Another Sunday morning online teaching session: Greek and Roman sculpture for the OU. More heated discussions about polychromy.

Poland trip just over a week away. Will be based at the university in Lodz and will be there for 5 days. First trip to Poland. Recommendations for what I should be eating and drinking?

Teaching complete. Dr Mike’s bar now open.

Current mood.

Unusually large group of students booked on to the online Antigone session for the OU this morning. Not sure why.

If I’d been sitting the Latin A level exams in 2013, I would have enjoyed doing the prose composition about the death of Cicero.

Been invited to chair the opening session at the conference in Poland next month. No pressure.

Some brutal trolling from the algorithms this morning: golf, care homes, palliative care and funeral plans. Titchmarsh is in there as well, plus ads for the Telegraph.

Our Aeneid primer episode is now live, and fantastic! thanks to our special guest @avensarah.bsky.social. It is the perfect companion episode to our Augustus double bill with @mikebeer.bsky.social Links below⏬️

Morning.

CA conference done for another year. Always good to catch up with friends and colleagues and meet new people. Inscriptions and archaeology papers particularly interesting.

Hoping for a sympathetic hearing this morning for my paper on Roman coin legends and trilingual inscriptions at the CA conference. As long as I do not have to flee whilst being pelted by rotten vegetables by disgruntled numismatists and epigraphers.

Draft programme out for the Colloquia Ceranea at the University of Łódź in Poland next month. Looks like my paper is one of the first on day one. Very interdisciplinary set of papers over three days. Definitely glad to being going and first visit to Poland.

Off to Manchester for a few days to the annual Classical Association conference. Giving a paper this year on Roman coinage and trilingual inscriptions. Scarcely any opportunity for a disparaging Cicero mention but I’ve managed it.

This Bold '80s Sci-Fi Anime Tackled The Odyssey Decades Before Christopher Nolan www.slashfilm.com/2136633/ulys...

Morning!

Morning.

It has just occurred to me that the person in China that I am tutoring for A level Latin on a Friday evening is doing that at 1 am in her country. That is dedication.

Fate versus Fortune in epic poetry - which affects the narratives of heroes more? Listen to the full episode with @greekmythcomix.bsky.social, out now wherever you get your podcasts, or on our website: www.ancienthistory101.org/p/gods-in-ep...

Good morning.

Series 1, Episode 4 is now live! We're joined by Laura Jenkinson-Brown of @greekmythcomix.bsky.social fame, who chats about the vital role the gods had in epic poetry, driving and moulding the narratives - and why adaptations of Homer's poems skip the gods at their peril...

After Poland and before Sicily, a spot of travelling around the Aegean: Athens,Ephesus, Paros, Crete, Kefalonia and Corfu.

Goodnight.

You can find us on instagram! Click here to find a clip from our latest episode with @mikebeer.bsky.social, discussing the Battle of Actium www.instagram.com/reel/DWhFxdh...

Working on the first draft of my paper for the Poland conference, which touches briefly on the career of the delightful Locusta of Gaul, expert ‘poisoner’ under the Julio-Claudians. Given the sources, I wonder whether ‘herbalist’ or ‘healer ‘ was a more accurate description.

Morning!

Augustus micro managed his image, but was he being honest? Listen to the full episode with @mikebeer.bsky.social, out now!

Huge thanks to @mikebeer.bsky.social for this bumper episode - I just know that a lot of GCSE and A level students in particular are going to find his insights so helpful...

Almost Easter.

Loved recording these two episodes. My favourite emperor (apart from Elagabalus).

Ok, think the Manchester paper is largely done. Starting to work on the papers for the Poland and Sicily conferences.

"Big book, great evil" (μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν) Callimachus of Cyrene

As of this week, all my teaching is online. OU teaching, some ancient history and Classical Civilisation, but mostly Latin, to various parts of the UK but also to Romania and China.

This Wednesday! Join us as Dr Mike Beer walks us through the life and career of Augustus in a special two-part episode.

A varied day: I’ve marked essays on Plato and on the Victorian Gothic revival, I’ve finished my CA conference paper (hieroglyphs, Aeneid Book 8 AND Welsh language TV channel S4C), I’ve booked a flight to Poland and this evening I’ll be teaching Latin prose composition to someone in China.

Goodnight.

Morning!

Penultimate commute rail journey from hell. Picturesque but incredibly slow and unreliable. Often late or cancelled. An elderly arthritic tortoise would make better speed.I won't miss it.

✨Crocodile✨ May your #MosaicMonday go as well as this crocodile with a very wide smile! This ‘Nilotic’ mosaic was found on the Aventine and can now be enjoyed in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.