Me on Monday: ‘Good afternoon! My name is Zach Herz, I’m your Roman Civilization professor this fall, and Ethel Cain hated my Instagram post’

Listen to the man!!

Fun fact—the formal pub date is 7/31, but apparently CUP is now live with my book, if you’re logging in thru an institution: accordingly, book 🧵 incoming. (1/) www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...

2013-2025 Moose died this morning. He declined quickly, but with enough warning for me to come home, and we were able to give him a sendoff that was painless and dignified. He got very old, very fast, and decided he was done. It was a good death. I just thought we would have so much more time.

Quote from a final (posted with permission): “Without a doubt, Rome fell when Broadway began.”

Call for papers is out from the American Society for Legal History! This is my favorite conference to present at, by far: wonderful audiences, who engage closely without tearing anybody down, and they love ancient law! Hit me up with questions and then SUBMIT. aslh.confex.com/aslh/2025/cf...

Quiz time: in order to get Moose to pose like this, you have to hold up A) a treat B) page proofs for Cambridge’s forthcoming translation of the Theodosian code; or C) all of the above #romanlaw #boyaremyarmstired

Finally heard a Tate MacRae song, and I no longer understand gay men. Why do we stan this woman

After si, nisi, num, and ne Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est

Legal historiography pupdate: Moose is under contract with Cambridge University Press Studies in Legal History! The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories should be coming out in ‘25. Hopefully they get his name right. #romanlaw #undercontract #getit

Count me also as unimpressed with the moral and philosophical incoherence of people who insist on asking “does calling Amy Wax a bigot chill speech” but steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the question “does a professor saying black and Asian people don’t belong here chill speech.”

Just remember—when you make fun of Ulpian’s self-aggrandizing notion of jurists as ‘sacerdotes’ at D.1.1, THIS is who you’re making fun of. #romanlaw #guilttrip

tfw you’ve made yourself regent to the child ruler Severus Alexander, but end up being killed on a military coup sometime between 223 and 228 C.E. #romanlaw #awkward

Hadrian’s Edictum Perpetuum IS brat #romanlaw #digest #bookxcx

One of life's great pleasures is reading student responses to "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema." #ifyouknowyouknow

@jbouie.bsky.social is the only NYT op-Ed who makes me feel smarter for reading him (specifically because he pointed me to the Rancho Gordo table of instant pot cooking times)

Enthusiasm @bonniehonig.bsky.social

Cannot emphasize enough, the man making this critique looks like Chappell Roan’s Wario

Herz: just remember that no one cares how your talk goes

🎼 he has slept countless aeons/In the frigid, cold beyond/Scream IO, CTHULHU PHTHAGN/it's the Necronomicon 🎼

Harp teachers

‘Globalist puppet’ ‘cabal’ Jesus Christ man just say Jew and save the ink.

OMG! @gregwoolf.bsky.social you are finally going to have a decent bagel.

A woman at the next table in this coffee shop just asked what ‘the whole coconut thing is about’

Hi. I was away for a week. Hope everyone is doing well. There are people who believe the reasons for my absence are shameful and disqualifying for full participation on public life. Those people can snort my taint. If you need help, get help. Don’t wait to be in crisis. You can feel better. /1

Trump is gonna have plenty of money, but this makes it MUCH more likely that Trump switches VPs and I want that *so bad.*

Tired: I study the early third century CE Wired: it’s a Severanomenon

This is critical for talks, especially. Leaving aside the tone-setting, the icebreaker buys you a few seconds to figure out acoustics and sight lines.

She would never stand in the way of congestion pricing

Can some talented person please make a κακοθερής T-shirt?

History does not protect you from having to make normative decisions and from feeling responsibility for the outcomes of those decisions, part 234423948282937€

‘A piece of pizza’

Right. Like, I am underpaid and should be paid 33% more—others are more underpaid. But the underpayment is the problem, not the budget quirk.

This is trainsphobic

When I say summer you say projects Summer Summer

Not for the first time, an unfathomably obscene use of the word "tragic."

Honestly Lonely Sexy Goatherd was weirder.

Hey ladies When your man wanna get buckwild Just go back and

Going up to Columbia today, to check some things in Butler and meet students. I am, as always, fearless in the pursuit of knowledge

It is possible to (1) deplore how Columbia University's administration is reacting to the on-campus protests and (2) also think it is very bad that a bunch of ghoulish, antisemitic opportunists have taken it upon themselves to hang out just off-campus, harassing Jewish students and celebrating 10/7.

I sure did. And here’s what I said.

GOD I love the AAH

They’re funny! I always tell people they’re funny!

It's very hard for me to imagine Shafik surviving this crisis at Columbia. Calling the NYPD riot cops onto your campus to arrest students should be a red line. If that's what students, faculty, staff, and alumni want Columbia to be, so be it. But I don't think it is.