Podcasts about Catullus

The Time Riders: Part 8 A Date With Death. Based on a post by BiscuitHammer, in 16 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Into the pit. Domitia was brought through the streets, which were lined with huge crowds watching her somberly. She was attended by at least twenty soldiers, who walked in silence around her. Accompanying them were her former sister Vestals and the Pontifex Maximus, one of the greatest priests in Rome and head of the state religion. It was he who ultimately was in charge of the Virgins, both choosing them and stripping them of their office if the need arose. He walked ahead of her, his face grave. Domitia wore a simple white tunic now, but all other signs of her former life were gone. Her magnificent braids were undone, and her brown hair hung down her back shamefully. The colors she'd been allowed to wear were missing. In times past, disgraced Virgins had been excoriated, possibly just beaten with a rod, but now, in the height of mighty Rome's power, the punishment was death, for endangering the city. But no one was insane enough to spill the blood of a Vestal Virgin, disgraced or not, so her execution was not so direct. She would be sent underground into a small chamber, with a stock of food and supplies, and locked in there until she starved to death, or succumbed to sickness. They weren't killing her, per se; she was merely shunned until she died. Such was the way of Imperial Rome. Her condemnation and pronouncement of her fate had already been declared, at the beginning of this long walk, meant to be a show of penitence before the face of all Rome. And as humiliated and crushed as she was, her foremost thought was about Bonosus, and his magnificent cock. Even now, being led through the streets, her cunt was wet and ached to feel him buried inside her. Before she knew it, they had arrived at their destination, a small area in the north of the city, with a plot dug into the ground. Stopping at its edge, she looked down inside; the walls were lined with wood, probably to prevent a collapse, and there seemed to be a small stool and a cot within. She heard hysterical sobbing from nearby, and turned her head to see her mother, her birth mother, Pompeneia, weeping from behind the barricade of guards and calling out to her. Domitia's heart ached for a moment, but then she turned her gaze back to the den prepared for her. Her fate was sealed. She glanced over to look at her sister Vestals, but they refused to look at her, staring ahead resolutely. She could see tears in dear Silla's eyes, though; she had hurt the Sisterhood badly, and this was how she was to pay for it. So be it. With all the dignity she could muster, Domitia swallowed her fear and stepped forward, turning and climbing down the ladder, descending roughly ten feet until she reached the earthen floor. There were small candles burning on some stone surfaces, allowing for dim light. She looked upward, and the last thing she saw was the face of the Pontifex Maximus looking down at her, his expression unreadable, before a heavy door was slammed down and locked, cutting off all light and all sound from above. She shuddered at the sound, her stomach twisting in knots. She knew that there was no way out. The door would be weighted, and guards set outside for weeks, to prevent anyone from trying to rescue her. Despite her fear, she looked around, noting the small amount of food supplies left for her, and a small, narrow hole dug in one corner where she was to relieve herself. It wouldn't do to have a Vestal Virgin stinking of shit, even a disgraced one, and even in death. The silence was almost terrifying. She slumped into the small chair left for her, shivering and biting her lip as she felt that her cunt was still wet, the sticky lips parting slightly as she spread her legs. Thoughts of Bonosus returned to her, and she couldn't help but reach down beneath her tunic and begin rubbing her fingers over herself. The fear she felt melted away as she tickled her throbbing clit and teased her warm nether lips. Domitia closed her eyes and sighed in pleasure. If she was to die in this hateful place, it would be while cumming, thinking of that magnificent cock, spurting inside her one last time; The wall opposite her creaked and opened, the stout wooden boards pulling away. Domitia almost yelped in shock, but she didn't stop playing with herself. She stared in astonishment as a tall blonde woman came inside, carrying a torch. Following her was Nanu, a slave-girl that Domitia would have sworn belonged to her parents. "Well, hello, Domitia," the blonde woman said, smiling at her. "I'm Lady Aurora Horatia, Bonosus' mistress. Are you ready to get out of here?" Domitia nodded, but then paused, reconsidering as her fingers plunged in and out of her molten cunt. "Can you; give me just a moment here?" the former Virgin asked sheepishly. Into the Arena. Mark winced and squinted as the great gate opened, allowing light to flood into the dark tunnel. The grinding and heaving of the gears that moved the iron-reinforced barriers echoed loudly, and his heart pounded in anxiety. He was almost hyperventilating, and he could feel the blood racing through his veins. Maybe taking the adrenalin tab he'd finally found stashed behind a loose brick wasn't such a good idea. And no instructions, either. He reminded himself to punch himself in the face when he saw himself again. Hey, at least he knew he survived. He felt himself shoved roughly out into the arena, looking around in bewilderment as tens of thousands of people all shouted and jeered at him. Part of the huge stadium was cast into shadow because of the giant canvas awning that covered a full third of its seating and the arena in the center. He thought it was called the Velarium, but he wasn't sure. The roaring noise of the crowds hurt his ears, and he felt dizzy. The tab's effects apparently hadn't evened out in him yet. Maybe he should have taken it earlier? Wearing his itchy burlap loincloth, a rope belt, sandals and nothing else, Mark wandered slowly toward the center of the sandy field, his cudgel in hand. The echoing sounds of the crowd were maddening, and he felt almost dizzy. What was the purpose of this damn tab, anyway? Guards approached him. His urge was to run, but where would he go? Trembling, he stood his ground and waited for them. One of them grabbed him roughly and spun him about to face something, shoving him to one knee. Mark gasped, but then looked up and paused. On the other side of the giant stadium, sitting in a shaded box, was a man wearing purple, surrounded by guards and other dignitaries. It had to be the Emperor. The most powerful man in the world. If only he knew which one it was. Maybe he could've gotten an autograph. He chuckled bitterly at his joke, but the guard holding him told him to shut up and slapped him across the back of the head. Mark's eyes snapped open and fury flared through him. He surged to his feet and his shoulder-block knocked the guard backwards, to the astonishment of the audience. The guard and another one nearby drew their weapons and were about to kill him, when trumpets blared from all around the perimeter of the Colosseum. Mark looked around warily, seeing the reaction of the crowds as the two guards withdrew. Drums sounded out now, and more trumpets. He looked over at the emperor, his eyes going wide as he noticed a familiar, stunning blonde woman in a seat next to him and watching Mark with a smirk. Kneeling beside her was Nanu. "Jesus, Becky, there's a million people in Rome; how many did you fuck?" he muttered, scowling. He heard the gates clanking open again and spun to face them, his heart racing again. From the dark tunnel strode a stout, bald man wearing leather armour on his shoulder and a metal-studded skirt, carrying a shield and wielding a small axe. "What is this, fetish night at the Colosseum?" Mark complained loudly as the man began to run toward him. Mark braced himself, watching warily. His earlier anxiety was being replaced by anger, and a desire to either flee or fight. He'd just trust to his adrenalin and hope that his future self knew what the Hell he was doing. The gladiator ran up and swung at Mark, who ducked and came up behind his foe. Before the man could turn, Mark struck him across the back of the head with his cudgel. The man crashed to the ground face-first. The crowd was yelling in outrage and astonishment. Apparently, that wasn't supposed to happen. The man showed no signs of rising, merely stirring feebly and groaning, a huge goose egg rising on the back of his head. Hastily, Mark leaned down and pulled the round wooden shield off the man's arm and pried the axe from his grip. He stood up, trying to control his breathing. His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest. He looked around, making sure no one was approaching him from any other direction, but nobody seemed to be forthcoming. Where was his next foe? It dawned on him that he hadn't been expected to last beyond this first fight. They were probably scrambling to figure out what to do next. Doubtless they'd be finding another gladiator to throw at him. He chanced a glance up at Becky, but she sat still, simply watching him. He didn't blame her; she was supposed to have turned on him, after all. He did notice that she was keeping one leg crossed over the other and bouncing her thighs subtly. Maybe the hormones weren't completely out of her system yet. Or it could have just been normal horny Becky. Who knew at this point? A few seconds later, the gates on another section of the concave wall that surrounded him opened slowly, and out strode a tall man, wearing only a loincloth like himself and greaves, but carrying a weighted net in one hand, and a trident in the other. "Trident!" Mark exclaimed to himself, remembering. "That's what those fucking things are called! Now I can; Hey!" Mark had gotten distracted and only barely jumped out of the way of the retiarius, who thrust his trident, trying to skewer his foe. Mark angrily struck at the man's head with his axe, but he raised the haft of the weapon to block and Mark's axe broke on it. The crowd cheered wildly as it saw what happened. Mark stared dumbly at the splintered handle of his weapon, the iron head missing entirely, having spun off to land in the dust several inconvenient feet away. "What the shit?" Mark shouted angrily as he dodged another attack, keeping his shield between himself and his enemy. The trident's tines glanced off the face of his shield, coming perilously close to ripping open his side. "You mean I can't kill anyone? I'm timelocked from killing someone, even if they're trying to kill me?" He dodged again and scrambled for his cudgel, lying next to the first man he'd knocked unconscious. The man he was fighting was quick, though, and lunged in, jamming his weapon forward and trying to impale Mark through his stomach with it. Mark blocked with the shield, shuddering in panic as he felt the tines burst through the wood and punch out the back side, dangerously close to his belly. But the trident was caught now, and now the two men wrestled back and forth desperately, with the retiarius trying to free his weapon and Mark doing everything he could to prevent that exact thing. Suddenly he realized that he was doing exactly the wrong thing, and simply let go of his shield. The gladiator now held his trident awkwardly, weighed down as it was by the shield embedded on it, and with no safe recourse to get it back. He flailed at Mark with the weighted edges of his net, threatening to break smaller bones if he got in too close. Mark dashed for the cudgel again, and this time his opponent couldn't quickly follow him. Mark picked it up and tried putting the man on the defensive, skirting around him, looking for an opening to strike. The man glared at him balefully, swinging the net if Mark got too close. He's not armored and he can't use his weapon; Mark reminded himself. He flung his cudgel at the gladiator's face and surged in while the man was trying to block the unexpected projectile. His trident was weighted down with Mark's shield, so he was using the net frantically to avoid being struck. Mark plowed into the man and took him down to the ground, using his advantage in height and weight. His foe wheezed as he landed hard on his back, beginning to thrash as Mark straddled his chest and pummeled at him. A lucky punch got through and Mark snapped his foe's head to the side with a right across the jaw. He went to sleep. The crowds were shouting again angrily as Mark stood, recovering his stupid club and taking the man's net, since the shield was wrecked, and the trident was no use since he apparently wasn't allowed to kill anyone. How did time lock know, anyway? He bent over, trying to control his breathing and his pulse. His head was spinning again from the anxiety. What the Hell was his future self thinking, leaving that damn tab to use? What sort of advantage and futuristic superpower was panic? You're pumping adrenalin; it makes runners faster, it makes them run longer; it makes people stronger in a crisis; He opened his eyes and stood, turning around and looking at the thousands upon thousands of people who hated him. Fuck those people. He turned and looked at the emperor and held the weighted net in the air, scowling at the sovereign. "That all you got, asshole?" he shouted, feeling himself get angrier and more aggressive with every moment. Becky could barely hear what Mark was yelling over the noise of the crowds, but she shifted somewhat uncomfortably when she felt the mood of the man next to her darken. "So that's how he wants to play it, hmm?" muttered the emperor, resting his cheek against his hand. "Uppity thing, this boy of yours, Lady Horatia." "Oh, he is no longer mine, great emperor; this behavior, reprehensible as it might be, is unknown to me. Please dispose of the upstart as you see fit," Becky replied, knowing better than to be perceived as defending Mark. "You can count on that, my lady;” he replied, nodding absently as he made some vague motion to a signaler. "If you will excuse me, sire, I must depart for a moment," Becky said, trying to not sound urgent. The emperor looked at her quizzically for a moment: "You would miss his doom?" She made a show of blushing: "His life and death mean nothing to me now, but all this excitement has undone me, sire. I must go and relieve myself, because it wouldn't do to piss myself in your presence." "Very well, then," he said, nodding. "But try to be back soon." Becky stood and bowed before exiting the emperor's spectator box, taking Nanu with her, pulling her along by the wrist. "My lady, is now a good time to see to such functions?" asked the Egyptian girl as she followed the blonde woman. "Is Bonosus not in great danger? I thought you meant to rescue him." "I can't rescue him sitting next to that pompous ass, now can I?" Becky hissed as she strode down one of the hallways. "And keep your voice down; I don't want people to know what we're doing." "Sorry, mistress," Nanu replied, blushing. She allowed herself to be dragged along for several seconds before asking her next question. "What are we doing, exactly?" "You'll see soon enough," Becky said grimly, her blue eyes flashing as she pushed through the throngs of people in the hallways that ran around the length of the Colosseum. "I hope you wore your cock-sucking lips today;” The huge man lumbered towards Mark; he was well over half a foot taller than Mark, and a whole lot heavier. Beneath his layer of fat, he was obviously muscular and very strong. He carried a shield in one hand, a wicked sword in the other. His loincloth was made of tough leather, covered in metal studs. His wide belt was also braced with metal. His right arm was protected from shoulder to wrist by a cauldron and gleaming steel plates. On his head was an intimidating helmet, the face mask looking like something out of "Mad Max: Fury Road," with a peaked top that sported what looked like a curved metal blade or sail. It looked like he was wearing a can opener on his head. "Fuck;” Mark whined to himself as he stood his ground, trying to figure out how he was going to keep from getting killed. He held his cudgel and his net, trying to look threatening, but the gorilla coming at him didn't seem to care. He jumped out of the way as the Samnite slashed with his sword. He tried to move in, but was sent flying backwards when the gladiator suddenly slammed the front of his shield into him. Landing on his back, Mark only had a split second to roll out of the way as the point of his foe's sword drove down into the dirt where'd he'd only just been. He kicked at the man's leg, but it held, and he scrambled away, looking to put some distance between them. "Hey, Jason Voorhies!" he called out, waving his club in the air. "Over here, candy-ass!" The gladiator turned his head to look at him while trying to wrench his blade from the hard-packed earth. He finally did so and stood upright, rolling his shoulders and striding forward again. He slashed with his blade, but Mark dodged once again and then threw his net over his foe. The Samnite got caught in it, but didn't go down, trying angrily to remove it. Mark jumped on his back and began hammering away with his stupid little club. The giant staggered about, flailing wildly to dislodge his smaller foe. The jeering from the crowd was punctuated with increasing amounts of laughter at this ridiculous spectacle. Mark hung on for dear life with one arm wrapped around the man, his other hand whacking away at the foe's helmet. But his own net was preventing the blows from being fully effective, despite the metallic ringing of his strikes. Unable to reach the pest on his back or use his weapons, the huge man simply fell backwards, hoping to crush Mark. It wasn't graceful, and it wasn't pretty, but it did stun Mark long enough to stop him from