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every time someone says odysseus "just" loves his wife or "just" wants to go home, i get so agitated... you don't understand. odysseus wants everything. he wants to be at home, and he wants to be a hero. he wants to die, and he wants to live. he wants his family, and he wants to lie to them. he wants to tell the story of his life, and he wants to keep his secrets. he wants to go back and for everything to be as it was, and he wants the glory and wealth and reputation he hard-won. he wants to be at peace, and he wants to do violence. he wants to sail past the sirens safely, and he wants to hear them. he wants the war to end, and he wants it to mean something. he wants to have his cake and eat it too. he's the man of many ways. he'll get his damn homecoming but he's a rube goldberg machine. he doesn't "just" anything.

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Love the random censorship in Victorian novels. Mr. ------- came down from -----shire in the summer of 18--. Who? Where? When? Wouldn't you like to know, book boy

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1948-1949 Silk wedding dress by Charles James

(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

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French, Wedding dress. Date: 1869.

Source: The Met

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enkidu and gilgamesh, presumably on their way to the cedar forest to slay humbaba, after which everything was fine, a-okay even, and nothing went wrong

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what’s the deal with billy budd

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i’ve been thinking a lot about moby dick lately (as one does) and i keep coming back to the sexual&gender&racial implications of ishmael casting himself as queequeg’s “wife”

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From the diary of Mary Chipman Lawrence, who accompanied her husband Captain Samuel Lawrence on the whaler Addison, 1856-60. Her young daughter Minnie was with her as well, and on July 18th 1859 it was her birthday and they celebrated it on board:

This is Minnie’s birthday—eight years old. I told her a month ago that when it was her birthday, I would make a treat for her in the evening and she might invite all the officers to partake with her. So she has ever since been looking forward to it as a great event. Saturday I made preparation, and I was fortunate in doing so, for I suffered exceedingly Sunday night and for the greater part of this day with a gathering at the roots of my tooth. I was able to get up, however, and prepare the treat for her. We set the table and called the officers down about half-past 7 P.M. Minnie was so happy she hardly knew what to do with herself, and I think we all enjoyed it pretty well. The officers all united in saying that they had not sat down to such a table since they left home. The treat consisted of a plate of sister Celia’s fruitcake, two loaves of cupcake frosted, two plates of currant jelly tarts, and a dish of preserved pineapple, also hot coffee, good and strong, with plenty of milk and white sugar. After we had finished there was ample supply left, which was sent into the steerage for boatsteerers, etc. Minnie arose this morning about four o’clock to look at her presents. She had a box of little notions, a book, and a pocket handkerchief from Mrs. Brayton; a pair of china vases from Mary White; two packages of paper dolls, a book, and a package of drawing cards from Helen Whitney; an ivory shuttle and a half dollar from her papa; and a bottle of cologne, a toothbrush, and a quarter of a dollar from her mamma. Not of much value, but they were all very pleasing to her.

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i love how in this production of britten billy budd everything is set in 1797, and the costumes are period accurate (as far as opera costumes go) but Older Vere is inexplicably dressed in a distinctly 1940s style

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Now that I'm working in the anthropology department and we're teaching human evolution, I wonder how many anthropologists looking for ancient hominids must have found modern human remains instead. You didn't find a fossil of human evolution... but you did find the remains of a person. Isn't that meaningful, too? And also... they are so similar to us, that it's not unlikely that so many remains that could have been key to understanding human evolution have been misidentified as just humans (which raises the question "weren't they just human" but I digress)

There's an interesting story about Sahelanthropus (a hominid similar to chimpanzees who walked upright about 6 millions ago in modern Chad). When it was discovered, the remains presented wear and tear from wind and sun exposure, which was wierd because they were found buried. It was then the anthropologists noticed it was buried with its head facing towards Mecca, like in proper Muslim burial practice. Muslim nomads must have found the remains of Sahelanthropus, they would have thought it was a person who died in the desert, and decided to give it a proper burial, even if they didn't know its story or who was it life, they thought those bones deserved to rest.

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This amethyst necklace is from around 1900 - isn’t it lovely? I love the tiny seed pearl-set stars.

See more from GemBank1973: https://diamondsinthelibrary.com/gembank1973-antique-jewelry

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classics people will see sex and cum and think whoa just like my latin

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Artist’s Sketch of a Swallow, New Kingdom, ca. 1479–1458 B.C. metmuseum.org

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obviously erasure of gay relationships in history does and has existed but ngl it irritates me when people specifically latch onto the word "friend" as something you're somehow not allowed to call gay people & that by calling them "friends" you're somehow denying their gayness. because the fact of the matter is that a lot of gay people in history would and did call themselves friends & did not see that as excluding the possibility of romantic love or sex. like it's a perfectly fine word to use provided you're acknowledging the possibility of the full breadth of what that relationship could mean, and in fact a lot of times to assign other words to them is to make assumptions about how they viewed their relationship and potentially to impose concepts on them they wouldn't have seen themselves in

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1895 Dress by Laboudt & Robina (France)

silk, velvet

(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

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oh hey um we kinda damnatio memoriae-ed your boyfriend. yeah we chiselled his name off all the inscriptions and everything. he’s ███ ██ ████ ██████ now. sorry.