cyrus-the-younger-archive

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

im watching a documentary about persepolis and theyre making reconstructions and stuff im losing my absolute MIND i want to get in a time machine so bad i need to see it like it was back then

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

900 Year Old Mirror Mosque in Iran from “Baraka” directed by Ron Fricke 

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

You Are Odysseus

So

I’m a teacher of Classical Civilisation that has taught the Odyssey for over a decade and studied pretty much every myth and story with Odysseus in it.. I think

and I’m writing an Interactive Fiction (choose your own path) version of the Odyssey, inspired by the Homeric phrase “he turned his great heart this way and that”, where you are Odysseus, allowing you to follow his decisions or make your own

and it already has 500 sections to it - written to emulate modern translations of the Odyssey, including the literary features of simile, formula, epithet, and the rest - and 21 different ways to die, and quite a lot of period and theme-appropriate alternatives

(and if I get time, the option to be Telemachus or Penelope, although that might have to wait because it’s already a monster)

and I’ve tested what I’ve made so far on my pupils, other Classics teachers, and some of the leading (and best-read) Greek Mythology podcasters and YouTubers, all of whom have universally loved it (yay!)

(EDIT: Oops and I presented on it at the Classical Association conference last year)

I’m trying to finish it this summer, but need a bit of encouragement to do so

EDIT: and I forgot to say that ideally I’m planning on it being a beautiful BOOK with an old-fashioned cover and lots of ribbons to mark your place ❤️ (ex-bookseller ofc)

so, please let me know if you’d like to know more!

(EDIT: or sign up here go get notified directly when it’s ready: https://ljenkinsonbrown.wordpress.com/you-are-odysseus-signup/ )

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

The Achaemenid/First Persian Empire is kind of wild. At the time of its greatest conquests it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, by a significant amount. Like any good empire it's a triumph of logistics, of course, but what's unusual is the character of the logistics in question. The kinds of empire we're used to are generally either basically maritime (Roman, Spanish, British, American) or basically horselord (Xiongnu, Parthian, Mongol, American) or Chinese (special case, the general tendency for there to exist a Chinese Empire is impressive in its own right but relatively familiar).

The Achaemenid Empire touched a lot of seas and bodies of water (Indus, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Tigris and Euphrates, Red Sea, Nile, Mediterranean, Aegean and Bosporus, Black Sea, Caspian Sea) and certainly these would have been used to facilitate logistics to some degree (Persian invasions of Greece relied on naval support, for example), but it certainly seems like the fundamental lifeline of their state was their extensive system of roads. The Romans talk a big game about their road system but ultimately the major logistical corridors of the Roman state were maritime and riverine. The Inca Empire was similarly road-based, likewise a hilly/mountainous region, and is also extremely cool, but didn't last nearly as long and was much smaller.

Herodotus says: "There is nothing mortal that is faster than the system that the Persians have devised for sending messages. Apparently, they have horses and men posted at intervals along the route, the same number in total as the overall length in days of the journey, with a fresh horse and rider for every day of travel. Whatever the conditions—it may be snowing, raining, blazing hot, or dark—they never fail to complete their assigned journey in the fastest possible time. The first man passes his instructions on to the second, the second to the third, and so on." A different translation of a section of this passage is famously associated with the US postal service.

Herodotus may be wrong in the details because the actual intervals between adjacent waystations seem to have been on the order of 16-26km, a distance a rider could reach in an hour (and perhaps most relevantly, a pedestrian or army might reach in a day), and as such it's certainly plausible horses were changed more than daily, as is attested in later relay postal networks, but it's easily possible he was right about their incredible speed. A perhaps somewhat generous estimated speed of government messages along this route is ~230km/day, by analogy of the pirradazish to the Pony Express and barid systems. This would make them faster than Roman communications, though certainly we have to recognize that maritime transport is ultimately faster and more convenient for trade in bulk goods and food. All figures taken from H.P. Colburn, "Connectivity and Communication in the Achaemenid Empire" Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56 (2013).