hitting his foe with his cudgel. "Oh fuck;” Mark wheezed as the Samnite rolled off him and struggled to get up while removing the netting. Mark slowly crawled away, shaking his head to stop the world from spinning. The jellied tissue that was once his lungs was on fire, and strained to get oxygen circulating through him. He heard his foe growl in frustration, and then he felt himself getting grabbed by the scruff of the neck and the back of his loincloth before being hauled completely off the ground; The crowd went wild as the gladiator threw Bonosus bodily to the ground, as if trying to crush his bones with the impact. He picked him up again and dashed him to the hard-packed earth, having given up on removing the net. Mark protected himself from the slams as best he could, but it wasn't helping much, given the strength of the man who was mauling him. The fourth time getting slammed to the ground was about Mark's limit, and the world had become nonsense around him; everything sounded like it was being played in drunken slow motion. His vision swam, and he really just wanted to take a damn nap. He shook his head trying to clear it, remembering that Becky had bought him time, so he'd best not waste it getting rag-dolled by this shit stain. While the Samnite was reaching down for him, Mark managed to roll onto his back and kicked up, hard, between the gladiator's legs. His foot found the man's crotch, and while the force of the blow was lessened by the net's interference, his foe still groaned, and his knees bent. Mark kicked again, and then once more, having finally staggered his foe. The man sank to his knees, holding his crotch. Mark couldn't see his face, but he was obviously in a great deal of pain. Mark staggered to his feet, ignoring the crowd's jeers and screams, focusing only on his foe. The gladiator was now protecting his crotch with his hands, so Mark couldn't kick him there, so he slammed the bottom of his foot into the larger man's chest, knocking him on his back, where he lay moaning. Mark stamped on his crotch for good measure. "Stop, dammit!" wailed the man. "Quit kicking me in the cock!" "Fuck you!" Mark spat, scowling. His chest was on fire and his entire body throbbed in pain. "You were trying to kill me, fuckface! Why should I give a shit what you think?" "I'll stop, I'll stop!" the man pleaded, writhing under the net and totally at Mark's mercy. "Just don't wreck my cock, I was gonna fuck tonight!" "Yeah, right," Mark sneered. "Who were you gonna fuck?" Mark spun as he heard an ululating war cry, and his eyes widened as he saw a woman running toward him, carrying a whip in one hand and a sword in the other. Her spiked hair was wet with blue woad paste, and her eyes were mad with battle lust. "Her;” the Samnite indicated. Becky and Nanu were both on their knees, mouths bobbing back and forth on the cocks of the men they had leaning back against the wall, groaning and pumping their hips. Neither of the men could believe their luck; they thought this would be another boring day for measly pay. From up here, they couldn't even see the action down in the arena well. Sulus and Catullus, two former merchant marines, were charged with keeping the Velarium in place during the spectacles. Their extensive experience with canvas sails made them ideal for this tedious but essential work. At least, that's what they were told, despite the thirty asses a day they received proclaiming otherwise. So imagine their good fortune and delight when this patrician woman and her slave-girl happened to wander on up, espy the two men, and offer to suck their cocks, without even charging them anything! Talk about Saturnalia in Quintilis! Nanu moaned as she swirled her tongue around the head of the cock she was sucking on, holding it by the base of the shaft, her eyes closed. This seemed like an odd time to be doing something like this, but Lady Aurora had been quite firm that it was part of the plan. So be it. Besides, that strange little patch her new mistress had affixed to the skin under her arm was making her so horny right now. Kneeling beside the slave, Becky's free hand reached out and took hold of Nanu's, giving it a squeeze. They continued pushing their wet mouths along the lengths of the throbbing shafts, both girls getting wetter and more aroused with each passing moment. Nanu pulled her mouth off the cock for a moment, sucking in air and breathing heavily as she massaged it with her tiny hand. Her face was flushed as she looked over at her new mistress, her eyes glazed with desire. Becky nodded her assent. Nanu stood quickly and lifted the long trails of her garment, exposing her ass and cunt to the man she'd been servicing. She turned around and leaned back against him, squirming her ass against his cock, making him moan loudly. With great need, she grabbed hold of his tool and speared herself down on it, sighing loudly before beginning to wiggle back and forth on him, shivering as he slid in and out of her. Becky rose to her feet soon after, moving around to face Nanu and leaning forward, with her hands on the slave-girl's shoulders and looking into her eyes. The marine got behind Becky and gripped her hips, pushing inside her. Becky moaned into Nanu's mouth as she kissed her, their tongues tangling hungrily while their tits squirmed and rubbed together. The men held tight and fucked the two women as hard as they could, looking to cum as quickly as possible. Hips smacked against asses and moans grew louder. Becky and Nanu now panted through an open-mouthed kiss, their hands groping one another in need. The Egyptian girl pressed back as hard as she could on the cock she was impaled on, while Becky ground in eager circles, yearning for release. Seconds later they were wailing into one another's mouths, shuddering in ecstasy as the men groaned and began pumping cum inside their wanton pussies. Becky and Nanu were relentless, milking the men for all they were worth, until they slumped to the stone floor, almost insensate from the orgasms these strange women had given them. Straddling the marines now, and facing into one another, Becky and Nanu continued kissing and fondling, even as they moved slowly up and down on the rigid poles they'd been fucking. "Umm, mistress;” Nanu said dreamily, lost in Becky's blue eyes. "I know, my love," Becky murmured, giving Nanu many light kisses on the lips, as if she was unable to help herself. "But we must; smooch; get ready to; do our part; smooch; and rescue Mark;” Nanu pulled back from the kiss and looked up in confusion. "Mark?" "Bonosus," Becky corrected herself, waving it off. "I'll explain later. Now help me get ready;” The crowd was howling with laughter as Mark ran around the arena in a panic, chased by the gladiatrix, who cracked her whip at him, screeching for him to get his ass back there so she could kick it. Mark didn't need oppositional defiance disorder to ignore her demands. The tip of that whip was cracking awfully close behind him. The Samnite he'd downed earlier grunted and flopped down again as Mark stamped on his back while running over him. "Don't try to get up, asshole, you promised!" Mark shouted angrily. "If you do, I don't care if she's trying to kill me, I'll come over there and kick you in the balls so hard you'll be spitting them out!" "Okay! Okay!" the man shouted back, lying on his stomach and waiting. "But I hope she catches you and rips your skin off to wear as a cloak!" "Oh, go sit on a Doric column!" Mark grumbled, deking to the left to try to throw her off. At this point, the crowd was chanting something, what he could only Assume Was Her Name "Achilleia! Achilleia!" "What is that, Latin for Psycho Hose-Beast?" Mark complained loudly, noticing that he had not gained any ground on his foe. He only had the stupid cudgel, whereas she had a wicked sword and a goddam whip. He had the distinct impression he couldn't tire her; she had the look of a woman on a murder mission; her eyes were wild with bloodlust, the scream escaping her lips singing of his gory doom. "She's the greatest female gladiator in Rome!" called out the Samnite, still watching from his confines beneath the net. "She's been more than a match for many men who have fought her!" "Singing my praises doesn't get you more cunt than normal, Rullus!" Achilleia snapped, still chasing her quarry. Gods, this slave could run! Pity she had to kill him, he was well-built and had a great ass! She pressed harder, now swiping with her sword, since using her whip slowed her down some. Like most gladiators, she was wearing little armour, only leather greaves, a leather loincloth, an abbreviated leather cuirass that exposed her midriff but held her tits in place, and a leather cauldron and brace on one arm. A steel fillet around her forehead glittered with glass beads, off-setting her wild blue death-hawk hair. She whooped in triumph as the tip of her sword tore open the back of his loincloth and it fell away, leaving Mark completely exposed as he fled for his life. The crowd was laughing hysterically again. "Dammit, I hate freeballing when I'm running!" he shouted angrily, grimacing as his balls slapped around his thighs. "You have no idea how uncomfortable this is!" "Stop running then, coward!" Achilleia taunted, enjoying the view even as she tried to kill him. "I only offer the bliss of death! One red kiss of my blade across your throat, slave, and you; Off!" Done with running, Mark stopped very suddenly and braced himself, hunkering down so that Achilleia plowed into him, completely unprepared. She staggered backward and Mark whirled and grappled onto her, preventing her from using her weapons. The gladiatrix snarled and tried to knee him in the crotch, but he kept his legs judiciously in the way. They tottered and staggered about, vying for control, until they tripped over the Samnite, who was helpless to avoid them. "Oh Fuck!" he wheezed as they landed on him and then rolled off, still tussling. "Welcome to my world, dickface!" Mark shouted back at him, still wrestling with Achilleia, who meant to murder him repeatedly. Out of desperation, and with the effects of the tab still coursing through his blood, he picked her up bodily and threw her to the ground, her sword clattering away. He dropped to his knees instantly, smacking her in the face with his scrotum. "Teabag!" he shouted before whirling around and grappling onto her, trying to subdue her. He hated the thought of punching a woman, but she was trying to eviscerate him, so an exception might be in order. Achilleia was a veteran of the gladiator pits, however, and not so easily dealt with. She recovered and thrashed around, screeching and trying to claw her foe's eyes out. He swatted the whip from her hands before she could strike him with it. Mark found her increasingly difficult to manage, using his weight on top of her body to keep her in place. That plan went south, however, when she wrapped her legs around his waist and began rocking back and forth, until she was on top. They rolled around in the dust while the crowd went insane. Mark had her arms gripped tightly, out to the sides, which forced her body down closer to his. The wild look in her eyes chilled his blood, and she tried to bite his neck repeatedly, to tear his throat out. He countered frantically by using his head to shove hers away from his tender skin, and the result must have looked ridiculous, the two of them pushing and sparring with their heads. "Gurr, let; me; kill; you!" Achilleia hissed, struggling to maintain her balance over her stronger foe. "I'll make it quick, I promise!" "It'll feel good, I promise!" Mark sneered, butting the side of her head to knock it away. "Why would I make this easy for you?" "Gonna; rip you; a new;” Achilleia strained, pushing down harder. She then paused, her eyes going wide with shock. "What; gods, do you have a hard-on?" Mark used the momentary pause to roll her over, her arms pinned beside her head. Achilleia's eyes were still wide as she goggled up at him. Unfortunately, yes, he was hard again. Either he was developing some sort of danger fetish, or the hormones weren't quite as out of his system as he thought. They struggled and thrashed, with the look of shock on Achilleia's face becoming one of irritation, then a weird determination. She wasn't fighting about so much, and she seemed to be pushing with her hips, almost pumping with them. She glared and bit her lip. The roaring of the crowds was slowly abating as they watched the proceedings on the arena floor. What was happening? Seconds ago, the gladiatrix had been trying to kill the slave, now they were; what were they doing? Mark kept her pinned beneath him, and couldn't help but join her in squirming as they glared into one another's eyes. Achilleia was undulating her hips now, her upper body virtually motionless. Mark grimaced at the feel of the toughened leather around her middle grinding on his hard-on. "Dammit;” Achilleia growled. "Let go of my god-rotting hand so I can move my loincloth!" Mark took a chance and let go of one of her hands. It flashed down and pulled aside the leather garment before taking hold of his hard cock and guiding it to her entrance. Without another thought, Mark pushed down, deep inside her. Achilleia wailed loudly and wrapped her legs around his waist again, pulling him in deeper still. The entire Colosseum throng had gone silent as the spectators stared, stunned by what they were witnessing. All that could be heard, echoing through the giant stadium, was Achilleia's cries of pleasure. Was this really happening? "Achilleia? What the Hell?" the Samnite yelled in outrage, his girlfriend getting fucked by Rome's most hated slave mere feet away from him. "Shut up, Rullus, he's fucking huge!" Achilleia shouted back, pumping her hips wildly against Mark. The gladiator did as he was told and simply sulked, turning his head to look elsewhere. The emperor watched out stonily, not at all impressed with the turn of events his grand spectacle for the people had taken. He'd heard of the blasphemy this upstart slave had committed, and this was supposed to be a damnation of a great sin. Now it was another blasphemy. And where the Hell was Lady Aurora? He napped his fingers and one of his servants leaned in close, to see what his master wanted. "Have them all killed;” growled the emperor, determined to save face somehow. Mark thrust harder and harder, while Achilleia yelped and bucked beneath him, holding onto his back and with her legs still wrapped around his back. Nearby, Rullus was resting his helmeted head on his hand and rapping his fingers against the packed earth, trying to look bored. Not difficult for a man tangled inside a net. "Any time, you two;” he grumbled. "Oh, cram it, Linzer-head," Mark spat. "Say one more thing and I'll fuck her ass next!" "Oh!" Achilleia wailed, grinding and thrusting against Mark desperately. "I'm gonna; I ‘ Then she seized up and pushed up with all her strength, clenching her teeth so hard they might have cracked. As Rome watched on in stunned silence, the gladiatrix shrieked to the gods and came, hard. Mark shuddered and groaned, pumping profuse amounts of cum deep inside her clenching cunt. He thrust madly, emptying himself into her. Finally, they were both spent. Achilleia lay still beneath him, her chest rising and falling, skin glistening with sweat. Mark, exhausted, rested his forehead against her shoulder, too tired to defend himself if she tried to kill him now. Fortunately, his death was the farthest thing from her mind. Seconds of silence passed, before the thousands of spectators in the stands erupted into a wave of cheers and catcalls. Mark smiled and chuckled tiredly. "That can't be good;” he mused. "Nope," she agreed, sighing and biting on a knuckle as the last of the orgasm pulsed through her. "After that, they're certainly going to kill us. All of us. It doesn't matter; I would have died in the arena eventually. At least this way, I died with a cock in me and cumming hard." "Don't be so certain about that;” Mark replied, finally looking up and seeing all the gates opening and dozens of legionaries rushing toward them, spears at the ready. "Ah, I don't like this!" Nanu whined as she shimmied out along one of the corbels that held the vast awning in place. She held on like grim death as she edged forward, a small but sharp knife in one hand. "You can do it, my love," Becky said encouragingly, watching from their original position where they'd fucked the two marines. Both men were still snoozing, but she had tied their hands and feet for extra security. She would have done Nanu's job herself, but she was taller and heavier than the Egyptian girl, who stood a much better chance of succeeding than she did without snapping the braces or corbels. "Look straight ahead and ignore the sounds below." So of course, Nanu looked down. "He's fucking!" she hissed, her eyes narrowing. "He's fucking the gladiatrix that's supposed to be killing him! I may kill him! He doesn't need saving, I do!" "Nanu, focus!" Becky insisted. "Get to your position and await my signal." "Yes, mistress;” sighed the slave-girl sullenly. Once in position, Nanu held on tight, trying not to think about the dizzying heights she was suspended from. Everyone seemed like ants far below her. Except for Bonosus and his whore of a gladiator; she could see them very clearly, to the place where she could make out his throbbing cock as it thrust in and out of her unworthy cunt. He had a lot of explaining to do when this was over. The crowd was watching in stunned silence, unable to believe what they were seeing. But then Becky and Nanu heard the gladiatrix wailing as she came. Bonosus' groans of pleasure burned in Nanu's ears, while Becky just rolled her eyes, sighed and tapped her foot impatiently. Thunderous cheers erupted from the crowd; they'd come for blood and been rewarded with live pornography! Nanu was scowling still, when she noticed the