wake up babe, NEW EURIPIDES JUST DROPPED

also I went on a podcast, wrote about Clytemnestra + psychoanalysis for an online journal, and read a fabulous book about the women of Greek mythology 💖

hello hello,

I hope you enjoyed Sunday’s guest post by

Ellie Ireland

(if you missed it, you can catch up here: hot oil, violent sheep, and sentient rivers 💦) but alas you are stuck with ME this week.

It’s been a busy month or so ~ I’m gonna catch you up and essentially fling you in a few directions depending on what you’re in the mood for. Like a very specific choose your own adventure.

The FIRST thing I am flinging you towards is a podcast episode - I was invited onto the flawlessly named Historical Homos podcast run by the darling (and fellow Cambridge MPhil graduate) Bash to talk about the ancient Greek symposium 🍷

here we are in our final form. I may have too much time on my hands but that is beside the POINT.

The episode description is as follows:

“Get in b*tch, we're having an Ancient Greek kiki!

We're back, baby! Join us as we navigate the wine-dark and wine-soaked symposia of Ancient Greece, to discover what exactly was so gay about these all-male drinking parties. (Hint: a lot.)

We cover ancient party planning, gay glassware, reclining etiquette, drunken flirting, and all the subtle arts of homosexual entertaining you need to host a horny soirée 2,500 years ago.”

Here is the spotify link: The Symposium a.k.a Let's Have an Ancient Greek Kiki (feat. Cosima Carnegie) but you can find the episode wherever you get your podcasts. Also, I beg you, I BESEECH you, to check out their instagram here, it is a colourful, chaotic, queer explosion.

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Okay the SECOND bit of flinging is towards Lady Dakota Warren’s Nowhere Girl Collective, an online literary and arts journal ❤️‍🔥 I repackaged/repurposed (ahem, cannibalised) part of my honours thesis from the University of Melbourne, which was about Julia Kristeva and the Abject (the most unhinged and therefore the best psychoanalytic framework) in Medea, Clytemnestra, and Lysistrata. July’s prompt was ~ confession ~ so I focussed on the moment in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon where Clytemnestra pops out covered in blood after killing her husband and essentially says I REGRET NOTHING AND YOU’RE ALL DUMB (alas, this is not a direct quote). The writing is more formal so if you’re in the mood for something with less emojis/swearing, you can read it here: Clytemnestra's "Confession."

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Next up we have a BOOK REVIEW ~ Lizzy Tiffin’s Bad Girls of Ancient Greece.

Now, I have to confess to my own hubris real quick. There are lots of excellent summaries and handbooks out there which whip you through the greatest hits (Medea, Clytemnestra, Medusa etc.), so I was looking forward to reading it but I wasn’t sure how much I would actually learn.

Call me fkn Icarus because boy was I wrong.

This is an insanely broad and detailed account of, I swear, every. single. woman. in Greek mythology. I only recognised like a third of the characters?? A third?? Every time I would turn the page I’d be like who the heck is this now?? And Lizzy would tell me?? And it was amazing??

Highlights include the myth of Procris - featuring a dog called Laelaps who always caught his prey (when I get a rhodesian ridgeback and name him laelaps I need you to remember this newsletter to fully appreciate how long I have been thinking about this name for a dog), Iphimedia who gets impregnated by sea water (??), and the yin and yang in the stories of Selene and Eos, goddesses of the moon and dawn, respectively. Melissa also springs out as one of my faves ~ she kind of WAS a bee and then got turned INTO a bee, I’m still not 100% across the practicalities or logistics there. Also Dirce needs a mention, a particularly ruthless woman who meets an especially brutal end :0

All in all, this book was very fun and readable and DETAILED. If you’re fresh to the world of Greek mythology I would absolutely recommend it but equally if you’re a withered old owl sputtering about Percy Jackson in the corner you should still give it a whirl because it is so DETAILED and so informative!

Also it’s pretty.

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And FINALLY, the click-baity article that I ensnared you with in the title - NEW EURIPIDES FRAGMENTS HAVE BEEN FOUND. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. If you don’t need me to tell you how big a deal this is then my god just read the article but if you do, let me ASSURE you this is A VERY. BIG. DEAL.

Uncovered Euripides fragments are ‘kind of a big deal’ - CU Boulder Classics scholars identify previously unknown fragments of two lost tragedies by Greek tragedian Euripides

Parian marble portrait head of Euripides (Rieti type), the British Museum.

Bonus pic of the man himself, looking rather crabby.

xxx