Armchair Classicist (Ryan Schaller)

Adorable flooflball 😍

Gray cat on a lap

More of Chaucer on this lazy #caturday

He’s been a bit of a Velcro kitty on this mostly dreary day.
🐈‍⬛📷

So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:

How can I then return in happy plight, That am debarre’d the benefit of rest? When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night, But day by night and night by day oppress’d, And each, though enemies to either’s reign, Do in consent shake hands to torture me, The one by toil, the other to complain How far I toil, still farther off from thee. I tell the day, to please him thou art bright, And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven: So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night, When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

Shakespeare's 28th Sonnet.
#poetry 📚💙

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarre’d the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night,
But day by night and night by day oppress’d,
And each, though enemies to either’s reign,

A facebook post by Ryan Schaller dated March 7, 2021 with the text "No Chaucer, you're not in the way at all" with two photos. The first photo is a large gray cat sitting on a book looking peaceful. The second photo has the same cat either yawning or screaming.

From the archives. That's the Phaidon "30,000 Years of Art" book that he's standing on.

#CatsOfBlueSky #Cats
📚💙 🐈📷
#Caturday

Thanks!

10/10
“World Literature in Translation” series. Some of the other “novels” included are “An Ephesian Tale”, “Daphnis and Chloe”, “The Ass”, Lucian’s “A True Story”, “Apollonius, King of Tyre” and a couple others. I’ve been impressed with every volume I’ve picked up in this series so far.

9/10
record of Alexander’s Conquests as related by the texts of Plutarch and Arrian.

The version of the Romance that I read was included in “Collected Ancient Greek Novels,” edited by B.P. Reardon and published by the University of California Press as part of their

8/10
The people of the steppes—the people outside of the “civilized world” of the writer—are often depicted as exotically monstrous. We’ll look at several specific examples. As an amateur historian, I was also interested in the various ways that the Romance diverged from the accepted historical

7/10
I decided to read the Romance (and specifically the oldest version I could find) as part of my research for a series of posts about the Central Eurasian Steppe region and its people. In the Romance, once Alexander conquers Persia, the fantastical aspects appear more and more frequently.

6/10
for the Romance is the medieval versions, then the quotes and episodes I mention may not align entirely with your recollection of the text—which is perfectly understandable. We are probably looking at textual variants that are separated by a few hundred years and one or more translations.

5/10
The Romance was extremely popular in both he medieval Christian and Islamic worlds. It’s my impression that a lot of the people who seriously study the Romance are the Medievalists exploring its influence on the romances and lays of that later time period. If your primary frame of reference

4/10
from a separate Greek text “Recension A” to expand on Thiel’s version of the text.

I wanted to point out that textual history, because Dowden is trying to recreate the version of the text originally written in Greek before the tale was expanded by centuries of translators and copyists.

3/10
with many of the “translators” expanding the text to incorporate new or additional episodes. Dowden’s translation is based on a manuscript prepared by H. van Thiel which chiefly relied on an original Greek text identified as “Recension B”. Dowden has added elements

2/10
I read by Ken Dowden, Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham, the original Greek text was written prior to a known Latin translation dated to around year 340. From there, the Romance went on to be translated into over one hundred languages,

Cover of the book "Collected Ancient Greek Novels" edited by B.P. Reardon

Alexander Romance - 1st Post
1/10
The Alexander Romance (the “Romance”) is a fantastical and highly fictionalized account of the life and conquests of Alexander the Great. There is no single ‘authoritative’ version of the tale. Based on the introduction to the translation
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#myth #Alexander #Greek

Intelevision controller. Looks like a ten-keypad with a circle movement button

Even further back: intelevision

Large gray cat

#Caturday cuddles with Chaucer

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Sounds wonderful!

A photo of a black two handled cup with a red figure woman or girl drinking from a cup.

This is a skyphos—a cup for drinking wine—which depicts a woman or girl drinking wine out of a similar cup. Housed at the Getty Villa Museum when this photo was taken, this Athenian ceramic is dated to 460-450. Photo is by Stephen Chappell -
@chapps.bsky.social
#Classics #Art #Greece

Brown tortoiseshell MaineCoon cat on a cabinet.

Happy #Caturday Eve from Zora
🐈📷
#CatsOfBlueSky

#MaineCoon

"There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them." Bernard Malamud, "The Fixer"

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A woman asks "Early Halloween costume?" to a second person who looks like a mummy. The second person replies, "Book Store receipt"

Send that receipt to the spam folder please. Hide the evidence.

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A photo of text describing the worship of Zeus Lykaios in ancient Greece.

The classical Greek version of the werewolf.
The travel writing of Pausanias is a gem for anecdotes of this kind.
#folklore

A flow chart titled "Which Greek Philosopher are you?"

I stole this gem from @lindsaypowell.bsky.social 's facebook page.

#Classics #Greek #Philosophy

Around three and a half feet long and 19 pounds!

A large long haired cat laying belly up

Large long haired cat laying belly up

Glorious cat belly.
#CatsOfBlueSky 🐈‍⬛📷

Grouchy but so handsome!