gates opening and legionaries pouring out of them, converging on the five figures in the center of the arena. "Mistress;” Nanu said nervously, her anxiety for Bonosus' well-being overcoming her jealousy. "Now, Nanu!" Becky yelled, making sure her slave could hear her. She was already working frantically to cut through the thick ropes in one of the giant pulleys that moved the Velarium into position. Nanu, meanwhile, was sawing at the edge of the rope that held the corbel she was on in place. She gritted her teeth as she watched the steel knife bite through the thick fiber cable until finally it snapped free. The rope whipped about as it unraveled, causing a cascade of loosening canvas across the broad length of the famed awning. Becky, meanwhile, finished cutting through the rope in the giant pulley she'd selected, dodging hastily as it snapped and flailed about before spinning away. The giant canvas sheets comprising the Velarium buckled and gave way, while the corbels and rope masts retracted rapidly. "Mistress!" Nanu keened, holding on like grim death as the corbel she was on, no longer held in place by the giant ropes, snapped back toward the solid stone walls of the Colosseum. "Jump, Nanu!" Becky called out, standing on the edge of the wall and holding her arms out. "I'll catch you! Trust mistress!" Nanu squeezed her eyes shut and jumped; Becky wheezed as she caught the flying girl, tumbling to the floor with her and holding her tight. Nanu was shivering in her grasp, so Becky just held her for a few seconds and caressed her raven hair. The slave-girl looked up at her savior and nodded, so Becky stood them up, listening to the shrieks of panic as the Velarium floated down relentlessly. "Teamwork, Nanu!" she said excitedly as they stood. "Let's see what happens next!" In the Arena. Mark faced one direction warily, while Rullus and Achilleia stood behind him, squaring off against other legionaries who were closing in. The original gladiator and the retiarius were also conscious and now stood with them, brandishing what weapons they could. Mark felt silly sporting only his cudgel, but it seemed dumb to not let the gladiators have the weapons they were trained with. His cock was still hard, and leaking cum from the tip. He saw Achilleia slowly turning her head to look down at it longingly. "Eyes front, Achilleia!" he snapped, not in the mood to die. She returned to glaring balefully at the encroaching soldiers. There must have been a hundred of the legionaries. That was twenty-to-one odds. He decided to not mention that to his enemies-turned-allies, since he wasn't sure if they understood ratios in any event. If their math was as poor as their hygiene, why bother? "When I thought I'd die in the emperor's sight, this isn't how I pictured it," Rullus growled, brandishing his sword. "I hadn't envisioned dying for that cocksucker at all," Achilleia replied, spitting in contempt at the foes in front of her. "Damned if I'm gonna give him the satisfaction of a clean kill. People will remember this day, to his embarrassment!" The legionaries advanced, the circle tightening. They were protected by their large scutum body shields, and their spears pointed threateningly at the little rebel group. Mark wasn't sure what good he would do here, since he was armed with a club smaller than his dick, and he was the only untrained gladiator. But then he noticed rippling movement above, looked up and grinned. The velarium became dislodged from its moorings and like a vast sail or flag, began floating down over the stadium. People noticed, began screeching in panic, and stampeding. "Right on, Becks;” he said with satisfaction as his day began to look up. The emperor looked up, scowling as he saw the giant canvas sheet descending, fluttering menacingly as it enveloped the upper levels of seating. Panic ensued, with people scampering around pell-mell, trying to escape. "I really hate the gods;” he thought darkly as the canvas touched down around him and everything went to shit. Becky, standing on the edge of the wall and looking down over the chaos and mayhem she had caused, with tens of thousands thrown into panic, cackled gaily and clapped her hands before yanking down her top to expose her tits and holding her arms wide and yelling loudly across her kingdom of madness. "Are you not entertained?" she shouted, reveling in her triumph. God, she'd always wanted to use that line. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" Mark shouted as he and his new allies raced down the hallway, shooing everyone in front of him. "Faster, if you wanna live!" The legionaries had forgotten all about the little group of rebels once the madness ensued, racing toward the emperor to rescue him. Mark used the opportunity to escape, bringing his former foes with him. He wasn't terribly interested in seeing them die, and they might prove very useful in getting out of here in one piece. Rullus had led them through a small, little-known door in the wall of the arena, one used generally only by pit masters to monitor the proceedings. His titan frame barely fit in it, but he led the way dutifully. "Where are we going?" Achillea asked, happy to be escaping, but at least wanting to know what the plan was. She had her whip and her sword in hand again. "The most convenient, flat and open space you know of beneath the Colosseum," Mark replied, hurrying along behind her. "A place almost no one knows about or uses." "One of the old training spaces," grunted Rullus. "It hasn't been used in years. Follow me!" Their course took them deeper beneath the stadium, through winding halls and narrow corridors and staircases. They finally reached a wide chamber, in the middle of which stood Becky, Nanu and Domitia. The former Vestal and the slave-girl seemed stunned to see the small party approaching, and the gladiators gaped as Lady Aurora and her slave ran into one another's arms, kissing deeply and feverishly, speaking in some unknown tongue. "Right!" Mark said, finally disengaging from Becky's tongue as he looked around, eyes flashing with determination. "I know this is going to sound weird, but I need you all to trust me. We're going to get you out of here, as quickly as we can." "How?" asked the Retiarius, looking about warily. "They'll find us eventually!" "I know, and what I'm going to say will sound like magic, but just run with it, okay?" Mark replied, walking over to the Holmes Field Device, which Becky had been kind enough to retrieve. He wasn't sure how, but she was better with this temporal shit than he was. And they trusted one another by now. "This contraption will get us out of here, but it's not big enough for all of us at once. I'm gonna take Lady Aurora and Domitia first, then come back for a few more, then the last load." Rullus nodded: "You spared my life, and I entrust you with it. Achilleia and I will go last, holding the room if the enemy comes." "Oh, Rullus;” Achilleia sighed, looking up at the hulking gladiator, her expression a dreamy one, before she suddenly scowled and smacked him on the back of his helmeted head. "You romantic asshole." Mark left them to argue while he hustled Becky and Domitia onto the platform, which was already switched on, lights and readings blinking around the surface. Becky swatted Domitia's hand as she tried to touch a dial. "You know where we're going?" he asked, hoping she had a better handle on this than he did. She nodded, smiling. "Leave it to me, Mark. I think you'll like this solution;” The climate was certainly a change from that of Rome, but it was also a pleasant experience in its own right. The city around them, built of red brick, sandy-colored stone, and studded with stately palm trees, reminded Mark of eastern cities in every movie he'd ever seen. Beyond the walls stretched endless expanses of desert, in which the city stood as a shining jewel in a vast sea of scorching sand. He didn't know why Becky knew to park the machine where she did, but he also knew she had figured out how to use his Holmes Field Device on her own, so he wasn't questioning it. Safe from prying eyes, and after two more trips back to the Colosseum to gather the other rebels, Mark now found himself in an ancient temple in the shape of a ziggurat, with priestesses standing in front of them and bowing. Unlike the Vestals, the white garments of these priestesses were delightfully spare, exposing more than it covered. "Lady Aurora Horatia," one of them said humbly. "Your timing is fortuitous, and we gladly accept your offer. Domitia will be given a new life as a priestess of Nanaya, or as she is known in your tongue, Suadela." The priestesses all walked up to Domitia and kissed her, welcoming her into their sisterhood. The former Vestal shed tears, not in sorrow, but because she had a new beginning. Nanaya, as the goddess was known in this far-flung province, was an ancient Sumerian goddess of sensuality and lust. When the Romans had conquered the land, they readily identified her with Suadela, to keep the peace. The priestess smiled at Mark and Becky again. "And for your generous donation of gold, we will take on your four friends here, to guard our temple, as the garrison makes no effort to do so. They are now, in their own way, lifelong servants and devotees of the goddess." The four gladiators beamed proudly. Since serving Nanaya, even as guardians of her temple, meant food, lodging and getting laid by her harlot-priestesses, they were more than amenable to the idea. "Lady Aurora," Domitia intoned, taking Becky's hands in hers and smiling slyly. "Will you consent to Bonosus and yourself being the first to receive my blessings as a priestess of Nanaya?" "I wouldn't have it any other way, my dear;” Becky purred, pulling Domitia into her arms and kissing her deeply. A small villa in Roman Italy; Mark sipped wine from a goblet while Becky lay nearby on a couch, wearing nothing while Nanu sat on a small stool and massaged her feet. The sultry afternoon suited everyone, and they were finally at peace. "Helluva trip, Becks," Mark mused, draining his glass and then pouring more for himself. "You've gotten really good with the Holmes Field Device now. I seriously thought it was me who left the adrenalin tab for my discovery under the Colosseum, but it was actually you." "Sorry to scare you there," Becky sighed, as Nanu worked on her toes individually, sometimes even kissing them as she rubbed oil into them. "I found them in our tab supply, and thought it was our best bet. I just jumped behind a few hours when no one was around and stashed them in that cell for you." "So it wasn't even me coming back from the future to save myself," Mark chuckled. "Here I was so confident that I'd lived, that I couldn't be killed because future-self was looking out for me, but no, it was current you. So I could've been killed at any point, even if time lock kept me from killing anyone else." "It was a little bit messy, but you did survive, and that's what counts." Becky pointed out, caressing one of her tits lazily while enjoying Nanu's exquisite touch. "So what're we gonna do with her?" Mark asked, referencing the Egyptian slave-girl. Nanu had gotten used to her mistress and her manservant speaking in this weird, harsh language, and thought nothing of it anymore; when they needed her, they spoke Latin or her own tongue to her. Becky sighed contentedly and puddled further into the couch. Nanu's foot massages were utter bliss. "I was considering letting her stay here, and simply look after this little villa I bought for me. Whenever we visited, we'd just come back as close to the time we left as possible, but I have no idea if we could guarantee time snarls not getting in the way. So I'm bringing her home with me." Mark raised an eyebrow. "That a good idea? Or even possible?" Becky shrugged. "If she can't be brought with us, the Holmes Field Device won't work, right? So we care for her here. If it does allow it, I'll keep her with me in my house and teach her about her new world. I'll just say she's a foreign student bunking with me." "Literally, I might add." Mark quipped, holding up his goblet and winking. "Oh, you," Becky giggled while Nanu shed her clothes and crawled over Becky, straddling her hips and beginning to squirm their pussies together slowly. "I don't think she's gonna give up on the notion of being my slave-girl any time soon; it seems to make her feel safe. If she asks about you as a slave, I'll say I freed you." "Well, I was pretty enslaved to you for a while there," Mark chuckled. "Funny, I remember being so in love with you while those tabs were in effect, and I remember it fondly. But at this point, I'm just back to feeling like you're my dear friend, and I love you, just not in love any more, ya' know?" Becky sighed and nodded as she placed her hands gently on Nanu's tits and caressed them while undulating beneath the slave-girl. "I know what you mean. Talk about exhilarating, right? We should do that again at some point, just for funsies." "I'm in," Mark agreed, as his cock hardened from watching the two girls make love. He put down his wine, stood up and moved in behind them, kneeling at the bottom of the couch and sinking his cock deep inside Becky, making her moan as he started to slide in and out of her. "And what about our other acquisitions?" he asked, caressing and squeezing Nanu's ass while he fucked his Physics teacher. "Uh, the clothes we'll keep at my place, for future use," she breathed, loving the feel of Nanu's moist cunt on hers while Mark fucked deeply. She felt Nanu shiver and gasp as Mark pulled out of her and pushed into the slave-girl. "And I bought those big amphorae of Falernian wine, there's twenty-six liters in each. We'll bury them where we know nature has never been disturbed back in our time, and then retrieve them. Voila, Roman wine for dinner every night." "I'm gonna have fun explaining that to my parents;” Mark chuckled as he slid back into Becky, making her cry out. Dinner with Family. Dhallyla stared at the liquid in her glass in wonder while her family sat at the table for dinner. It was quite unlike anything she'd ever tasted before. "Mark, what; what did you say this was called again?" she asked. He shrugged as he ate. "It's a Roman-style wine, called Falernian. Lots of people are recreating ancient alcohol recipes now, so I thought we'd give this a shot. Pretty nice, hmm?" "Very strong," his sister Roxy rasped as she put down her wine glass and made a bit of a face. "Very, very strong." "That's why the Romans and Greeks mixed their wine with water," he chuckled. "Some Roman talked about not being able to bring an open flame near wine because it could catch fire. So I mixed it with water, like the instructions said. Sorry if it's still strong." "Where did you get this again?" his father asked. "Ren Faire," he said easily. "All sorts of brewers and people showing off their wine and beer skills these days at them, so I thought I'd give it a shot, ya' know? Bought a couple of bottles." "It's certainly different, but I can grow to like it," his mother mused. "Make sure you get more before we run out." "I can do that," Mark replied cheerfully. Later that night, he was sitting at his desk in his room, surfing for eras to visit during their next adventure, when the door to his room clicked shut. He turned his head to see his sister leaning back against the door, looking at him pointedly. "Something I can do for you, Rox?" he asked plainly, keeping his eyes on his research. "Now that you mention it, yeah," she said, folding her arms and wearing that insufferable smirk of hers. She never stopped reminding him who the elder sibling was. "So I did some looking around online, and there hasn't been a Ren Faire within five hundred miles of us in the last six months." Mark paused in his surfing and slowly turned to look at his sister. "So," she said, walking slowly toward him. "I figure it's about time you told me what the Hell is really going on;” Loose ends, scores to settle, a moral quandaries abound! It's Your Own Fault You Snooped! Mark didn't speak for several seconds, trying his best to not gape at Roxy. She'd always been somewhat suspicious of him when he did just about anything, but the fact that she'd done actual research this time was something new. She had played her hand, and he was cornered. But still, he found himself not sure what to say. "Well, c'mon, you little trouser snake," moving away from the door and sauntering toward him. She could tell she'd caught him dead to rights about something, but now she needed to find out what it was. "Ya' might as well 'fess up, because I somehow doubt you want mom and dad to know what you're up to." The mere thought brought a shiver to Mark and left a cold sweat on his brow. He swallowed, trying not to panic. Roxy had less mercy in a sibling confrontation than Mike Tyson had in the ring. He thought of the number of times she'd beaten his ass for tattling on her when they were younger, and how she'd always get some brutal form of revenge he was unlikely to forget. And he dreaded the thought of how she could screw this up for him. "I'm almost not wanting to find out, at least for a while, because watching your mind flop around in panic is kinda fun," she said, smirking as she stopped in front of him and leaned forward. "But I need to make a decision about whether the 'rents oughta know, so let's speed this up, okay?" She then turned and sat on the edge of his bed, leaning back on her hands, one leg crossed over the other as she looked at him pointedly. "Spill it, little brother." His mind raced. What could he tell her? She'd caught him in a flat-out lie that he had acquired his Falernian wine from a Ren Faire, and had no doubt pieced together that his other recent exotic acquisitions were likewise not from where he'd claimed. So what were her suspicions? She no doubt was assuming, quite reasonably, that he was involved in some illicit activity that