That's so cool! It's several hundred BCE and they have a complex permanent relay system with stations every couple dozen km, on a system of roads running throughout an empire thousands of km from center to edge. Just for one road, like the Sardis-Susa section that the Greeks usually talk about, that's over a hundred stations, each with a stock of supplies, backup mounts and riders, accommodations, anything else they might need, and Sardis-Susa was just one possible road stretch among many. That's incredible! I wish we knew what the people who made it and ran it thought. What was the life of a gas station attendant waystation operator in the reign of Artaxerxes I like?

It's kind of tragic that the Achaemenid Empire has been marginalized historiographically for so long. Generally it was treated as significant for its invasions and meddling in Greece, for ending the Babylonian captivity, or for providing a ready-made empire for Alexander to take over. It's not nothing, other places and time periods end up with much less of an imprint on our contemporary understanding of the past. We know a lot of cool stuff. But I wish we had more reflections on Persia from within. Most of what we seem to have is reports from Greeks, fragmentary letters and steles, and precious few excavation sites.

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

~Ram’s head. Culture: Greek Period: Late Classical Period Date: probably 4th century B.C.

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

alright this is annoying me! medusa wasn’t a rape victim in greek mythology!

 there’s no existing greek poet who ever wrote about that origin for her. she was born a gorgon with her two sisters stheno and euryale. perseus’ who was roughly about a teenager when he killed medusa, did so to save his mother because the king of the island they washed up on, wanted his mother, and wanted to rid himself of perseus, so he charged perseus to bring him the head of medusa, a vicious gorgon, in which the king was sure that perseus would be turned into stone like many many others. athena & hermes aided him; athena gave him a shield & hermes gave him his winged sandals. using this mirror athena gave him, he was able to turn the tides on medusa because he could see her reflection without being turned to stone, he then cut her head off.

stop using ovid’s version as the greek version, roman and greek as much as people love to make jokes that romans copied greeks, they have their differences including this myth.

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

I havent at all been active but here my trimonthly assassins creed art

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Alexander the great and Hephaestion in Babylon.

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

AAAAAAA

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You with your precious eyes —

The gods differ from mortals here not because they are above the law but because they possess the insight to avoid breaking it. This marks the difference between gods and mortals perhaps more deeply than death itself: the gods never find themselves in the position of Oedipus, suddenly and unimaginably guilty. They are able to avoid actions whose consequences they cannot control; mortals risk such consequences in their every action. And perhaps it is even a kindness that transgression and death go hand in hand, that those who cannot die need not sin: for one who has broken the law which even the gods fear, the best thing is to die quickly.

-incest, cannibalism, and the rise of the house of atreus, michael kinnucan

So the ubiquitous counsel of the chorus concerning the hero—look what fortune has done here, she used to be on top of the world, don’t count on happiness, don’t believe anyone happy until he is dead—says more than it seems to. In the last analysis, what can one say of mere mortals? A human is just too partial, too speckled and subject and already-half-gone, for anything to be really true or false of him. Is he happy, is she sad? Maybe, a bit, for a time, but really—who can say, who can even care? That’s how it is for humans, unless and until they are tragic. The tragic hero is complete. You can call him unhappy (miserable, utterly broken) even before he is dead. For an instant he is something like divine. And then he dies, because there’s nothing left to do. The center of every tragedy is the image of a human being who has already died but keeps talking, someone whose face is a mask. Antigone says this explicitly—she is already dead; Oedipus acts it out in gouging out his eyes.

-the gods show up, michael kinnucan

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[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

youre welcome!! im glad i could help (:

fellas how do i translate a typical pet-name for a kid (buddy, kiddo, honey, etc.) into ancient Greek 🤡🤡

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

What would Alcibiades look like if he were a cat

KITTY!

(socrates do you have a permit for that? socrates I don't think "love can fix him" works on wildlife. Socrates no I don't care if he listens to pspspsps, that's not a housecat. Yes, I see he's a cute loaf but he's gonna eat someone someday and then you'll both get in trouble)

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

she/her? blocked and unfollowed.

what the hell

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

when you finally get home and see your wife but can't talk to her because there are 108 strangers in your house

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It’s always “why did you commit regicide” and “your covered in blood” and never How was the treason The treason looked fun was it fun

[cyrus-the-younger-archive]

Your boyfriend didn't even see the inner mysteries. The vestal virgins are ripping out his eyes. Because he sucks.