These are the top most viewed posts of the year. (For Comparison, here are last year’s)
- No, Aristotle Din’t Write “A Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts”
- Nope, Aristotle Did not Say “It is the Mark Of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without…”
- A School Massacre and Toxic Heroism
- An Ancient Greek Horror Story to Make You Scream
- Racists Use This Fake Quote From Aristotle
- Head and Heart: a Quotation Falsely Attributed to Aristotle
- A List of Women Authors from the Ancient World
- Our Culture: Classics By Exclusion
- ‘Classics for Everyone’ Must be More than a Slogan
- The Future of Classics, From “Below”
“How many there are who degrade the Latin language!”
Quam multi sunt, qui verba Latina depravant! -Piccolomini
The Aristotle posts were all written before last year but seem to get a lot of hits from search engines. Here is the list of last year’s top posts that debuted last year
1. A School Massacre and Toxic Heroism
An essay starting with the heroic tale of Kleomedes the Astupulaian and suggesting that heroic “patterns” are part of our problem with school shootings
2. Our Culture: Classics By Exclusion
A reflection on the history of exclusion that characterizes Classics as a discipline
3. ‘Classics for Everyone’ Must be More than a Slogan
Dani Bostick’s essay on how superficial our efforts to expand the appeal of classics can be
4. The Future of Classics, From “Below”
Dani Bostick’s essay on how discussions of the future of Classics rarely includes high school teachers and students
5. Non-Elite Latin for the Classroom
Brandon Conley’s excellent introduction and selections of non-literary texts for the classroom
6. From the Iliad to the Irishman
Erik’s review of Martin Scorsese’s recent film from the perspective of Classics
7. Dumpster-Fire Retrospective: Hanson, Homer, Horseshit
If you don’t remember Who Killed Homer?, this might be a good place to start
An essay on the harmful stances we take in public and the classroom and how it shapes the way we learn and behave
9. Beauty and Privilege: Latin, Paideia, and Papyri
Who is foolish enough to try to connect a recent book about loving Latin with the cultural problems of the Paideia Institute and Dirk Obbink’s Papyrological shenanigans?
10. “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down” in Ancient Greek
Pretty much exactly what it sounds like
The essays on academia, our discipline, and culture seem to be some of the most popular, but Erik’s review of “The Irishman” has been only live for a few weeks. I am also a big fan of his takedown of “Who Killed Homer?” (#7). The title is great; the fire inside is better.