The brilliant Roman love poet is the poster boy for teen angst. He feels everything intensely, from the stealing of his favourite napkin to the death of his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow. And then he dies young. Of course the Romantics loved him, as do his biographer Dr Daisy Dunn and Professor Llewelyn Morgan. Born to an aristocratic family in Verona, Catullus is fearless in abusing in sophisticated verse his father's friend Julius Caesar, his ex-lover Lesbia and the poets unlucky enough to be his contemporaries. Satirical, scurrilous and obscene, his popularity endures.'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist. Her books, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet, and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, were published in 2016 and earned her a place in the Guardian‘s list of leading female historians.Producer...Beth O'Dea

“I have a long and complicated personal history which I am in the process of turning into a huge memoir; crucial facts are that I was reared Catholic but got over it, was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one and am much happier than I was when I was younger.” Poet, novelist and critic Roz Kaveney's iography on her Glamorous Rags website is a brilliant beginning for anyone wanting to understand the struggles and celebrations of becoming the writer you are and the person you are. In this episode of The Writers' Gym podcast, Dr Rachel Knightley talks to Roz about her novel Tiny Pieces of Skull (winner of the Lambda in 2016), her recent novel Revelations and a poetic memoir The Great Good Time. In 2018 she published original versions of the complete poems of the Roman poet Catullus with Sad Press. self-knowledge of what it is you want your writing and your writing life to be.   Find out more about Roz: https://glamourousrags.dymphna.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roz_Kaveney https://university.open.ac.uk/arts/research/pvcrs/2023/kaveney   Join the Writers' Gym for more writing and creative confidence workouts at www.writersgym.com or sign up to our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com   Get in touch with us at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com     Writing Workout based on Roz's interview   Warm-up: “I have a long and complicated personal history, which I'm in the process of turning into a memoir. Crucial facts are that I was really Catholic, but got over it was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one, and I'm much happier than I was when I was younger.” Roz Kaveney biog, Glamorous Rags  Imagine you're looking back at your writing and personal growth, not just what's happened so far but what will have happened. What have you ‘got over'? What have you claimed as part of your newer, truer identity   Main Exercise : “Research more than you need, and then throw half your research away.” Roz Kaveney   Choose an area of interest you don't normally get to spend much time with. Go to the British Library website, or Google, and let yourself wander. Keep everything that fascinates you.   Choose a scene to create in that world or around that idea. Include what you like. Exclude what doesn't fit or feel relevant. And know that whatever is still there has had that research support it – even if it doesn't make the final draft.     Take a blank sheet of paper and choose one of these questions:   Who have I been told I am? What do I agree is true? What do I not agree is true? If I were to take one step towards something truer today: -what would it be towards? -what would that step be?

In this episode of Crack the Book, we take a look at Week Fourteen of Ted Gioia's Humanities Course, covering Virgil's The Aeneid (Books 1–2), Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 1), and selections from The Portable Roman Reader. The focus is on key texts from Roman literature, their historical context, and their connections to earlier Greek works, providing an overview of their content and significance.Key Discussion Points: Virgil's The Aeneid (Robert Fagles' Translation): Written between 29–19 BCE, The Aeneid serves as Rome's foundational epic, modeled on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Book 1 opens with Aeneas, a Trojan survivor, shipwrecked on Carthage's shore due to Juno's interference, meeting Queen Dido, an exile from Tyre. Book 2 recounts Troy's fall, including the Trojan Horse stratagem and Aeneas' escape with his father Anchises and son Ascanius, losing his wife Creusa. The text emphasizes Aeneas' pietas (duty to gods, family, state). Divine rivalries, notably Juno's grudge from the Judgment of Paris and Venus' protection of Aeneas, drive the narrative. The Fagles translation includes maps and a glossary for accessibility. Ovid's Metamorphoses (David Raeburn's Translation): Composed around 8 CE, Metamorphoses is a 15-book poem chronicling transformations from creation to Ovid's era. Book 1 covers the creation of the cosmos from Chaos, the division into four elements (fire, water, earth, air), and humanity's decline from the Golden to Iron Age. It includes a flood narrative with Deucalion and Pyrrha and the story of Io, transformed into a cow by Jupiter to evade Juno. The Raeburn edition organizes vignettes with titled sections for clarity. The Portable Roman Reader (Basil Davenport, Ed.): Published in 1951, this anthology includes poetry from Rome's Republic, Augustan, and later Empire periods. Catullus (c. 60s–50s BCE) offers direct, personal verses, translated by Byron. Horace (65–8 BCE) writes complex, philosophical odes, less accessible due to style. Martial (c. 38–104 CE) provides epigrams on public life, including two elegies for a deceased young girl. Davenport's notes contextualize each era, and the anthology features prose by Livy, Caesar, and Tacitus for future study. Contextual Notes: The texts reflect Rome's engagement with Greek literary traditions, adapting gods' names (e.g., Hera to Juno) and themes. The course's schedule prioritizes rapid coverage to identify key works and connections.Takeaways:I loved this week so much! It felt great to come "home" to Rome. I've got specific ideas about how to approach each of these books, but in my opinion they are all worth the time for certain people. The music was gorgeous, arias and overtures from Puccini and Verdi! You must listen...check out my link below. And the cave paintings were worth examining as well, especially the handprints from Indonesia. See that link below, too.This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for WHATEVER IS NEXTLINKSTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)Spotify Play List of Puccini and Verdi without wordsCave...

The Honest Broker's Humanities Course shifts to the Middle East and Persia, exploring the Quran (circa 800 A.D.) and the 13th-century poet Rumi, before returning to Rome next week. The reading, kept under 250 pages, includes 14 of the Quran's 114 surahs (1-5, 12, 17, 18, 32, 36, 55, 67, 103, 112) and self-selected Rumi poems. New to both texts, I approached them with curiosity, trusting the curator's selection after prior Bible readings, but found the experience underwhelming.The Quran portrays Allah as focused on division between believers and unbelievers, with frequent mentions of hell for those lacking faith. Submission to Allah's will is paramount, and praying toward Mecca symbolizes spiritual alignment and community unity. The text excludes Jews from Abraham's promise if they do wrong, though some verses suggest salvation for believers, possibly including Jews and Christians. Jesus is depicted as a prophet, not divine, contrasting Christian beliefs. Allah seems to emphasize punishing unbelievers, with hell referenced often, and fasting is highlighted as a path to righteousness, noted during Ramadan.Familiar Biblical stories—Cain and Abel, Joseph, Moses—appear but differ from their older Genesis versions. Joseph, for example, is nearly perfect in the Quran, unlike the flawed figure in the Bible. The origins of these variations remain unclear after online research. Some Quranic verses, like “God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity” (Surah 2:286), contrast with Christian teachings, such as Galatians 6:2's call to “bear one another's burdens.”Rumi's poetry feels modern and dreamlike but elusive compared to upcoming Roman poets. Plans are in place to revisit Rumi when studying Dante, a contemporary. The Quran was read on a Kindle (Clear Quran translation), which hindered the experience due to reliance on spatial memory for physical books, making note-taking and recall difficult. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's music and Islamic architecture were briefly explored but felt overwhelming. Next week's reading covers Virgil's Aeneid (Books 1 and 2), Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 1), and selections from Horace, Catullus, and Sulpicia in Davenport's Portable Roman Reader, with Verdi and Puccini arias and cave art.LINKSTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)Rumi's PoemsCONNECTTo read more of my writing, visit my Substack - https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ LISTENSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bdApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm

Send us a textHello and happy Part 2 of our Mythology episode! This week Max is going to tell us the story of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur! Get ready to rage!Max's Sources - Theseus, Ariadne, the Minotaur, and the LabyrinthDiffen.com - “Labyrinth vs. Maze”  Classical Kids' summary of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur  Greek Mythology: The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur Liverpool Museums, “Theseus and the Minotaur” Knossos Palace, “The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur”  The Metropolitan Museum, “Theseus, Hero of Athens”  Epoch Magazine, “Theseus and Ariadne in Naxian Identity” Ancient Greece, “Theseus and the Minotaur” Theoi, “Ariadne” Cornell College, “Analysis of Ariadne and Theseus” The Guardian, “In love's labyrinth” by Charlotte Higgins  Myth Matters podcast, “Into the Labyrinth and the myth of Ariadne's Thread”  Full free text of Catullus 64 in English and Latin BONUS: Homeric Hymn to DemeterSupport the showCheck out our books (and support local bookstores!) on our Bookshop.org affiliate account!Starting your own podcast with your very cool best friend? Try hosting on Buzzsprout (and get a $20 Amazon gift card!)Want more??Visit our website!Join our Patreon!Shop the merch at TeePublic!If you liked these stories, let us know on our various socials!InstagramTiktokGoodreadsAnd email us at sortofthestory@gmail.com

Is Gov. Janet Mills of Maine an ‘Neo-Confederate'? Yes, and “she is taking states' rights to the extreme,” argues Victor Davis Hanson on today's edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” After refusing to comply with a Trump administration order banning men from competing in women's high school sports, the Department of Justice launched a civil lawsuit against the Maine Department of Education for failing to protect women in women's sports, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday. “Janet Mills may not know it, but she's an insurrectionist. She's a neo-Confederate. She is taking states' rights to the extreme. Rather than saying, ‘I oppose the federal government. I will go to court to stop you. But if I lose, I will comply because the states are subordinate to the federal' —she's not doing that. She's right in the spirit of the old Confederacy… “I can cite you chapter and verse from the poems of Catullus to the novels of ‘Satyricon,' of Petronius, ‘The Satyricon,' of men who dress up like women. Both as transvestites who are still, I guess you'd say heterosexual, but they have a fetish to wear women's clothes or that who really want to be women. In the case of a poem or two, they castrate themselves. It's found in ancient history.   “And statistically, if you go back before this controversy happened, it was a very small number of the population. About less than 1% identified as transgendered or transsexual. Then it became, in the last decade, the next civil rights frontier. And all of a sudden, we had universities where students were polled at 10% or 20% or 30%, thought they might want to transition. It became almost a cult following.”  

