Thucydides knows everything about everything, Part 1283. It’s not enough that he recorded eclipses of both sun and moon, without directly attributing them to divine action – okay, he does claim an increased number of eclipses as grounds for recognising the unprecedented greatness of the Peloponnesian War, but he also notes that the eclipse of 431 occurred in the moon’s first phase, implying a natural event. No, he has to have anticipated all our modern concerns as well: Where does this stuff come from? It can’t be anyone who has actually read the relevant sections of Thucydides, as obviously ..read more

I was never entirely convinced by Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex. The idea – I’m taking this from the original radio series, which I could once recite by heart, so variations in the books are non-canonical and therefore irrelevant – is that every piece of matter is connected to every other piece of matter, and therefore it is possible to extrapolate the entire universe from a small fairy cake. One scientist used this principle to annoy his wife; “Have some sense of proportion”, she would say to him constantly, and so he plugged her into the extrapolated universe so that she saw hersel ..read more

Woken by a powerful, disturbing dream, in which I have had to organise some sort of awayday for graduate students, arrive at the venue to unpack everything and take over the room from the previous group punctually at half past six ready for dinner – only for the leader of that group, unmistakeably Prof. Pat Porter of the University of Birmingham, to say “Thanks for the food, Nev, we’ll see you at six thirty tomorrow morning.” I am positive that I haven’t misbooked this session, but there’s nothing I can do; A. is now berating me for letting everyone down – I have no idea what she’s doing here ..read more

I wouldn’t say that it’s been the highlight of this academic year – that would be my lovely Thucydides seminar, for whose final class I spent yesterday morning baking shortbread and brownies – but the most unexpectedly memorable thing, both exhausting and rewarding, has been teaching Greek Historiography to first and second years. It’s not a new module, even if it’s the first time that I’ve taught it, so there hasn’t been a lot of extra time for preparing new material – but the previous lecturer had a unique style (hi, Irene!) that doesn’t suit me at all, so I’ve had to start from scratch anyw ..read more

Update from the Thucydiocy Bot: Ex-Twitter is now really, really boring. Yes, there are still a few people posting the ‘Scholars and Warriors’ quote to make the same old points about jacked librarians, and a fair amount of boilerplate ‘strong do what they want’ Realism, but there hasn’t been anything interesting – a decent argument, let alone a new misquotation – for six months or more. When someone posted the old image of three students in random graduation outfits, it actually created a little warm feeling, thinking of the old days when the Thucydides musattributions seemed never-ending. The ..read more

As someone expensively educated in an imperialist state recklessly convinced of its innate superiority and entitlement, whose once-promising career was derailed by embarrassing failure, I have a far better instinct for Thucydides’ ethos and political sensibilities than do most moderns. I was once regularly threatened with violence by a member of the school’s Combined Cadet Force to extort the nicer elements of my packed lunch, so can personally attest to the prevalence of the mentality depicted in the Melian Dialogue within the officer class. And I visited Amphipolis once, gaining a powerful s ..read more

Woken marginally before the alarm went by A. putting the radio on – she has an even earlier start than usual, with a quick appointment for a routine blood test before heading into work. Got up to do last night’s washing up, remember to take a bread roll out of the freezer for her lunch and make tea; thick head full of phlegm, as the cold that’s been hanging around for the last couple of days seems to be coming out. Cats are still being very weird after Hans’s death last week; Hector briefly sits next to us then makes a grumpy noise and jumps up onto the wardrobe, which Olga takes as a cue to d ..read more

I don’t know if I have ever been more glad that it’s Reading Week. It has been quite a slog on the teaching front, with a fair amount of marking (students from courses last term submitting revised/expanded versions of their assessments) and a timetable that gives me four straight hours on a Friday morning, actually an adrenalin buzz but the come-down is substantial. But the main reason is that the last month has been dominated by Hans very gradually deteriorating and fading away, beyond any hope but still hanging on, still purring and happy more or less until the very end; last night he finall ..read more

Looking for more articles like Daniela Cammack’s ‘Plato and Athenian justice’? You might try M.B. Foster, ‘On Plato’s conception of justice in the Republic’, The Philosophy Quarterly 1.3 (1951) and Stella Lange, ‘Plato and democracy’, The Classical Journal 34.8 (1939). If you enjoyed Pantelis Michelakis’ ‘Naming the Plague in Homer, Sophocles and Thucydides’, you might also enjoy Masen J. Williamson, ‘Thucydides’ Plague, a narrative aggressor’, Brigham Young University ProQuest Dissertations (2021) or Andy Coghlan, ‘Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers’, New Scientist 193 (2007). Yes, it’s been ..read more

A disturbed night full of strange dreams – definitely embroiled in some sort of complex academic scandal and a lot of uncomfortable secrets – I think I was whistle-blower rather than culprit – crossed with complex navigation of the public transport system in a strange city. Around half five – so, normal getting-up time in the week, but not what was hoped for on a Saturday – emerged close enough to consciousness that A. turning on her iPad to read was enough to wake me completely. She put the radio on, and I tried and failed to get back to sleep to an accompaniment of Philippa Forrester talking ..read more