:DD I have a reasonably good foundation in Greek myths due to the book that geeky (younger -- it's a book with lots of pictures) kids get over here -- my awesome uncle gave me D'Aulaire's Greek Myths when I must have been, hm, eight or so? and at a family reunion and unhappily bored. I think I almost memorized that book. I later went on to read the traditional high-school-level Greek-and-Roman book over here, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, which as I remember brings in stories from Ovid, etc., but I don't know those backwards and forwards the way I do everything in D'Aulaire. (Fun fact: selenak, your Arachne fic was, I think, either the first or second time I came across you, many many years ago, before we "met" via DW -- and before I knew about things like, uh, commenting, so, just fixed that :P )
And I've read the Iliad and the Odyssey, but back in middle/high school, so I don't remember a lot about it, and as a uncivilized barbarian didn't really like them all that much :P I read the Sarah Ruden translation (recced to me by ricardienne) of the Aeneid much later and liked it much more.
I know basically noooothing about Latin or Greek poetry OR history except, you know, the kinds of things you get from basically what amounts to fandom osmosis :P I did once read a one-volume abridgement of John Julius Norwichs Byzantine Empire and enjoyed it a lot, but have forgotten it all.
(Oh, I only now realized after your post that Cavafy wrote Waiting for the Barbarians, which I read in a college class. I only knew him from "che fece... il gran rifiuto," which I came across far later at exactly the right time, and which is an extremely meaningful poem for me.)
What I already know about but would have fun debating, retelling etc. about to [personal profile] cahn or other unsuspecting victims: We could always do a gossipy sensationalist take on the late Roman Republic, complete with Cicero's letters, Suetonius' biographies and Catullus' poetry.
Yes please, as I said above, history and poetry I know nothing about! (I have read one or two fics about Cicero, that's it.) :D
Alternate book club ideas: for current day Aeneid-inspired novels, Jo Graham's "Black Ships" and Ursula Le Guin's "Lavinia": compare and contrast! For example.
...actually part of why I read the Aeneid was so I could read Lavinia, but then I never actually got around to it *facepalm* Yes, I want very much to do this! Mildred wouldn't be interested in that, of course, but she could tell us history or something?
The sum total of what I know about Egypt is reading Judith Tarr's historical novels about Alexander the Great, Hatepshut (these two books I remember very little about), Cleopatra, and Akhenaten -- I own the last two, so have reread those and remember a lot more about them. (Tarr's degree is in Classics/Medieval Studies, and I get the sense that she did her research, but she did write these decades ago, and the Akhenaten book in particular was based on an academic theory that Akhenaten was Moses, to which she said something in the afterword along the lines of, "it's crack, but such a fun idea for a novel" :D )
Tangentially, it's interesting to me that you have serviceable French but not Latin -- is it that you learned French later (what I as an American would call high school) and so it stuck better? (This makes me feel better about my kids' elementary school which has terrible/no language program...)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2022-01-08 06:30 am (UTC)And I've read the Iliad and the Odyssey, but back in middle/high school, so I don't remember a lot about it, and as a uncivilized barbarian didn't really like them all that much :P I read the Sarah Ruden translation (recced to me by
I know basically noooothing about Latin or Greek poetry OR history except, you know, the kinds of things you get from basically what amounts to fandom osmosis :P I did once read a one-volume abridgement of John Julius Norwichs Byzantine Empire and enjoyed it a lot, but have forgotten it all.
(Oh, I only now realized after your post that Cavafy wrote Waiting for the Barbarians, which I read in a college class. I only knew him from "che fece... il gran rifiuto," which I came across far later at exactly the right time, and which is an extremely meaningful poem for me.)
What I already know about but would have fun debating, retelling etc. about to [personal profile] cahn or other unsuspecting victims: We could always do a gossipy sensationalist take on the late Roman Republic, complete with Cicero's letters, Suetonius' biographies and Catullus' poetry.
Yes please, as I said above, history and poetry I know nothing about! (I have read one or two fics about Cicero, that's it.) :D
Alternate book club ideas: for current day Aeneid-inspired novels, Jo Graham's "Black Ships" and Ursula Le Guin's "Lavinia": compare and contrast! For example.
...actually part of why I read the Aeneid was so I could read Lavinia, but then I never actually got around to it *facepalm* Yes, I want very much to do this! Mildred wouldn't be interested in that, of course, but she could tell us history or something?
The sum total of what I know about Egypt is reading Judith Tarr's historical novels about Alexander the Great, Hatepshut (these two books I remember very little about), Cleopatra, and Akhenaten -- I own the last two, so have reread those and remember a lot more about them. (Tarr's degree is in Classics/Medieval Studies, and I get the sense that she did her research, but she did write these decades ago, and the Akhenaten book in particular was based on an academic theory that Akhenaten was Moses, to which she said something in the afterword along the lines of, "it's crack, but such a fun idea for a novel" :D )
Tangentially, it's interesting to me that you have serviceable French but not Latin -- is it that you learned French later (what I as an American would call high school) and so it stuck better? (This makes me feel better about my kids' elementary school which has terrible/no language program...)