Neoteric poetry is on the menus this week, as the guys take a close look at what Dave considers the most beautiful and moving poem from antiquity: Catullus 101. This is the famous threnody that Gaius Valerius Catullus (87-55 B.C.) addressed to his brother's ashes in Bithynia around 57 BC. The haunting lines of elegiac couplet compress a world of sorrow and sadness into 10 short verses. Along the way, Jeff explains how Catullus might have been a beat poet, and there's much discussion of what was driving the art and culture of the time. The one gentleman of Verona, the place that was a kind of Roman Hocking Hills, made his way to the capital city at the age of 22 and quickly put his name in lights with his brilliant and racy poetry addressed to cow-eyed Lesbia. Listeners will want to tune in for the new music, a brand-new sponsor (dellachelpka.art), and the usual, though moderated - given the weighty subject matter - hijinks. Check out A.S. Kline's translation of the poem here: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.php#anchor_Toc531846828

Ewan Whyte's feature essay, ‘The Cult That Raised Me' – about the United States based Community of Jesus and Grenville Christian College – includes the introduction, “When I was 11, my parents sent me to Grenville Christian College, a prestigious Anglican boarding school in Brockville. It turned out to be a perverse fundamentalist cult that brainwashed, abused and terrorized students. For decades, the school tried to intimidate us into silence. It didn't work.”Ewan Whyte is a writer, art and cultural critic. He has written for the Globe & Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. He is the author of Desire Lines: Essays on Art Poetry & Culture, Shifting Paradigms: Essays on Art and Culture and Entrainment, a book of poetry, and a translation of the rude ancient Roman poet Catullus. His feature essay 'The Cult that Raised Me' was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. Ewan's upcoming book, Mothers of Invention: Essays on the Community of Jesus and Grenville Christian College, will be released in June and is available for preorder now. In advance of its release, Ewan shared some of his research and thoughts about these two organisations.You can support us on Patreon. Sarah Steel's debut book Do As I Say is available on audiobook now.Links:Mothers of Invention: Essays on the Community of Jesus and Grenville Christian College — by Ewan Whyte, Wolsak & Wynn, 2025The Cult That Raised Me — by Ewan Whyte, Toronto Life, 5 January 2021I-Team: Former Members Of Cape Religious Group Allege Emotional Abuse, 'People Don't Realize The Mind Control' — WBZ News, 4 November 2021Aaron Bushnell: Friends struggle to comprehend US airman's Gaza protest death — by Kayla Epstein & Angelica Casas, BBC News, 3 March 2024 Subscribe and support the production of this independent podcast, and you can access early + ad-free episodes at https://plus.acast.com/s/lets-talk-about-sects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textWhat's that knocking? It's the multi-talented Tishani Doshi, sharing her Bloodaxe collection A God at the Door. You'll hear supple, powerful poems fuelled by a controlled rage at the continuing oppression of women, blended with a playful optimism and dazzling ability to weave history, contemporary politics, and vivid imagery. Plus Peter bites the AI bullet. Can Chat GPT be useful for poets? Or is AI the poet's nemesis? Robin emerges with a little colour in her cheeks, having read Bad Kid Catullus the 'filthsmith' Roman poet as re-imagined by innovative small press, Sidekick Books. Support the showPlanet Poetry is a labour of love!If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

No togas today please. Natalie celebrates the mid-winter festival of Ancient Rome, Saturnalia. According to Catullus, it's the 'best of days'. Expect cross-dressing, sweets, drinking games and the wearing of special pyjamas. Oh and anarchy and jokes. Sounds a bit like a Christmas pantomime? Not surprising, according to veteran pantomime dame André Vincent, who traces the origins of panto back to the fifth century. Early in that same century - late antiquity - a Roman Christian named Macrobius wrote the most comprehensive extant guide to Saturnalia, which was celebrated in some places, in one way or another, until possibly the eleventh century.You are invited to be part of this festive show which includes gifts for the entire Radio Theatre audience (cue noisy rustling of sweet bags) and the wearing of traditional Saturnalian pointy hats (the 'pileus') to celebrate. Even Professor Llewelyn Morgan has one. Honest.Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

From ancient times to the present, cultures worldwide have celebrated the sun's return following the winter solstice. In this episode, I bring you the story of the midwinter celebrations of ancient Rome, from Saturnalia to Sol Invictus and beyond.Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.Episode sourcesSupport the showEnchantedPodcast.netFacebook/enchantedpodcastInstagram/enchantedpodcastTumblr/enchantedpodcast

Catullus' poetry

Latinets inflytande på den västerländska kulturen går inte att överskatta. Latinet var romarrikets lingua franca och ett verktyg för att styra imperiet. Latinet har format den europeiska civilisationen på djupet. Från religion, litteraturen och vetenskapen till juridiken och filosofin har latin påverkat hur vi tänker och uttrycker oss.Detta är det första av två avsnitt om Latinets utveckling. I podden Historia Nu samtalar programledaren Urban Lindstedt med Karin Westin Tikkanen som är journalist och docent i latin. Hon är aktuell med boken Latin – En handbok i odödlighet.Det indoeuropeiska latinet har sitt ursprung i Latium Vetus, en region i det nuvarande Italien. Det talades av latinarna, ett folk som bodde i stadsstater och delade en gemensam religion. Den äldsta kända latinska inskriptionen återfanns på Lapis Niger, en sten vid romerska forumet från år 500 fvt. Denna primitiva form av latin visar att romarna hade ett eget språk under en tid då de annars tros ha varit starkt påverkade av etruskisk kultur.Latinet spred sig i takt med romarrikets expansion och blev så småningom tal- och skriftspråk i stora delar av Medelhavsvärlden. Det användes i dagens Portugal, Spanien, Frankrike, Italien, delar av Belgien och Schweiz samt i Rumänien - områden där romanska språk nu talas. Språket nådde även England och Nordafrika.När romarriket var som störst år 117 sträckte det sig från Mesopotamien i öster till Iberiska halvön i väster, från Saharas öknar i syd till Brittiska öarna norr. Och med expansionen följde imperiets språk – latinet som förenade människor och användes för att sprida information över stora avstånd. När kristendomen etablerades fick språket ytterligare skjuts, i kyrkliga sammanhang, över ännu större områden.Den romerska litteraturen, som till stor del imiterade den grekiska, utvecklade sina egna unika drag. Den romerska komedin, med författare som Terentius och Plautus, var bland de tidigaste litterära formerna. Lyriken blomstrade med Lucretius och Catullus, medan Vergilius skapade episka verk som "Aeneiden". Prosan användes flitigt för historieskrivning, retorik och filosofi, med Cicero som en framstående figur.Bild: Kvinna med vaxbricka från fresk från Pompeji. Fotograferad av Joel Bellviure, Wikipedia, Public Domain.Musik: Rome av biggrez. Storyblocks Audio.Klippare: Emanuel Lehtonen Vill du stödja podden och samtidigt höra ännu mer av Historia Nu? Gå med i vårt gille genom att klicka här: https://plus.acast.com/s/historianu-med-urban-lindstedt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textWe're back from the summer break and in conversation with Christine Dwyer Hickey, who was the subject of our very first Books for Breakfast podcast. This time around we're talking to her about her latest novel Our London Lives, just published this week. We also give ourselves a double Toaster Challenge. Enda talks about Alba de Cespedes' Roman novel Forbidden Notebook, while Peter stays in Rome but goes back 2000 years to the last years of the Republic and the poet Catullus, two of whose poems he pays homage to.   Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Incidental musicScott Buckley, Emmit Fenn. Logo by Freya SirrTo subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. Support the show

fWotD Episode 2645: Homeric Hymns Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.The featured article for Thursday, 1 August 2024 is Homeric Hymns.The Homeric Hymns (Ancient Greek: Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι, romanized: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. The hymns praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods on Mount Olympus, or the establishment of their cult. In antiquity, the hymns were generally, though not universally, attributed to the poet Homer: modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though some are more recent and the latest, the Hymn to Ares, may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE.The Homeric Hymns share compositional similarities with the Iliad and the Odyssey, also traditionally attributed to Homer. They share the same artificial literary dialect of Greek, are composed in dactylic hexameter, and make use of short, repeated phrases known as formulae. It is unclear how far writing, as opposed to oral composition, was involved in their creation. They may initially have served as preludes to the recitation of longer poems, and have been performed, at least originally, by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre or other stringed instrument. Performances of the hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts.There are references to the Homeric Hymns in Greek poetry from around 600 BCE; they appear to have been used as educational texts by the early fifth century BCE, and to have been collected into a single corpus after the third century CE. Their influence on Greek literature and art was relatively small until the third century BCE, when they were used extensively by Alexandrian poets including Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes. They were also an influence on Roman poets, such as Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. In late antiquity (c. 200 – c. 600 CE), they influenced both pagan and Christian literature, and their collection as a corpus probably dates to this period. They were comparatively neglected during the succeeding Byzantine period (that is, until 1453), but continued to be copied in manuscripts of Homeric poetry; all the surviving manuscripts of the hymns date to the fifteenth century. They were also read and emulated widely in fifteenth-century Italy, and indirectly influenced Sandro Botticelli's painting The Birth of Venus.The Homeric Hymns were first published in print by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489. George Chapman made the first English translation of them in 1624. Part of their text was incorporated, via a 1710 translation by William Congreve, into George Frideric Handel's 1744 musical drama Semele. The rediscovery of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in 1777 led to a resurgence of European interest in the hymns. In the arts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used the Hymn to Demeter as an inspiration for his 1778 melodrama Proserpina. Their textual criticism progressed considerably over the nineteenth century, particularly in German scholarship, though the text continued to present substantial difficulties into the twentieth. The Homeric Hymns were also influential on the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, particularly Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later poets to adapt the hymns included Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Constantine P. Cavafy. Their influence has also been traced in the works of James Joyce, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:47 UTC on Thursday, 1 August 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Homeric Hymns on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Arthur.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or hereFor more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chatLeave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it's easier). Thanks!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– The YouTube footage of the big Cleveland reading/conference/shouting match: Pt. 1 & Pt. 2– My recent appearance on A Mouthful of Air, w/ Mark McGuinness– The recent episode of Poetry Says ft. Jonathan Farmer– The recent episode of Poetry Says all about Horace iv.1– A slew of poems (mentioned, not read!) from my dumb book Midlife– Catullus ci– Catullus li– Sappho 31 (trans. Chris Childers!)– Archaischer Torso Apollos by Rainer Maria Rilke– The Unquarried Blue of Those Depths Is All But Blinding by Ashley Anna McHugh– A Letter by Anthony Hecht– A se stesso by Giacomo Leopardi– Antigone by Sophocles, trans. Jean Anouilh– Translation by Roy Fuller– Halcyon by Alcman, trans. A. E. Stallings– Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae by Ernest Dowson– Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam by Ernest Dowson– Cold Turkey by Joshua Mehigan– Back in Your Head by Tegan & SaraFrequently mentioned names:– Joshua Mehigan– Shane McCrae– A. E. Stallings– Ryan Wilson– Morri Creech– Austin Allen– Jonathan Farmer– Zara Raab– Amit Majmudar– Ethan McGuire– Coleman Glenn– Alexis Sears– JP Gritton– Alex Pepple– Ernie Hilbert– Joanna PearsonOther Ratbag Poetry Pods:Poetry Says by Alice AllanI Hate Matt Wall by Matt WallVersecraft by Elijah BlumovRatbag Poetics By David Jalal MotamedAlice: Poetry SaysBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] comMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith

Today's poem is Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week's episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Ekphrastic poetry sometimes pushes back against the idea of simple art made complicated in idea, born from an eccentric personality. Inspired by another famous Twombly painting, one that itself is inspired partly by a poem, today's poem realizes the frenetic sense of the artist's canvas is a conceptual product of a sophisticated and sometimes frustrating mind.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

We work through carmen #5 by Catullus "Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus. . ." Then a couple of Shakespeare sonnets. I hope you like. Don't forget to go over to soulsteading.life! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1243386908/support

This week Jeff and Dave welcome into the studio Classicist extraordinaire and all around good guy Dr. Kirk Summers. We should probably also mention that Kirk is a Prof. of Classics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, former co-owner of the Red Cat Coffee Houses in the same city, and one of the world's leading experts in Theodore Beza. And he still finds time to root for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Kirk drops by to talk about one of his earliest works on Beza, A View from the Palatine. First published in 1548 before his conversion to the Protestant faith, Beza issued this collection of poems, Sylvae, much in the style of Catullus, Martial, and other Roman love poets. This got him into a little bit of hot water, as Kirk explains. Along the way, we hear how Beza's early training in the humanities shaped him for a career in theology and polemics, about his wife Claudine Desnosse (that she was not Candida of his poetry), and some of bases views on the relationship between Christianity and the ancient Greeks and Romans. All this and more can be yours, if you can survive Dave's first, atrocious pun.

Ewan Whyte is a writer, translator and author. He has written for the Globe & Mail and The Literary Review of Canada. He is the author of the books, Desire Lines: Essays on Art Poetry & Culture, Shifting Paradigms: Essays on Art and Culture. Entrainment, a book of poetry, and a translation of the rude ancient Roman poet Catullus. His feature essay "The Cult that Raised Me" on the Community of Jesus/Grenville Christian College was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.   for two extra episodes a month and exclusive content please visit patreon.com/thenickbryantpodcast nickbryantnyc.com epstienjustice.com

Why You Feel the Way You Do: Understand and Heal the Source of Stressful Emotions by Reneau Z. Peurifoy M.A. https://amzn.to/472eR3h It was long ago that Roman poet Catullus (84-54BC) said, “We hate and we love, can one tell me why?” Have you ever wondered . . . Why You Feel the Way You Do? Now is the time for you to discover what's hiding behind the negative emotions, unhealthy response patterns and distorted thinking that keeps many from living a happier and more fulfilling life. Why You Feel the Way You Do takes you on a journey beyond your personality, your DNA, and your family upbringing, to pinpoint critical issues and self-destructive thought patterns that influence your well-being, followed by practical tools for managing negative emotions in a healthier way. • Learn about the emotional circuits we share with our pets. • Discover ways to quiet destructive emotional triggers. • Understand the role of guilt/shame and ways to manage them. • Reduce the negative effects of social media and devices. • Identify common destructive response patterns and learn how to change them. . . . plus much more! In Why You Feel the Way You Do, author Reneau Z. Peurifoy helps you emerge from those nagging, unhealthy emotional barriers, while providing practical ways to experience more joy in your daily life. Moving beyond emotional problems, Peurifoy also explores what positive psychology has recently learned about the three most important emotional factors that impact personal happiness. Show Notes About The Guest(s): Renaud Purifoy is an internationally known author, therapist, and teacher with over four decades of experience. He has written books that have been translated into multiple languages and has appeared on numerous radio and television programs. Renaud has been invited to speak at 11 national conferences for the Anxiety Disorders Association of America. Summary: Renaud Purifoy joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss his latest book, "Why You Feel the Way You Do: Understand and Heal the Source of Stressful Emotions." Renaud takes listeners on a journey through the seven basic emotions that humans share with animals and explains how these emotions develop into triggers. He also explores the negative and positive core response patterns we have and shares three key factors that contribute to happiness. Renaud provides practical activities at the end of each chapter to help readers apply the concepts in their own lives. Key Takeaways: Renaud explores the seven basic emotions shared by humans and animals: anger, fear, seeking, play, lust, separation anxiety, and caring. Emotions serve as a way for the brain to index information and create associations with memories. Renaud discusses the importance of desensitization to reduce the negative effects of triggers and shares practical strategies for managing anxiety. Social media can have negative effects on mental health, and it's important to set boundaries and limit screen time. Building strong relationships and connections with others is a key factor in happiness and overall well-being. Quotes: "The brain is always making associations, and emotions are the way that your brain indexes information." - Renaud Purifoy "Desensitization is the process of gradually exposing yourself to triggers and managing anxiety to reduce their negative effects." - Renaud Purifoy "People are starved for real relationships, and that's why they're so susceptible to the addictive nature of social media." - Renaud Purifoy

