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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, to ca...

"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 poetry? ...

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 secured? O...

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 works ...

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 encyclop...

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 rough-a...

This week the guys dip back into Marrou, where the author pivots like Yaxel Lendeborg to the Roman side of things. H.I. takes up the "Old Roman Education". Immediately we notice realities that put the lie to the loose notion that the Romans just took from the Greeks and changed the names. While, yes, eventually much of Roman education merges with the Hellenistic ideals explored earlier (and later) to...

"There are the life events that have been apportioned to you. Live in harmony with them. There are the people whose destiny is to live at the same time as you. Love them. (Make sure you really feel it.)" (Meditations 6.39) This week Jeff and Dave sit down with Aaron Poochigian – experienced translator, poet, and all-around Classics enthusiast – to discuss his new translation from W.W. Norton of the M...

Ok, AdNaserinos, you have slogged your way through 214 episodes of this humble podcast, patiently enduring many digressions, running gags, and inside jokes. You have also heard the hosts gush over the wit and brilliance of Publius Ovidius Naso, and the many vignettes mined from his Metamorphoses. For this Gurgle, Dave and Jeff take a quick bite of an important article from the journal Phoenix, Winter...

This week Jeff and Dave zero in on the neoteric poetry of the Roman Republic's waning days. Relying on the efforts of the late great Peter Green (of "brackish tang" fame) and his 2005 translation and commentary on the Catullan canon, the guys look at poems 1 (to Cornelius Nepos), 13 (to Fabullus), and 14 (to Calvus). What is it that drives a poet of apparently trivial interests? Is it love? Revenge? ...

When you're feeling blue, all you have to do, is take a listen here, then you're not so blue. Why? We've got a Marrouvy kind of show. This week Jeff and Dave wrap up Part II of this portion of the book (and you might be say, "well it's about tome!") Tune in to learn all about how music iand gymnastics began to fade, and language study and literature became dominant. The Hellenistic era formed a bridge to Roman education, and while ...

This week Dave and Jeff are joined in the vomitorium by Dave's former colleague and long-lost friend Dr. Bob Stacey. Bob is headmaster and instructor in government at the St. Augustine school in Jackson, TN. The menu today includes a discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous work Democracy in America, specifically a portion of Vol. II.1.15. Should everyone be allowed to study Greek and Latin? Can the pursuit of literature, art a...

Did you know that when Martin Luther (1483-1546) wasn’t nailing things to doors and fomenting major splits in Christendom he was writing poetry? In Latin? Well, thanks to Carl P. E. Springer we now have all of it in one fascinating volume. Join the guys and see how Luther runs the gamut—lines which express his deep faith, his longing and loss, his reworking of the Psalms, invective against Erasmus and Pope Clement VII, not to menti...

This week Jeff and Dave conclude their brisk and breezy, dramatic reading through that old comedy standard, the Clouds. Featuring a rich smorgasbord of hilarity, inanity, and some nearly "postmodern" trends and politics, the episode starts out with an homage, a listener's letter, and some outrageous paronomasia: just what Aristophanes ordered! The hi- and lo- jinks then move on to some rather serious...

In an AN first, Dave and Jeff take the show on the road to the Michigan state capital. Hosted by the world-class nerds of the Michigan Junior Classical League, the guys slush their way into Lansing to talk Ovid once more—specifically the crushing demise of "gym bro" Acis, who stood zero chance against that hulking, one-eyed colossus, the Cyclops. Here is your opportunity to master the geometry of emotion: do Polyphemus, Acis, and G...

This week the guys take another stab at Aristophanes, this time with his Clouds. Will they rain in their criticisms? Will their jokes float lazily over your head? Haven’t the foggiest, but tune in anyway. The episode begins with a discussion of Aristophanic comedy and its genre-bending mix of the lofty and the scatological. Following translator Meineck, exactly how many different ingredients did Aris...

Join the conversation this week as Jeff and Dave go back into the world of Henri-Irénée Marrou’s History of Education in Antiquity, Part II, Chapter XI. First up is philosophical conversion: when you read Plato or Aristotle for the first time, does a lightbulb go off in your mind? What's the wattage, and is it epiphanic? Should everyone study philosophy? The hosts carefully break down the three level...

Porphyry, Isaac Casaubon, and Richard Rietzenstein walk into a bar. Well, that's not true, seeing that they were separated  from each other by hundreds of years. But if they did, they would be talking about the Corpus Hermeticum, that mysterious forged document that dates to the Hellenistic era, and claimed to have been written by "Hermes Thrice-great" (the Triple-decker). Thanks to the brilliant wor...

Incipe, parve puer - "Get started, little boy..." These are the words Roman poet Vergil used in his famous Fourth Eclogue of 40 B.C., bidding the powerful child yet born, son of a divine father, and of a 'virgo', to usher in a new Golden Age after a time of warfare. But who precisely is this puer, who will make war to cease, cause the poisonous serpents to go docile, release draught animals from toil...