New t-shirt: "The Romans, kicking butt and taking names"

For the first time in a while, a new t-shirt in the Classics Daily shop: "Romani: clunes laedentes et nomina capientes ab urbe condita (753)" = "The Romans: kicking butt and taking names since the founding of the city (753)."

This design was inspired by a recent conversation with the spouse. We're eagerly awaiting season 2 of Game of Thrones (being poor folk who have to wait and watch it on DVD). I asked my husband what he thought our favorite character Tyrion Lannister might be up to, and he said, "oh, kicking a** and taking names."

Perhaps thinking of the many Roman emperors who overcame challenges in the service of butt-kicking (including the epileptic Julius Caesar), I thought the sentiment deserved a t-shirt.

UPDATED: now available as a mug. Pin It

Mythology and Place

I have been thinking a lot lately about place: the significance of actual, physical locations. Ancient Greece and Rome are often described as essentially imaginary places. The ability to conduct a productive career in Classics with only occasional, brief visits to modern Greece and Rome supports that idea to a certain extent. 

Yet the popular imagination inevitably connects the civilization and the place. Innumerable articles make cutesy references to Zeus or Socrates before getting down to a discussion of the current economic crisis. Visitors flock to an Athenian cave  because it's billed as 'Socrates' prison'.

Entirely fictional worlds can seem real too, with a wealth of invented detail often substituting for a basis in real-world history. There are no doubt many classicists who loathe the fiction of Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, but many more who find these fictive environments highly congenial, with their emphasis on myth and the moral imagination.

Ultimately we may love visiting the places where our favorite authors and historical figures lived for the same reason that we once loved tree houses and backyard forts.* They allow our imaginations, so often squelched in the pursuit of scholarly rigor, free rein.

*I'm thinking primarily of literary scholars rather than archeologists, although I'm sure they also experience an imaginative connection to their work.

image credit

Pin It

'Our way is the old way'

It seems like everyone in Game of Thrones is a classical scholar. Ned Stark is killed more or less because he borrowed the wrong book on genealogy from the Grand Maester. Jaime Lannister studies the White Book of the Kingsguard for tips on how to stop being a massive jerk. Tyrion Lannister gives his evil nephew Joffrey a rare biography of four ancient kings (which he promptly destroys).

Bits of treasure and knowledge survive from Valyria Before the Doom, which is also where the old ruling family of Westeros came from. House Targaryen sounds like a hideous domestic disaster to me -- brother-sister marriage, madness (no doubt aided and abetted by a limited gene pool). But the new ruling family wants to be just like them. Jaime Lannister fantasizes about making his sister/lover an honest women; Tywin Lannister obsesses over owning a Valyrian steel sword. Something about that connection to the mysterious, fragmentary past...

Anyway, I finally gave in and started reading the Song of Ice and Fire series (=Game of Thrones). It's fantastic, and I can report that even the lower-rated fourth book is enjoyable. Its flaws, such as slightly slow pacing and a length(ier) list of characters, are the sorts of things classicists tolerate well. Pin It

I don't want to hear about your sniffles

I have received numerous emails recently explaining that a student missed class because he/she just didn't feel quite up to it. I'm with Arya Stark's fencing tutor on this one:

Pin It