In their eighth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom look at a contemporary of Catullus, Lucretius, and the only poem we have from him, De rerum natura (The Nature of Things), which sets out ideas about how to live one's life based on the Epicurean philosophical tradition, embracing friends, gardens, materialism and moderation.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsEmily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books.Further reading in the LRB:Richard Jenkyns: Coaxing and Seducing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the second half of their Among the Ancients series, Emily and Tom move to Ancient Rome, starting with the late Republican poet Catullus. Described by Tennyson, somewhat misleadingly, as ‘the tenderest of Roman poets', Catullus combined a self-conscious technical virtuosity with a broad emotional range and a taste for paradox, often using obscene diction to skirt across the boundaries of gender and aesthetics.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsEmily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books.Further Reading in the LRB:William Fitzgerald: Badmouthing City Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joining Charlotte in today's episode is Dr. Aven McMaster. In a conversation that could have carried on for HOURS, they talk about sexual and gender politics in Rome. From Ovid to Catullus. Aven tells the story of the woman she believes everyone should know about and mentions a few sources by the end, for anyone who enjoys a rabbit hole;Suetonius "Lives of the Caesars", Cicero "Philippics", Catullus, and Juvenal "Satires"."Exploring Gender Diversity" edited by Allison Surtees and Jennifer Dyer, from Edinburgh University Press, and "Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Culture" by Tom Sapsford, from Oxford University Press."The Scholars" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=13330"Pandora", by Susan McMaster (http://web.ncf.ca/smcmaster/), originally from "Dark Galaxies", Ouroboros Press 1986, and also in "Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New" published in 2010 by Black Moss Books https://a.co/d/eIjYU5RFollow Aven on socialsWebsite: www.alliterative.net Twitter: @AvenSarah

Returning champion and fan favourite historian Patrick Wyman comes back to talk to Phoebe about the prolific 1st century BC Roman poet Catullus; poster, lover, obsessive butt guy. -------- PHOEBE ALERT Can't get enough Patrick and Phoebe? Want some Milo in the mix too? Check out their new limited series about Rome Here! And while you're clicking links, check out Phoebe's Substack Here! -------- This show is supported by Patreon. Sign up for as little as $5 a month to gain access to a new bonus episode every week, and our entire backlog of bonus episodes! Thats https://www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast -------- Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with John West about his genre-bending memoir, Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery (2023, Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co.).Lesson and Carols takes its shape from the Christian liturgical practice of the same name, often celebrated on Christmas eve. The service consists of nine short lessons that sketch the fall of humanity, the coming Messiah, the need for redemption, and hope found in the birth of Christ. Between each lesson, congregants sing Christmas carols that provide musical counterpoint to the lessons just received. And John West's new memoir is divided accordingly: nine lessons structure a fragmentary narrative that reads equally as short meditations, prose poems, collections of quotations, and memoir on addiction and recovery, mental health, becoming a parent, the desire for redemption, the urgent need for poetry and music and ritual, and the elusiveness of language. The carols that divide the lessons are West's translations of the Latin poet Catullus's elegy. Driven by a desire for order and meaning, West's narrative nevertheless lingers with doubt, depression, and loneliness. Finding meaning in the rituals we co-create in the company of others, Lessons and Carols suggests that “maybe redemption is not a place you find, but a system of mapmaking. Sketch a land. Pencil in dragons. Imagine it real, resplendent, and broken under a waxing moon.”John West is a technologist and writer, currently reporting the news with code at the Wall Street Journal, where his work has won multiple awards and been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Previously, he worked at the MIT Media Lab and the digital publication Quartz. He holds an MFA in writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College. He lives in Boston with his partner, their daughter, and a cat. You can follow him @johnwest on Twitter.

Welcome to the History of Latin literature told in beginner-friendly, easy Latin (historia litterarum Latinarum lingua Latina simplici narrata). Listen to the episodes in order to navigate through history and learn the Latin language (the difficulty of my spoken Latin increases progressively throughout the episodes). The same episodes with Latin subtitles are available on my YouTube channel. This is a Satura Lanx production.

He loved and he hated. Other than that, not much is known about the life of Catullus, who scandalized the late Roman Republic with his bawdy poems, his aching love for the upper-class married woman he called "Lesbia," and his invective against Julius Caesar and other Roman notables. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Catullus, whose poetry was lost for a thousand years, but which, once recovered, became highly influential among poets for its accomplished technique and urgent intimacy. Additional listening: 93 Robert Frost Finds a Friend Ezra Pound 4 Sappho Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Synopsis Happy Saint Valentine's Day! On today's date in 1953, a new choral work by the German composer Carl Orff received its premiere performance at the La Scala opera house in Milan, Germany. Trionfo di Afrodite was the title of the new work, intended to be the final panel in a triptych of choral works celebrating life and love. This triptych included Orff's famous Carmina Burana, based on medieval texts, and Catulli Carmina, based on love lyrics by the Roman poet Catullus. All three pieces were given lavish, semi-staged performances at La Scala, led by the Austrian maestro Herbert von Karajan, and with German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda as the star soloists. For the world premiere performance of Trionfo di Afrodite, Schwarzkopf and Gedda portrayed a bride and groom on their wedding night: the texts they sang were pretty hot stuff—if you understand Latin, that is! Triofi di Afrodite shows Orff's indebtedness to Stravinsky, and his repetitive rhythmic patterns seem to anticipate the "minimalist" movement by several decades. At the 1953 premiere, Schwarzkopf's husband, record producer Walter Legge, gently suggested to Orff that he might consider a few cuts to the new work. Orff's response? "Oh, I know very well the effect of my rubber-stamp music!" In any case, Legge decided not to make a recording of the new work—which seems a shame, considering the all-star cast assembled at La Scala for its premiere! Music Played in Today's Program Carl Orff (1985 - 1982) Trionfo di Aphrodite

Yep, The Cru went Welsh, mostly to force Krispy to pronounce the language. This is definitely an odd episode: we discuss why we hate writing, really living out the immortal words of Catullus: odi et amo.  Surely you have felt it too: the frustration; the struggle to get words on the page; the "why oh why do I have to love this?"  And yet here we are, writing away. Except for Murph.  He didn't write anything, and though his speech may attempt to denigrate the beauty of Vivien Leigh, we all know the truth. From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Eisteddfod (Welsh, 'session') Eisteddfodau were held in medieval Wales and later, largely to regulate the admission of aspirants seeking to qualify as bards or minstrels. [...] They have been held annually since 1880, primarily for the encouragement of Welsh literature and music. Stories (?) begin around the 20:50 mark.

I know the rest of the night will be as devoted to work as love as I'm now resting in this expensive sentence and in the end I'll spend it fast writing to you anyway, addressing you and a solution or night beginning like a letter, just a few words more freely seeing everything more clearly than the rest of life and love tends to be like windows facing mostly south but surrounding us, I'm thinking of you.Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day is a book-length poem entirely written on December 22, 1978. It documents her day—early morning dreams, midday chores with her toddlers, late night all-night writing sessions with her partner—in a panoply of poetic modes. Chris and Suzanne read the poem alongside some of the other books they've read this year, and consider Mayer's works and days.SHOW NOTES.Bernadette Mayer: Midwinter Day. [Bookshop.]Other books by Bernadette Mayer: Memory. Studying Hunger Journals. Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words: The Early Books of Bernadette Mayer. Sonnets. A Bernadette Mayer Reader. The Helens of Troy, NY. Milkweed Smithereens. 0 to 9: The Complete Magazine, 1967–1969.Bernadette Mayer's pages at the Poetry Foundation and PennSound.Some of her early works can be found at Eclipse.Obituaries in the New York Times and Artforum.Our episodes on Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, the Metaphysical Poets, the Iliad, and The Waste Land.Catullus.Geoffrey Chaucer: The House of Fame.Ted and Alice are Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley. John Donne: A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day.Sonnet [You jerk you didn't call me up].Bernadette Mayer's Writing Experiments.Next: Sadeq Hedayat: Blind Owl. [Bookshop.]Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and hang out with us in a private Discord.

Publication date 2013-12-24 Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honor of the deity, Saturn, held on December 17 of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through December 23. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves. The poet Catullus called it "the best of days." In Roman mythology, Saturn was an agricultural deity who was said to have reigned over the world in the Golden Age, when humans enjoyed the spontaneous bounty of the earth without labor in a state of social egalitarianism. The revelries of Saturnalia were supposed to reflect the conditions of the lost mythical age, not all of them desirable. The Greek equivalent was the Kronia. Although probably the best-known Roman holiday, Saturnalia as a whole is not described from beginning to end in any single ancient source. Modern understanding of the festival is pieced together from several accounts dealing with various aspects. The Saturnalia was the dramatic setting of the multivolume work of that name by Macrobius, a Latin writer from late antiquity who is the major source for information about the holiday. In one of the interpretations in Macrobius's work, Saturnalia is a festival of light leading to the winter solstice, with the abundant presence of candles symbolizing the quest for knowledge and truth. The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun," on December 25. Notes This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code). --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/3rdeyevizion/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/3rdeyevizion/support

In this episode, the storyteller, Kathy Shimpock, will tell you the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.  Her version is one you may not have heard before, for it tells this story from the eyes of Ariadne.  In doing so, we'll discover how a single shift in perspective can make all the difference.Story: Derived from  "Ariadne's Lament" by Catullus.Cover illustration:   Statue of Sleeping Ariadne in the  Vatican Museums. Music:  The Snow Queen Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.Copyright 2022 Kathy Shimpock.    

I Hate And I Love By Catullus

We have a very fun conversation with Dr. Natalie Swain about her work on classical reception and the polar regions — the Arctic and Antarctic — science fiction, and comics. And Natalie and Mark find lots of overlaps and connections between their interests!“Between the Sheets: Reading the Coverlet as Comics in Catullus 64.” Image [&] Narrative 22.2 (2021)Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics@mazonianfeline#ClassicsTwitterComicsTranscript of this episodeThis episode on YouTubeOur Patreon pageRedbubble storeThis podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International LicenseThe Endless Knot RSS

Episode #39: Book of the Heaven Eleven (1) Roman poet Catullus and Greek poet Sappho both use eleven-syllable lines in their poetic stanzas. In this first part of my Intro I'll read my translation of a Catullus poem (with my commentary verse employing his rhythm) and a half-dozen examples of what I call “catullics.” I'll remark on certain references (Goethe's use of Greek myth, mystical numerology, Persian Sufi interpretation of Noah) which I've explained in my accompanying “blogatelles.” The idea is to ease the reader into the melodic flow of catullic wordsong.

On February 1st, 1936, Begum Hasrat Mohani, famed Indian writer and independence activist, sends the first of several letters to her daughter. She's traveling on the Hajj, passing through Iran and Iraq on her way to Mecca. Along the way, she writes to her daughter, noting the sights and sounds she experiences on her pilgrimage–and give us a glimpse into a different kind of travel writing, from a different kind of travel writer. Those letters are the subject of Daniel Majchrowicz's chapter in Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing (Ilex Foundation: 2022), edited by James Uden. The book covers travel writing by women, mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as they travel through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Both James and Daniel join us today to talk about their book, and their respective chapters. In this interview, we talk about what makes these examples of travel writing so interesting, and what the genre of travel writing means today after two years of travel restrictions. James Uden is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.researches and writes about Latin literature and the transformation of ancient ideas in later eras, especially the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has published essays on a broad range of topics, including Catullus, Virgil, love elegy, travel literature, and ancient fable. His first book, The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome (Oxford University Press: 2014), offers a new interpretation of the poems of Juvenal, showing how these texts responded to changing conceptions of Roman identity and contemporary trends in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. His second book, Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740-1830 (Oxford University Press: 2020) explores the work of British and American novelists of the eighteenth century. Daniel Majchrowicz is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University. His research considers the history and culture of Muslims and Islam in South Asia with an emphasis on Urdu literature, travel writing, popular culture, and language politics. He is a translator from Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian, and currently the director of the South Asia Research Forum. Daniel is also an editor of the forthcoming Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press: 2022) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

On February 1st, 1936, Begum Hasrat Mohani, famed Indian writer and independence activist, sends the first of several letters to her daughter. She's traveling on the Hajj, passing through Iran and Iraq on her way to Mecca. Along the way, she writes to her daughter, noting the sights and sounds she experiences on her pilgrimage–and give us a glimpse into a different kind of travel writing, from a different kind of travel writer. Those letters are the subject of Daniel Majchrowicz's chapter in Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing (Ilex Foundation: 2022), edited by James Uden. The book covers travel writing by women, mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as they travel through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Both James and Daniel join us today to talk about their book, and their respective chapters. In this interview, we talk about what makes these examples of travel writing so interesting, and what the genre of travel writing means today after two years of travel restrictions. James Uden is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.researches and writes about Latin literature and the transformation of ancient ideas in later eras, especially the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has published essays on a broad range of topics, including Catullus, Virgil, love elegy, travel literature, and ancient fable. His first book, The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome (Oxford University Press: 2014), offers a new interpretation of the poems of Juvenal, showing how these texts responded to changing conceptions of Roman identity and contemporary trends in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. His second book, Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740-1830 (Oxford University Press: 2020) explores the work of British and American novelists of the eighteenth century. Daniel Majchrowicz is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University. His research considers the history and culture of Muslims and Islam in South Asia with an emphasis on Urdu literature, travel writing, popular culture, and language politics. He is a translator from Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian, and currently the director of the South Asia Research Forum. Daniel is also an editor of the forthcoming Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press: 2022) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

