Lady Lazarus
On the anniversary of her death, here is Sylvia Plath reading “Lady Lazarus.”
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Looking ahead to the Dionysia
The next festival on our calendar is the Dionysia, which spans the 10th through the 17th of the month Thyrsos (or March 4-10 by the common reckoning.) Although it’s still a ways off I spent much of...
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Ch-ch-changes
Around the year 95 e.v. Dio Chrysostom visited Olbia, where he delivered a speech to the city elites in the forecourt of the temple of Zeus on Platonic politics and Zoroastrian mythology. Due to...
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she has assembled unlawful thiasoi
Phryne was accused of asebia because she held a komos in the Lykeion. This is what Euthias, who prosecuted her, said: I have now proven that Phryne is impious because she has participated in...
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whose light is darkness
PGM IV.1716-1870 Sword of Dardanos: Rite which is called “sword,” which has no equal because of its power, for it immediately bends and attracts the soul of whomever you wish. As you say the spell,...
View ArticleMore on the Black Ship
So I’m reading Valeriya Kozlovskaya’s The Harbour of Olbia (which, aside from being tremendously informative has some really great maps and illustrations) and wondering if she’s going to mention the...
View ArticleOopsies
Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I was googling something in anticipation of having the post where I praise immigrant and queer heroes used as proof that I’m a crypto-Nazi because the meander is a...
View ArticleHe took a face from the ancient gallery
Looks like Grigori Rasputin is winning the Dionysia poll with a whopping 2 votes! Rasputin would indeed make a good subject for a play. I’d portray him as a surrogate sacred king slash pharmakos in...
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Folkways
Speaking of festivals, here is my wife Galina helping our cat get ready for Lindisfarne Day: How will you commemorate this day come June 8th? I recommend making a replica of the monastery out of...
View ArticleAnd walked on down the hall
Alternately, I could do a play based on Sir Orfeo where our hero must journey through the Underworld (transformed into a Celtic Otherworld) and confront the Fairy King who has abducted his beloved...
View ArticleI will tear out my clear heart and offer it to the Sun
Here is the trailer for the Royal Opera’s 2015 production of Król Roger by Polish-Ukrainian composer Karol Szymanowski and his cousin librettist Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, which looks pretty fucking cool....
View ArticleHmm. How half-heathenish was he?
According to Snorri Sturluson in the Heimskringla Roger II (who in the Fagrskinna is called “Jarl Rogeirr”) was visited by the Norwegian King Sigurd Jorsalfare, who famously established the Varangian...
View ArticleRoger & Me
I’m reading various analyses and reviews of Król Roger, and I came across these bits from Göran Forsling’s Opera Or Not, It Is Drama – Szymanowski’s King Roger in Stockholm: An early reviewer of this...
View ArticleNew Official Dionysia Poll Post
Democracy is a messy, quixotic process. New candidates have entered the contest and the previous votes (all two of them) have been rendered void, as it was determined there was electoral interference...
View ArticleBearer of luck of the mother
I just found something really cool. A bone tablet was discovered on Berezan Island where the Black Sea and the Dneiper meet, a short distance from Olbia. It contains a cult hymn to Apollon with some...
View Articlethe one you share cattle-wealth with
By the way, the history of Berezan Island is pretty interesting: Berezan was home to one of the earliest Greek colonies (possibly known as Borysthenes, after the Greek name of the Dnieper) in the...
View ArticleVaskresenje
From the comments section: fakt: There is a wordplay in Russian. The last line in the song means “God please give me resurrection”, then Severija repeats “resurrection” (“vaskreshenje“) and says...
View ArticleExpect much geekery to follow
Exciting news! I got my hands on a PDF of G. M. Hirst’s “The Cults of Olbia,” originally published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1903. Pretty much everyone working on the polis cites this...
View ArticleHail the original Archiboukolos!
The election is now over and the votes have all been tallied. Since none of our candidates broke the minimum threshold (Mithridates Eupator came the closest) that means the play … Continue reading Hail...
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