basis for it will still be the funniest thing to me
“Why have you come to me here, dear heart, with all these instructions? I promise you I will do everything just as you ask. But come closer. Let us give in to grief, however briefly, in each other’s arms.” - Homer
yes, of course, the “dative of the thing sprinkled,” my b, should’ve remembered that one, feel free to retract my credentials,
a list of very good greek mice names from the battle of the frogs and the mice
Ψιχάρπαξ- crumbsnatcher
Τρωξάρτης- breadnibbler
Πτερνοτρώκτος- hamnibbler
Λειχοπίναξ- platelicker
᾿Εμβασίχυτρος- bowl-visitor
Τυρογλύφος- cheesecarver
Τρωγλοδύτης- hider-in-the-hole
Τυροφάγος- cheese-eater
Μεριδάρπαξ- sliversnatch
we made comparisons between joe exotic and trimalchio from petronius’s satyricon in my latin class today after my professor went off on a tangent about binging the show when he should have been grading our tests. and i never thought my netflix binging and niche interests would overlap like that
Statue of Apollo covered in tulle netting
A copy of the Greek bronze original by Leochares (330 BCE)
Blanton Museum of Art
i lost my mind when we learned this is my ancient greek class. philips are the OG horse girls
man knowing greek and latin kind of ruins a lot of names. like philip seems like a perfectly good and reasonable name until you realize that it’s literally the ancient greek for “horse girl”
i just want to work in a small museum in italy where i translate latin manuscripts and talk to college kids about the ancient world before walking to my little apartment by the sea to drink tea and watch the sunset while chopin plays in the background. is that too much to ask?
let these dark academia valentines do the talking for you
what does your bio mean? "the sea was never blue" ?
Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.
— The Sea Was Never Blue, Maria Michela Sassi
What, from a cursory glance, appears blue generally has more to say. You lift a precious stone to the sunlight and it lights up, it refracts, but there’s always a side you can’t see. If you think you’ve thought of it all, think a little longer. There’s always more to consider.