On February 1st, 1936, Begum Hasrat Mohani, famed Indian writer and independence activist, sends the first of several letters to her daughter. She's traveling on the Hajj, passing through Iran and Iraq on her way to Mecca. Along the way, she writes to her daughter, noting the sights and sounds she experiences on her pilgrimage–and give us a glimpse into a different kind of travel writing, from a different kind of travel writer. Those letters are the subject of Daniel Majchrowicz's chapter in Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing (Ilex Foundation: 2022), edited by James Uden. The book covers travel writing by women, mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as they travel through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Both James and Daniel join us today to talk about their book, and their respective chapters. In this interview, we talk about what makes these examples of travel writing so interesting, and what the genre of travel writing means today after two years of travel restrictions. James Uden is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.researches and writes about Latin literature and the transformation of ancient ideas in later eras, especially the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has published essays on a broad range of topics, including Catullus, Virgil, love elegy, travel literature, and ancient fable. His first book, The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome (Oxford University Press: 2014), offers a new interpretation of the poems of Juvenal, showing how these texts responded to changing conceptions of Roman identity and contemporary trends in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. His second book, Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740-1830 (Oxford University Press: 2020) explores the work of British and American novelists of the eighteenth century. Daniel Majchrowicz is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University. His research considers the history and culture of Muslims and Islam in South Asia with an emphasis on Urdu literature, travel writing, popular culture, and language politics. He is a translator from Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian, and currently the director of the South Asia Research Forum. Daniel is also an editor of the forthcoming Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press: 2022) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

On February 1st, 1936, Begum Hasrat Mohani, famed Indian writer and independence activist, sends the first of several letters to her daughter. She's traveling on the Hajj, passing through Iran and Iraq on her way to Mecca. Along the way, she writes to her daughter, noting the sights and sounds she experiences on her pilgrimage–and give us a glimpse into a different kind of travel writing, from a different kind of travel writer. Those letters are the subject of Daniel Majchrowicz's chapter in Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing (Ilex Foundation: 2022), edited by James Uden. The book covers travel writing by women, mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as they travel through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Both James and Daniel join us today to talk about their book, and their respective chapters. In this interview, we talk about what makes these examples of travel writing so interesting, and what the genre of travel writing means today after two years of travel restrictions. James Uden is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.researches and writes about Latin literature and the transformation of ancient ideas in later eras, especially the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has published essays on a broad range of topics, including Catullus, Virgil, love elegy, travel literature, and ancient fable. His first book, The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome (Oxford University Press: 2014), offers a new interpretation of the poems of Juvenal, showing how these texts responded to changing conceptions of Roman identity and contemporary trends in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. His second book, Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740-1830 (Oxford University Press: 2020) explores the work of British and American novelists of the eighteenth century. Daniel Majchrowicz is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University. His research considers the history and culture of Muslims and Islam in South Asia with an emphasis on Urdu literature, travel writing, popular culture, and language politics. He is a translator from Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian, and currently the director of the South Asia Research Forum. Daniel is also an editor of the forthcoming Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press: 2022) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On February 1st, 1936, Begum Hasrat Mohani, famed Indian writer and independence activist, sends the first of several letters to her daughter. She's traveling on the Hajj, passing through Iran and Iraq on her way to Mecca. Along the way, she writes to her daughter, noting the sights and sounds she experiences on her pilgrimage–and give us a glimpse into a different kind of travel writing, from a different kind of travel writer. Those letters are the subject of Daniel Majchrowicz's chapter in Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing (Ilex Foundation: 2022), edited by James Uden. The book covers travel writing by women, mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as they travel through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Both James and Daniel join us today to talk about their book, and their respective chapters. In this interview, we talk about what makes these examples of travel writing so interesting, and what the genre of travel writing means today after two years of travel restrictions. James Uden is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University.researches and writes about Latin literature and the transformation of ancient ideas in later eras, especially the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has published essays on a broad range of topics, including Catullus, Virgil, love elegy, travel literature, and ancient fable. His first book, The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome (Oxford University Press: 2014), offers a new interpretation of the poems of Juvenal, showing how these texts responded to changing conceptions of Roman identity and contemporary trends in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. His second book, Spectres of Antiquity: Classical Literature and the Gothic, 1740-1830 (Oxford University Press: 2020) explores the work of British and American novelists of the eighteenth century. Daniel Majchrowicz is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University. His research considers the history and culture of Muslims and Islam in South Asia with an emphasis on Urdu literature, travel writing, popular culture, and language politics. He is a translator from Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian, and currently the director of the South Asia Research Forum. Daniel is also an editor of the forthcoming Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press: 2022) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The great actor David Garrick gave his farewell performance on June 10, 1776. This Today in London History podcast takes us there. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. It's June 10th. And talk about spoiled for choice. Working back, 22 years ago today […]

We continue our look at why people study Latin by exploring some of the beauty of Latin literature. In Episode 2 of Season 0, we talk about some of the most famous Roman authors, including Catullus, Cicero, and Vergil. Please subscribe to Rostra on Spotify and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @guerinjcl.

 Our intrepid hosts investigate poetry reading cliches and surmise which poets of the past (and present) would have committed these heinous crimes -- and in broad daylight, too!Poets we mention include:1) Read a fabulous essay by Emily Wilson on Sappho here. 2) Many of (Sagittarius) William Blake's artworks can be viewed online through the National Gallery of Victoria here.3)  Catullus's manuscripts are viewable online here; you'll need to be able to read Latin.4)  Aaron references James Wright's "The Sumac in Ohio," which ends:"Before June begins, the sap and coal smoke and soot from Wheeling steel, wafted down the Ohio by some curious gentleness in the Appalachians, will gather all over the trunk. The skin will turn aside hatchets and knife blades. You cannot even carve a girl's name on the sumac. It is viciously determined to live and die alone, and you can go straight to hell." Wright was a Sagittarius. 5) The poem we reference by Maxine Kumin about wearing the clothes she traded with Anne Sexton can be found here (navigate to the poem on the left side of the website). Kumin is a June 6 Gemini (like Aaron). 6)  H.D. (Virgo) is primarily a poet, but she also wrote prose and translated from the Greek.  7) Go watch Louise Glück talk about making poems here, particularly about her poem "Landscape" in Averno (first published in Threepenny Review). You'll thank me for showing this to you. Glück is a Taurus. 8) Terrance Hayes is a Scorpio. Visit his website here. 9)  The National Portrait Gallery had a terrific show on Gertrude Stein (Aquarius) in 2011. You can view much of the show online here. And of course there's a story that Anne Carson recounts in her book, Glass, Irony and Godabout why Hemingway friend-broke-up with Stein (in the essay "The Gender of Sound") that we recommend. (The story will not improve anyone's opinion of Hemingway.)  10) Joyce Carol Oates (Gemini) issued an apology after railing against the use of singular they/them pronouns. You can read a recap of the ugly mess here. 11)  Ezra Pound was a Scorpio as well as a poet, translator, and critic. His "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste" is instructive advice for poets.  Louis Menand wrote an essay for the New Yorker about Pound's rabid antisemitism ("The Pound Error," June 16, 2008). 12) Allen Ginsberg was a Gemini. You can read a collaborative poem called "Pull My Daisy" here. Kerouac adapted that into a film starring Ginsberg and others in their circle; Pull My Daisy can be watched here. 13)  Read more about Christina Rossetti on the Victorian Web, one of the best online resources about writers in the long 19th century. Rossetti is a Sagittarius. 14)  More about John Keats can be found here. Aaron and James also recommend Anahid Nersessian's terrific book Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse.&

Anna Jackson has six books of her poetry to her name, but her latest Actions & Travels focuses on the work of others. Rather than an academic textbook, Actions & Travels explores how poetry works through the discussion of 100 poems, ranging from the ancient Roman poet Catullus, through to the Romantics like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and on to many distinct contemporary New Zealand voices - among them Hera Lindsay Bird and Jenny Bornholdt. Jackson is a writer and academic who teaches English literature as an Associate Professor at Victoria University of Wellington. She is currently in residence at the Sargeson Centre in Auckland, having been awarded a 2022 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.

NB: Next week, Alice Allan of the Poetry Says podcast will be joining me to discuss the 2016 Jim Jarmusch poetry movie Paterson, but not the insanely long William Carlos Williams poem of the same name. Watch it now to pre-empt spoilers!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– More Alice!– Good advice from Ocean Vuong– Michael Robbins' poem “Alien vs. Predator”– Michael Robbins' review of Postmodern American Poetry– Michael Robbins' essay on atheism– Michael Robbins' book Walkman– José Ortega y Gasset's book The Revolt of the Masses– Another smart email from Coleman– An interview with Melissa Lovada-Oliva– Helena Feder's interview with Stephen Dunn– “Sun Under Wood”– Sonnet 73– Sappho 31– Catullus 51– Claudia Rankine's book Citizen– Sam Riviere's essay “In Defense of Poetic Plagiarism”Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!Send questions, comments, and suggestions to sleerickets@gmail.com. Music by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith

