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Catch a quick bite of the Classics this week courtesy of 'Doug' at Etymonline. On the menu is a discussion of the first English dictionary, the Latinate tome of Henry Cockeram, 1623. Jeff and Dave also stratuminate your path toward the labors of Sir Thomas Elyot, another aspiring neologist who sought to beef up the paucity of the English verbalate with some gems exveined of Latin. The question...

Welcome to stop number two on the guys' journey from Iolcus to Colchis (and back!). With preliminaries covered, this week Dave and Jeff drfit through Book 1 of Apollonius’ Argonautica and continue to puzzle over Jason’s milquetoast administrative style. Is this meant to be reflective of an Athenian democratic ideal, as though Homeric arete has hit a sunset clause? And what is up with Heracles?...

Crashing rocks, a golden fleece, the smelly women of Lemnos, a lost waterboy, fraternal murder, potions, and Jason, the very unheroic lead...ready for another epic? Join Dave and Jeff as they climb aboard the Argo with a roster of heroes from the days before the Trojan war. The Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes (d. circa 215 B.C.) takes us on a four-book, seafaring journey from distant and...

Tune in this week for a quick eructation as Jeff and Dave review the disturbing story of Lucius Pedanius Secundus, Roman aristocrat, who in A.D. 61 was murdered by one of his household slaves. The aftermath of this violent act was notoriously brutal: Tacitus tells us all 400 other slaves in Pedanius' house, whether implicated in the crime or ignorant of it, including women and infants, were...

Join the guys this week for a quick takedown of three recent translations of Homer's Odyssey, courtesy of Prof. Richard Whitaker of the University of Cape Town (Acta Classica, 2020). In six weeks, the Christopher Nolan adaptation of the Odyssey will hit the big screen, based on Emily Wilson's translation. But does this new rendition of the epic have sufficient gravitas, not to mention accuracy,...

"Greece, though beat, then caught her captor fast; and into boorish Latium brought cultured life at last." So says Horace in Epistle II.156-157. This week Jeff and Dave return to Marrou, Part III, ch. 2, to examine the much discussed but ever fresh question of the Hellenization of Roman culture. When exactly did the toga clad race turn her gaze east to try to learn art, sculpture, music, and...

Will the clever slave Dexter (Palaestrio) succeed in outsmarting the self-absorbed, narcissistic, self-proclaimed war hero Major Blowhard (Pyrgopolynices), so that the mostly incompetent, lovable, lovelorn young man Nauticles (Pleusicles) can rescue the young girl he loves, Convivia (Philocomasium), from the Major's lecherous clutches in time, and spirit her back to Athens with possessions...

This week the guys make their first foray into Roman Comedy, specifically Plautus and one of his best-known plays, Miles Gloriosus (“Major Blowhard”). After a brief digression on Doestoevsky (не спрашивай), Dave and Jeff dig into the particulars of Greek New Comedy, its influence on Roman comic poets like Plautus and Terence, as well as the challenges faced and license needed to translate such...

This one's for all you autodidacts: if you have questions about any aspect of Greco-Roman antiquity, have trouble distinguishing between Phylas and Phrynichus, and are not sure where to turn when you are tearing through an ancient text and get stumped by some unfamiliar term, we've got you covered. This week Jeff and Dave walk us through the fascinating landscape of the most famous classical...

In the Athenian criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime (and who didn't exist) and the district attorneys (there were none of these either), who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. Dun dun.This week the guys take a close look, complete with dramatic reading of a cross-examination, at the...