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
Sheep of the Day #5. An aryballos made in Rhodes in the early 5th century BCE, now in the Louvre. This type of container was commonly used to hold perfumed oil, especially by athletes. I wonder why they wanted to associate their bodily aroma with sheep. Lovely eyeliner though.
Sheep of the Day #4. In fact a whole family, on a Roman-era mosaic in Tamentfoust, Algeria. The Latin name of the place Ῥουστόνιον/Rusguniae came from Punic ršgny (𐤓𐤔𐤂𐤍𐤉). Sheep remain crucial to the Algerian economy.
The date when James Talarico, amazingly, swung Texas for the Democrats, and in his powerful speech likened Trump's administration to Goliath, and his own supporters to David's sling shots, is also the birthday of painter Guido Reni (4/11/1575). The smiles of James and Reni's David say it all
Sheep of the Day. To indicate that Paris was a shepherd when he judged the goddesses. The sheep is clearly not impressed that Paris chose Aphrodite or else has has seen a juicy clump of grass behind the boulder. Water jar made in Athens, found in Capua, now in British Museum.
When me, Mary Beard and Edith Hall go on our all expenses paid tour of Italy and Greece next summer, all this wind and rain will be a distant memory. I'm going to send so may postcards! I hope the gals won't want to go clubbing every night, you know what these celebrities can be like.
Wonderful, fiery edition of The Verb #BBCRadio4 this evening. Loved hearing @theclpe.bsky.social #CLiPPA winner 'the great John Agard' to quote @imcmillan.bsky.social his new poem to Guy Fawkes. Plus Michael Symmons Roberts & Edith Hall & a celebration of Douglas Dunn 🔥 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
People seemed to appreciate the vase I posted with Hera and her sheep on Halloween, so here's a lovely male sheep, his fur in gorgeous curls, far more interested in the foliage on Hermes' altar than in the god himself. Made in Athens, now in Berlin.
Baroque classicism isn't my thing, but I'll make an exception for this 'Diana and Endymion' by Pietro da Cortona, born Nov. 1 1596. The goddess' cheeky smile, inviting the viewer in conspiratorially to admire Endymion's pecs, beams across centuries. I can almost hear her giggle.
I'm bored with commercialised Halloween, and it's #HugASheepDay, so here is Top Goddess Hera looking gorgeous with an ovine furry friend rather than a peacock. I'm sure they'll be hugging later. Made at Athens, now in Hartford, Connecticut, USA (commiserations, Queen)
Angelica Kauffman, born 30/10/1741, painted many classical scenes, but I love her portrait, 'painted for her pleasure' not money, of her friends in Rome, Domenica Morghen & Maddalena Volpato, as the muses of Tragedy & Comedy. Girls just want to have fun (with theatre masks & ivy)
🤩 Throwback to the end of September, when Prof. Edith Hall and Prof. Arlene Holmes-Henderson spent a week in Manchester at Novus Education, training more prison educators to deliver their course 'Ancient Wisdom for Modern Life'. 👏 Congratulations Alice, Suzanne, Zoe, Caroline, Rebecca and Jilly!
On #WorldBalletDay here's an exquisite satyr showing he knows a thing or two about standing gracefully on one leg with arms akimbo (and precious weights) long before the Sun King got into it. Plus added problem of the phallus. Made in Athens, now in Rome.
@profarlenehh.bsky.social & I celebrated the launch of Aristotle beyond the Academy in the Cambridge Classics cast gallery last Friday! Thanks to Tim Whitmarsh, Nicholas Denyer & Frisbee Sheffield, as well as our co-authors Peter Swallow MP, Rory McInnes-Gibbons & photographer @rickypo.bsky.social
Pablo Picasso, born 25/10/1881, was obsessed with minotaurs. His 1935 etching Minotauromachie expresses his emotional chaos when his wife Olga Khokhlova wanted to leave him because he'd impregnated the (centauress?) Marie-Thérèse Walter. Minotaurs should keep it in their loincloths!
There are so many images of Amazons being defeated by Greek males on ancient vases that it’s a joy to see the roles reversed on this vase now in the Metropolitan Museum. I love the axe. Hiding behind a tree won’t help. He had it coming.
Just a really perfect owl on a fragment of a classical Athenian vase now in the Metropolitan Museum to brighten up your day. Too-whit, too-whoo to you!
Sometimes a Greek vase takes my breath away. This vase-painter depicts a stone statue of Heracles, his lionskin being painted encaustically by an artist with pigmented hot wax melted by an attendant on a brazier. Heracles comes to inspect, his dad Zeus and a winged Victory aloft.
With two deaths during the French riots already recorded, the Jacobin 'The Spirit of France between Liberty and Death' (1794-5) of Jean-Baptiste Regnault (born this day 1754) seems sinister. Most of his paintings were of voluptuous ancient Greek goddesses and heroines disrobed.
With two deaths during the French riots already recorded, the Jacobin 'The Spirit of France between Liberty and Death' (1794-5) of Jean-Baptiste Regnault (born this day 1754) seems sinister. Most of his paintings were of voluptuous ancient Greek goddesses and heroines disrobed.
thoughts.pivic.com/edith-hall-o... I loved hearing Edith Hall speak about why Medea is celebratory. Medea is the only ancient criminal, certainly the only criminal female, who wins. #EdithHall #Medea #mythology #StartTheWeek #feminism #patriarchy #gender
Edith Hall on Medea, the only murderer in Greek tragedy who gets off completely with impunity
image Miss Clairon in Medea by Charles-André van Loo (1705–1765), 1760. Collection of Neues Palais in Potsdam. I just heard the latest episode of Start t...
thoughts.pivic.com
On #WorldMenopauseDay, my favourite ancient statue of Artemis, in the Piraeus museum. The goddess who looks after women's biological transitions looks so authoritative, gracious, calm and numinous.
On UN #InternationalDayForTheEradicationOfPoverty, here's the 1965 Greek National Theatre in Aristophanes' Ploutos. Poverty (right) confronts the demotic heroes, before the women of Athens, along with the slave Karion and the god of Wealth, achieve socialist utopia & affluence for all. Hurrah!
Arnold Böcklin, famed for his phallic paintings of the Odyssey, was born 16/8/1827. But I like his 'Centaur at the Blacksmith's' (1888), because it humorously asks how horse-human hybrids look after their feet.
ON #BaldAndFreeDay2026, one of my favourite comedy vases. Three actors wearing the masks of bald men stage a comedy-within-a-comedy about Cheiron the centaur (named), played like a pantomime cow by two actors with old men masks. The horse/human hybrid tries to ascend a staircase.
On #InternationalScepticDay, are you more of an Academic Sceptic like Carneades & deny that knowledge is possible? Or a Pyrrhonist like Sextus Empiricus and merely suspend judgement about the possibility of knowledge? Or do you just trust the evidence of your senses and get on with surviving life? !
At 0905 today I’m on BBC Radio 4 talking about Medea. Will be broadcast again at 9 pm tonight. Two other fascinating guests too.
On UN #InternationalDayOfTheGirldChild a gorgeous Athenian depiction of a dancing lesson. Both children have the word KALE (beautiful in feminine declension) inscribed; the youth (a big brother?) has KALOS. The directive teacher looks like my least loathed PE instructress c. 1970. Now British Museum
Hate to be a Reply Guy, but was Zeus not in the form of a swan, pretending to be fleeing from an eagle?