I become what I consume. Obviously I'm only referring to the mind, not the physical, for if this were true for the body, I would have turned into a bowl of breakfast cereal by now. But over years of reading and watching movies, with the gift of hindsight, I realize that I do merge with what I read, which isn't anything new. The old saying rings true: “Where your treasure is, there also your heart will be” - even when the treasure is a destructive one. While throwing around proverbs, I'll just add another: “Be careful of the company you keep.” I'd apply that same statement the books or movies or media you keep.Charles Bukowski, the alcoholic poet that I loved to read in my early twenties, is the subject. Yes, Bukowski, the carnal, rejectionist, drunken, insane, brutally honest, self-destructive societal outsider. Who doesn't love that kind of guy? He's the guy that follow no rules whatsoever and yet is a virtuoso of victimhood. But then he also wrote from the heart and could spin sentences into gold. He reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Bukowski did look at the stars, but just as often he would lie face down and describe the gutter itself, in great detail.In my own days of drinking, I knew there was a problem around control, a dysfunction that I couldn't manage. I knew it from the very first time the buzz spun me around, that this was my drug, what I had been looking for. But I also knew there was something not right about this affinity but I didn't want to face the problem. However, when I stumbled onto Charles Bukowski, I found a kindred spirit where I didn't have to care about the problem. I just let the problem be. I could let it exist. I just wanted to allow myself to not feel lost and empty, which meant letting the desire live unfettered. Not wanting to deal with the problem, I found Bukowski giving me a fist bump and saying, “Just go with it. Embrace it.” One quote that sticks in my mind was this one:“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”There is no question that Bukowski was a deep addict that could speak profoundly, often striking deep at the paradoxes written in our souls. Honesty and raw pessimism makes his writing hit readers hard. His gutter-style of writing, from the dark places, made him famous. He compared himself to a Roman writer named Catullus, another poet of the alleyways who lived on the hidden streets of society. The humor in Bukowski's stories made me laugh out loud, as he crossed every line and broke every taboo. This appealed to me because, like a court jester, he stood outside of society and mocked all of our facades. The masks that we wear and our modern rituals meant nothing to him. Throughout history, outsiders like the comedian and the bum on the street both hold special privilege to mock us “normies,” and Bukowski played both bum and comedian. He didn't fit the mold of expected society, so he flung himself far from it and laughed at the absurdity, like a failing student slinging mud from the back row of class. Or he at least appeared to be unbothered by his flaws.But then he would write something that let his own mask slip from his persona, like a poem called “Bluebird” that, when I first read it, struck me like a shovel to my forehead. A flicker of light remained within him. He knew something deep about his spirit, admitting that he recognized something like hope within.there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too tough for him,I say, stay in there, I'm not goingto let anybody seeyou.there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I pour whiskey on him and inhalecigarette smokeand the w****s and the bartendersand the grocery clerksnever know thathe'sin there.That poems sits in great contrast to his more common themes of nihilism, insanity, and pessimism, which fired on all cylinders through most of his writing. He touches on something very far down, very deep, in his spirit, and his Bluebird is like the last refuge of his hope, and it reminds me of a teaching of the Catechism that states the same thing, but without the references to whiskey and smoke:In the depths of his conscience…always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. (GS 16 & CCC 1776)Bukowski, even in full rejection mode, taps into the center of something that cannot be drowned with booze or smoked out.What fascinated me in his writing is that he avoids all political correctness, which was already a thing in his era, and goes straight to the bottom, to the blind alleys, and just says the things that few would say or write. He was a prophet of the “Big Empty” where nothing matters, and where nothing is important. In his world, everything is a waste of time. I recall reading this quote and nodding along, as so many mornings you would wonder why the day needed to happen:“I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?”Or darker still, Bukowski could enter a contest against Sylvia Plath for the saddest sentence ever written. There was always a yearning for suicide in the writing of both of their works. Here was a writer that could articulate depression. An example from Bukowksi:“If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.”Similar to Hemingway's quote, “Drinking is a way of ending the day,” Bukowski had a devastating idea about drinking as a way of killing hisself each day:I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.When I was reading Bukowski, the sentiments confirmed ideas that I held. The rejection of society and self I felt, even while I was going through the motions of proper society externally. The mask I wore in society, Bukowski just discarded it. He had no need of approval, or so he said - which is funny, because he actually did need approval. He wrote for approval and constantly sent out his art for publication. But like the person today who posts on Facebook, “I don't care what anyone thinks about me, I am who I am,” it's the same plea for approval. Declaring that you don't care about approval is always a cry for support from others to approve of you. I know quite a few people who need to be seen in a big pickup and drinking beer and talking sports who say, “I don't care what people think of me.” It always make me laugh, as this is like a very lite beer version of Bukowski, who took that sentiment and no parachute and jumped all the way to the bottom of that lie.The sadness that could be discerned in his writing so often bordered on thoughts of suicide, which is unavoidably where this way of life leads. My own feelings were bolstered by Bukowski's announcements about the cruel “truth” of the world. My suspicions were that the Big Empty was it, that life had no meaning, and here was the first author I found that wasn't afraid to declare it without a bunch of “isms” like subjectivism or positivism or communism or existentialism or deconstructionism or just plain old atheism. Bukowski didn't write happy endings or pretend the world was good. He saw the world as a mess and so he pushed the eject button.After reading many of his poems, however, his notions of being at odds with everything start to seem self-congratulatory. Today, what I see so many years later in his quotes is an addict in full bloom, with no remorse or intention to change. The same celebration of alcohol and recognition of emptiness can be felt in the books of Hemingway and Fitzgerald as well, but they have more refined plots and complex characters. Bukowski's dissatisfaction finds an outlet to pleasure through drinking, as the state of drunkenness removes what ails his heart, and so that becomes the center of his life. (This is not surprising to anyone that enjoys drinking or drugging, but differs none for those chasing other addictions like porn, gambling, cheating, food, work, shopping, plastic surgery, fitness, or internet and video games.) His rough youth and escapades are illustrated in his books via his alter ego Henry Chinaski. The path of his addiction is so well recorded that his life reads like a manual: this substance that gives pleasure initially becomes less satisfactory, but then you can't stop doing it because you're looking to get the high back again. Always repeating the same loop of events, he drinks to escape life. Then the isolation and self-pity infiltrates his life and everything else becomes pointless, stupid, a waste of time, and no one understands him. The reason he claims to love isolation so much is because of the grip alcohol had on him, not because he actually enjoyed isolation. The spiral of depression takes a person to a lonely place, and while the user feels like the vice lifts him up, it's a trick of the mind, and it only took me about 20 years to realize that this is literally what the word “hell” means. Bukowski celebrates this error because his addiction wants him to stay there and be lonely with it. A false worldview has trapped him, so he claims to love his self-absorption and self-pity. For all the humor and deep thoughts in his writing, that's what it is. He's in a hell that he's chosen and is too stubborn and addicted to ever leave.As the saying goes, the devil won't bother you while you are already doing what he wants; he only bothers you when you try to stop. If you don't believe me, stop doing the thing that troubles you the most and report back in one year about how it went for you.Repeatedly in his stories you can hear this bottoming out, this hopelessness, as he just wants to be left alone with writing and liquor because there no one can hurt him. No one but himself.I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. This is actually why I like Bukowski still today. He's just so honest about the problem. I read it very differently now though having called closing time on my own pity party. As I was adrift in adulthood, despite having a good job and wanting for nothing, this gnawing sense of meaninglessness led me to seek and explore the emptiness, since if nothing was all there was, why not make the most of it? There are billions of people in this state today. I can sense it in conversations and see it in their faces. I have felt what Bukowski describes and if you attend recovery meetings, you will hear this sentiment over and over and over again. One thing that has always amazed me at recovery meetings is that people will admit things very much like Bukowski. They will utter these damaged and lonely ideas to strangers because they felt no one would understand, and then, to their surprise, everyone understands. If it were not so sad it would be comical, that we all carry this burden, asking ourselves, “What is the meaning of life?” but feeling inadequate to articulate the feeling, we just say “Screw it,” and dive back into our problem because we think others would find our ideas crazy. As I've said before, at recovery meetings, no one is going to be surprised at your darkest thoughts or what you have done in the past because you lack the uniqueness you imagine. Yes, it hurts to hear it. Bukowski was unique in his writing, but he was not unique in his drinking or his addiction. In fact, he would have still been a great writer without the booze.As I've mentioned, I was a big fan of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Bradley Nowell of Sublime. Both died in their twenties. Both had drug and alcohol problems. I once referred to Kurt Cobain as my “hero” years before I had discovered Charles Bukowski. When someone pointed out that “hero” might not be the right label for a lead singer who was a drug addict that killed himself, I ignored them, believing that the rock star life of full-speed-unto-death was a more honest life than most (insert laugh-track here). So I was already primed for Bukowski and my discovery of his writing was far from accidental. In fact, I sought such corroboration of my worldview, just as we all do.What drove me to anger in those years were Christians, who represented everything opposite of Charles Bukowski, who was so “free”. The Christians appeared fake and gullible and obnoxious, as they embodied a quote by Bukowski: “Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.”But those boring damned people were not damned, because while Bukowski was “free” to do whatever he wanted, he was miserable. His identity came from his writing, but he worshipped his image as a rebel. He loved his fame once he got a taste of it. In fact, he needed all those boring people to loathe, but he also needed them as readers, so that he could justify himself. What was valuable to him? He claimed it was nothing, but it was three things: writing, drinking, and insulting everything that wasn't his own writing or drinking.I suppose I should cut to the chase. In those Bukowski-admiring years, I had come to have faith in atheism, believing that nothing mattered. I say “faith” because to believe in nothing is as much a leap as believing in God. This conversion had taken place over years, but once I was finished with college and making my way in the world, living alone, I found no purpose whatsoever to anything. There was making money and moving up the ladder at work, but even then I knew something major was missing from those pursuits.That march toward nihilism had begun in college. No, even before that, when I first started to lose faith as a teenager over questions around the Resurrection of Jesus and I couldn't get any satisfactory answers. I was grasping at God in those years, trying to find God and getting hung up on literal readings from fundamentalists, which I could not accept. But once I hit these Bukowski years, I was now straight-up fleeing God. I wasn't grasping at all, I was running.What I did not understand is that while sprinting away from God, I was going to run in a full circle once I realized, years later, there is nothing in that void, that is has nothing to offer, and that a worldview aimed at the void is simply wrong. If I had been educated in the faith, so many questions would have been answered, but it seems that the idea of blind faith and not asking questions bumped me sideways to the point where I had to go searching for different answers. In observing bad behavior in Christians, I lumped them all together as one blob of humanity and ignored learning any actual doctrine.What's funny to me now is that the Church was well-aware of my entire experience long before I stumbled onto it, and as I mention often, it hurts to find out how unoriginal I am. In 1965, the Catholic Church published this:For, taken as a whole, atheism is not a spontaneous development but stems from a variety of causes, including a critical reaction against religious beliefs, and in some places against the Christian religion in particular. Hence believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God and religion. GS 19I could tick all of those boxes, and tick them off about many Christians that I knew. Neglect of training or education? Check. Erroneous doctrine? Check. Deficiencies in moral and social life? Without a doubt.Furthermore, in their explanations of modern atheism, the following description also stuck to me like flypaper:For while God is expressly denied by some, others believe that man can assert absolutely nothing about Him. Still others use such a method to scrutinize the question of God as to make it seem devoid of meaning. Many…contend that everything can be explained by this kind of scientific reasoning alone…Moreover, atheism results not rarely from a violent protest against the evil in this world, or from the absolute character with which certain human values are unduly invested, and which thereby already accords them the stature of God. Modern civilization itself often complicates the approach to God not for any essential reason but because it is so heavily engrossed in earthly affairs. (GS 19)Now when I consider that statement against a Bukowski quote about being his own god, he is like a case study of a lost sheep. Bukowski realizes that without God, he is a god, and with that arrangement, nothing has any meaning but that which he declares meaningful.“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god…”In other words, there is no truth for Bukowski, and ultimately no meaning. He is “pliable” and “adjustable” which boils down to a pretty weak lower-case god.The great realization that I had was two-fold: there is a God, but more importantly I am not God. That short sentence - I am not God - changes every single thing I see in the world. This is like standing in a room full of mirrors and then suddenly stepping outside, where before all I could see was myself and my expressions, my feelings, and suddenly I saw everyone else. The way of seeing the world radically differs between a believer and a non-believer, and it changes even further for Christians. When your life is no longer about you, nothing looks the same.Bukowski even knew there was something good in the world, and in him. He actually reveals why he hides his beloved Bluebird in the second verse of his poem. Why does he keep this beautiful Bluebird hidden in his heart? Because he likes his rebellion. His status as a rebel feeds his ego. If he shows his Bluebird, he has to give up his outsider status, which helps him sell books.there's a bluebird in my heart thatwants to get outbut I'm too tough for him,I say,stay down, do you want to messme up?you want to screw up theworks?you want to blow my book sales inEurope?The appeal of Bukowski to those adrift is his stubbornness to never let his light shine, even when he knows the little light is in there, deep in his heart. There's even a parable about hiding a light under a bushel basket. As an artist, Bukowski was actually grasping at something higher, but he could not admit it to the world.For those that do come to faith, the former life of standing in the room of mirrors comes to be seen as a false life, a different life - almost a life that didn't exist because of the focus on the self. When Jesus cures the blind man and the blind man says, “All I know is I was blind, and now I see,” his life is changed in the literal sense of vision but also of his outlook on the world and his soul. The lives of many saints are remarkable in similarity when this change occurs, like Ignatius, Augustine, Paul, Dorothy Day, Elizabeth Anne Seton.If you are a doubter, just consider the annoying people who are always talking about Jesus and seem to have a wellspring of happiness. Aren't they annoying? Aren't they boring?But the sense of joy is honest in them. It's real. The turning toward God changes people in ways that cannot be understood unless you experience it. This blindness-into-sight is what happens to people who experience conversion. Once it occurs, you realize that it's not boring. Life is not boring. Faith makes every day worth living, so that you don't wake up and put on your shoes, and like Bukowski say, “Oh, now what?” This way of seeing makes you wake up filled with hope instead of despair. You know the world has flaws, and so do you, but still there is hope.This way of seeing flips everything on its head, just as you see with Matthew or those who “come to Jesus.” Nothing is the same for them ever again. They would not even recognize their former lives and would never want to go back to old ways. Like me and so many others, unfortunately, you almost have to arrive at this destination the hard way - by following things to their end, to realize that you were looking in the wrong place.Now I think back to the influence of writers like Bukowski had on me, and how I allowed myself to celebrate my errors and flaws. That wasn't a mistake so much as a guidepost along my way. We are raised today to believe that fulfilling our wants and desires is path to happiness, but the only times I've grew spiritually is when I don't get what I want, when I deny myself. The many freedoms we have today to satisfy the self is actually what chains us to a life of misery. The self always wants more, whether it's food or sex or comfort or honor or pleasure or wealth. Bukowski did what he wanted all the time and it's pretty obvious he was miserable.If anything I'm grateful for the entertainment of Bukowski's books as it hustled me along to the end of the path, where I could realize that it is not better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. Turns out that serving myself creates a kind of living hell. Separating myself from belief in a loving God makes this life into a place of endless wants and desires. Elevating myself into a god - it's just too much work! It's too empty if I am the only decider of right and wrong, the lonely chooser of what is meaningful and meaningless.I wouldn't advise anyone to read Bukowski, not because I think he's a bad writer. I think he's amazing, and I still laugh just thinking of some of this quotes. Rather, I wouldn't recommend him because the influence of reading can be strong on a mind and persuasive in tugging one toward blind alleys. If you are seeking that kind of writing, you will find it anyway. If you are already one of the “boring” people that Bukowski hated, who has faith and hope, I would strongly recommend remaining boring and full of hope.I could give a drunkalogue on adventures undertaken under the influence of alcohol which might lead you to believe that pursuit of selfish pleasures is anything but boring, but I can assure you, if you go to any recovery meeting, you can watch people roll their eyes or fall asleep when a newcomer tries to wow ex-drinkers with his or her tales of debauchery. No one cares. Everyone has heard it. Moreover, no one wants to hear it, whether in a recovery meeting or regular life. Drunk stories only entertain the teller. All “wild” stories of intoxication are a dime a dozen. The aftermath of “wild” stories may be the only interesting part, since the epilogue is not about the teller, but about the people the story impacted and quite often hurt.Once again, as the saying goes, “Where your treasure is, there also your heart will be.” If your treasure is nothing, your heart will find those who celebrate it, such as Bukowski or Camus or Marx or Dawkins or Foucault, or so many others who preach faith in nothing. They may not all be labelled as nihilists, but at the bottom, of you follow it to the end, that's what the underlying doctrine really is.A better recommendation would be to find a better treasure. For anyone looking for a reading recommendation, I would start with the Word on Fire Bible, and read all the side commentaries. Don't just read the Gospels, read the explanations of why the parables and encounters of Jesus are so profound. Don't just pick up any Bible, read a study Bible and start with the Gospels, since that is where the real treasure is. That was the book I needed. Had I read the Gospels with this kind of understanding instead of following Bukowski's adventures, I may have never gone down those aimless paths. At the very least, I likely would not have got stinking drunk and bought a one-way ticket to…oh never mind. That alone would have been worth giving the Gospels a solid try.Lastly, idolizing drunk writers and artists allows justification of bad behavior. When I fancied myself a writer, I fell for the cult of drinking in which Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald are lionized for their maladies. Creativity, as the hypothesis goes, is linked to drinking. But as anyone who is not a creative genius knows, there is a fine line between skills being sharpened by a buzz and falling off a cliff after drunkenness. For anyone that has been drinking while playing card games or pool or darts, or even backyard beanbag toss, or anything involving the brain - yes, the drink loosens you up and there's a moment of genius and skill…right before it takes you downward into the abyss of stupidity and acting like an ass. If our heroes happened to write something great, and perhaps they got loosened up with a few drinks, that's one thing. But to celebrate heroic drinking is a fool's errand. And yes, I'm calling myself a fool for falling for this idea. I fell for it because I wanted to allow my flaws to flourish, rather than deny them and face my problems. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

We talked to Isobel Williams about her fascinating and illuminating new translation of selected poems of Catullus, illustrated with her drawings of the Japanese art of rope binding, shibari. Our discussion ranges over the connections between the world of shibari and the emotional struggles depicted in Catullus's poetry, the way translation and learning Latin can feel like being tied up in, and untangling, knots, and much more.Content Note: fetish, sex, brief mention of sexual violence, discussion of enslavement and use of slavery as metaphorBlog about drawing shibari (Japanese rope bondage): Boulevardisme Straight blog about drawing: Drawing from an uncomfortable position Website: Isobel Williams Twitter: @otium_CatulleInstagram: @isobelwilliams2525From Isobel: “For the online book launch, I compiled a video (>20 minutes) of self and others reading in Latin and English from the book. It starts with Sappho in ancient Greek and ends with Shakespeare, to show the continuity Sappho -> Catullus -> Ovid -> Shakespeare (it contains no Ovid). The video is here 'Catullus: Shibari Carmina' - readings and performances - YouTube”Page about the bookLink to the book for Canada and US: Catullus: Shibari Carmina | Independent Publishers GroupJames Methven's Precious Asses – highly recommendedIrish poet and mediaevalist Bernard O'Donoghue – Poet, Academic, Medievalist and Literary CriticTranscript of this episodeThis episode on YouTubeOur Patreon pageRedbubble storeThis podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International LicenseThe Endless Knot RSS

Mik and Verge discuss (in depth) the nature of bodily functions as they have occurred and been contemplated upon throughout history. Ethnic Enclave of the Week: Koreatown/Little Bangladesh, Los Angeles, CA, US WikiHoles: "Catullus 16" (Miklas) / "Le Petomane" (Vergel) / Holes begin at 21:03