Edith Hall
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edithmayhall.bsky.social
Edith Hall
@edithmayhall.bsky.social

Durham University Classics Prof keen on Aristotle, visual art, Greek theatre/pots, labour/anti-racist history, prison education, Parthenon reunification. All views my own. Also on Twitter @edithmayhall

Edith Hall is a British scholar of classics, specialising in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. From 2006 until 2011 she held a chair at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she founded and directed the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome until November 2011. She resigned over a dispute regarding funding for classics after leading a public campaign, which was successful, to prevent cuts to or the closure of the Royal Holloway Classics department. Until 2022, she was a professor at the Department of Classics at King's College London. She also co-founded and is Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University, Chair of the Gilbert Murray Trust, and Judge on the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation. Her prizewinning doctoral thesis was awarded at Oxford. In 2012 she was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize to study ancient Greek theatre in the Black Sea, and in 2014 she was elected to the Academy of Europe. She lives in Cambridgeshire. .. more

Art 25%
History 24%

John Collier, born 27 Jan 1850, painted Clytemnestra after the murders twice: in 1882 after seeing an Oxford production of AGAMEMNON, and 1913, after excavations at Knossos had revealed bare-breasted ladies in art. Not that he needed encouragement. Many of his other works are boobfests.

Greek friends, Philhellenes! If you'd like to attend this event on Sat. Feb. 28 at 1900 in Athens, either in person or virtually, please register. It'll be wonderful to have you with me and the nonpareil Hellenists in the best sense Alicia Stallings and Ioanna Karamanou

Writing about ghosts in fragmentary Greek tragedies. Here's Medea's dad Aeetes as a ghost labelled EIDOLON AETOU telling her to get on with some murders, and Glaucus, little Prince of Crete, resuscitated in his tomb by the Corinthian seer Polyidus after drowning in a vat of honey

On #GoodMemoryDay, here's the goddess who can help. Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses on an Antioch mosaic in the Worcester Art Museum, Mass. Nicely sceptical expression. Perhaps she's trying to remember the names of all her nine daughters. I have difficulties with far fewer.

Am I right that there is not a single woman on Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza? Incomprehensible given what women have been through there.

Wonderful party for Michael Silk, the “Daddy Cool” of Ancient Greek and most other literature, at King’s College London last night. Fiona Macintosh and David Ricks beautifully edited the Festschrift that the pictured persons contributed to

Great idea! Not yet but I will think about it!

On #AppreciateADragonDay, my favourite ancient example. In one version of the Argonaut myth, the Colchian dragon guarding the golden fleece first ate and then disgorged Jason when Athena intervened. Fabulous teeth/scales. Red-figured cup made in Athens c. 580 BCE, now in Vatican

Eugène Carrière, born 16th January 1849, "Priam at the feet of Achilles" (1876). Gets their mutual sorrow and the gloom and filth of military tent cities over better than many other depictions of this famous scene in Iliad 24

Chuffed that Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer's Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World is longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award. The climate crisis makes me think this my least unimportant book. I still need more ££ to keep the prison education initiative running so let's hope....

The Polish author Stanisław Wyspiański, born 15 Jan 1869, was the first to give Odysseus what we call PTSD in his grim, still-performed 1907 Powrót Odysa (Return of Odysseus). Here's a painting by fellow Pole Vlastimil Hofman inspired by the tragedy's rugged/dogged psychorealism.

Thanks to everyone who voted on cover for my biography of Medea. Combined majority on all platforms resoundingly for this one. Plus pic of me at site of the bronze-age Thessalian palace where she persuaded Pelias' daughters to boil him (chapter 3).

On UNESCO #WorldLogicDay thanks to Aristotle, here gazing into Lady Logic’s eyes on Cathedral of Notre Dame, Le Puy-en-Velay fresco. He was the first to codify the rules of formal logic; his Organon or compilation of logical works was central to the medieval curriculum. Cool ringlets!

so do I

"The King of Thule" by Pierre Jean van der Ouderaa, born 13/1/1841. Inspired by Goethe's poem. The King of the northernmost land on the ancient Greek map never let go of the goblet his dying mistress gave him until he expired and cast it into the sea. The sadness in his eyes...

It's choose the cover time again. My 'biography' of Medea, for which I looked at every single ancient source, researched forensic psychology and visited every site to try to come up with a coherent narrative, comes out this year. My editor likes the green background. Please help choose!

On #WorldPharmacistDay here are two gorgeous images of the medical herbalist Dioscorides, from the 6th-c Juliana Anicia Codex, where he receives a mandrake root, and the 13th-c. Arabic manuscript from Iraq of his De Materia Medica, where he is teaching a student about the uses of medicinal plants

Jusepe de Ribera (born January 12 1591) liked painting ancient Greek philosophers looking like late Renaissance depressives reading in very dark rooms. Here are Plato and Aristotle.

Lovely spooky 1792 picture of blind prophet Tiresias guided by his daughter Manto, to whom he'd given birth when a woman, painted at height of Gothic craze by Henry Singleton. Found while editing a piece on Tiresias by @anactoriaclarke.bsky.social for a volume on Euripides' Phoenician Women

These wonderful prison educators now trained on how Aristotle can make you choose friends, make decisions, achieve potential, communicate, listen, develop virtues, curb vices, recreate constructively & find a purpose. Proud of them all @ProfArl @profarlenehh.bsky.social @durhamclassics.bsky.social

So excited to be training prison educators in delivery of Aristotle’s Ethics with @profarlenehh.bsky.social
@durhamclassics.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #12. Apollo traverses dolphin-gambolling waves, above fish & an octopus, on a mobile winged tripod like that his Delphic priestess sat on, strumming his lyre, with bow & quiver ready. Puts the dolphin into Delphi (an association the Greeks heard).

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #11. Amphitrite on a v. rare beast, a taurocampus rather than a hippocampus (perhaps inspired by Europa). A Roman imperial sardonyx cameo in a 17th-c. mount, once owned by Louis XIV and now in Bibliothèque nationale de France

Actually...

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #10. The easiest to find as Dionysus has so many vehicles in his garages (often boats and asses), but only in Sousse, Tunis, did he get not one or two but FIVE tigers. Suggests that we rename horse-power as tiger-power.

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #9. Demeter/Ceres. In ancient Greek art she's always letting her mentee Triptolemus ride the snake-drawn winged car to sow the crops, but in the 18th century she got to ride it herself, having apparently been confused with Medea!

Welcome to 2026 and my sincere hopes it offers, like this ancient Greek mosaic, Health, Long life, Joy, Peace, Good Cheer and Hope to every human on the planet and all the organisms we share it with.

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #8. Zodiacal Ares/Mars in 1569 edition of Aratus. His chariot-cum-siege machine is drawn by dogs of war, his symbol (later made to = male as Venus' symbol = female) and Mars' 2 houses, Aries & Scorpio, emblazoned on the wheels.

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #7. Aphrodite has 2 vehicles in her Olympian garage on which to ride elegantly side-saddle. For terrestrial journeys, a nanny-goat, with cavorting kids (Pergamon Museum); for aviation, a goose (BM). Because She's Worth It.

12 gods with interesting modes of transport for Xmas #6. Hermes/Mercury, god of travel, rather bafflingly choosing to have his chariot drawn by roosters. Two of many prints imitating a design by Raphael in the Sala dei Pontifici.