Gustave Moreau was born 200 years ago today. The glamour of his 'Hesiod and His Muse' never fails to amuse me; when I imagine Hesiod he's sweating grumpily over his plough

A conversation with @twhittermarsh.bsky.social re the poet Musaeus over the roast dinner I cooked yesterday reminded me I used to collect visuals for story of Leander, who swam the Hellespont to visit his girlfriend Hero. Here's my favourite, in 15th-century Dutch manuscript. The wimple!

Easter Monday egg. This precious drawing of a Berlin vase fragment destroyed in WW2 has Leda and the egg again, except this time baby Helen is visible in her albumen sac inside the eggshell.

Thomas Hobbes, born 5/4/1588, in his classist 1628 Thucydides translation of 1628) equates critics of the monarchy with Athenian demagogues. The frontispiece shows Thucydides clutching a scroll that reads "A POSSESSION FOR ALL TIME", dignified nobles (HOI ARISTOI) v. HOI POLLOI.

Happy Easter! It's not Easter Bunny bringing you an egg, but Dionysus, who has the daddy cock (or mummy hen--they can have red crests, too). Made in Boeotia c. 350BCE, now in the British Museum

Ancient egg for Easter--it's Leda again, worrying that the Zeus-eagle dad is about to peck the egg containing Helen open. In this one Clytemnestra (left) is an older sister waving hi. Granddad Tyndareus bemused. Made in Athens 440-430 BCE, Now in Boston.

Egg for Easter hols no. 3. Youth tries to woo maiden with great ear-rings (both in Nike trainers) with necklace, girdle and bigger, more ovate egg than the one she's balancing on her cowl-necked mantle, presumably bestowed by previous suitor. She doesn't look impressed. Naples Archaeological Museum

So pleased to have sent completed book Aristotle Beyond the Academy in Britain and Ireland 1660-1922 off to go into production at Routledge. Here's one of the images. He's influenced the constitution, suffrage debates, abolition, sex manuals, zoology, the chocolate industry....

Eggs of the day for Easter weekend! Pompeii fresco.

After weeks working so hard I've scarcely posted, I'm getting into Easter mood with some egg images. Here's Leda looking surprised at what she's laid, with dad Zeus and big brothers of the girls (Helen and Clytemnestra) inside the egg, Castor and Pollux. Made in Athens 450-400 BCE, now in Bern

Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me by Edith Hall | Issue 172 | Philosophy Now philosophynow.org/issues/172/F...

The Greatest Speech of all Time: Pericles' Funeral Oration Gresham College | Edith Hall youtu.be/NzpRgD4H8V4?...

Edith Hall retells the story of The Iliad as a bronze age apocalypse caused by overextraction #TheAncients open.spotify.com/episode/0coO...

Aristotle as the originator of spreadsheets. Source: fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

🤩 Congratulations to our Classics researchers on winning the Outstanding Team Quality Award- Learner Facing at the annual national Outstanding Achievement Awards. 👉 The team, led by Prof. Edith Hall and Prof. Arlene Holmes-Henderson, won the award for the project they have delivered in prisons.

Edith Hall, "Classics for the people" aeon.co/essays/why-w... Returning to this piece.

Published today! Local history meets Classical Reception! For my part, fruit of collecting stuff in the best part of England since 2001! @durhamclassics.bsky.social

Very honoured to receive an Honorary Fellowship alongside these luminary fellow-alumni from Wadham College, Oxford wadham.ox.ac.uk/news/we-welc...

Great write-up by John Green for "seminal" Hall & Stead, "A People's History of Classics" (download free from edithhall.co.uk) in Morning Star, in the course of reproving the author of a book who should've read our work, but hasn't. I used to sell Morning Star in the 1980s

Today!

Last October I jeopardised my hard-earned reputation for a lifetime of dissipation by starting to go to the gym after a near-fatal fall. Just to reassure my friends that some things don’t change, here’s my favourite gym kit. And I still drink lots of wine to recover from workouts

What a great time I had picking up the International Hellenic Prize, awarded by Matthew Lodge, the British Ambassador to Greece, on Saturday. Surprise reunion with old RHUL comrade Chris Kremmydas was particularly gratifying.

After brutality at Istanbul Airport (Turkish Airlines) followed by far worse at Paris Charles de Gaulle (Easyjet) this month, a joy to be flown on time with charm by Aegean Airlines to a queue-free passport experience in Athens & this bouquet my hosts had ordered to my hotel room

I just love the illustrations to the Sirens chapter in James Joyce’s ULYSSES by Richard Hamilton, born 24 February 1922. The Sirens’ eyes are distinctly bird like

If you're interested in attending the IHP award ceremony in Athens on Feb 28th for this year's prizewinner @edithmayhall.bsky.social, please visit our website to register to attend in person or online - this is not an event to miss! internationalhellenicprize.org

On #WhoopingCraneDay2026 what better than a case from Sparta which gives you a Medusa with excellent lash-separating mascara and Sphinxes as well as cranes?

Had a lovely time filming a documentary about the Odyssey in Paris today. Less impressed by six hour delay at Charles de Gaulle airport on return voyage. There were some monstrously rude Gauls opposing all our progress at Passports so missed the home bound flight.

Now on BBC Radio 4, the episode of YOU'RE DEAD TO ME on Hypatia that I contributed to bbc.com/audio/play/l...

And here’s a quick video with me, Olga Koch, and @edithmayhall.bsky.social telling you more about this week’s episode of YOU’RE DEAD TO ME on BBC Sounds & Radio 4

Want to support teaching of ancient ethics in prisons? Here's a blog with a link to JustGiving. £10 buys course material for 4 prisoners. @durhamclassics.bsky.social edithorial.blogspot.com/2026/02/anci...

Hive Mind! I’m looking for someone with excellent WordPress expertise to get my website (edithhall.co.uk) up to date, on a paid-for basis, and then regularly update it. Please DM me if you feel you can help. I would also be grateful for pointers to anyone who might suit.

👏 ICYMI: Prof. Edith Hall and Prof. Arlene Holes-Henderson started the year in Manchester, training prison educators in the delivery of Aristotle’s ethics.

Yes! Our guest professor, Edith Hall, talked about it in her ‘Nuance Window’ at the end of our Aristotle episode of BBC YOU’RE DEAD TO ME

When its 0924 in the morning and you've already given a talk on Classics and social & environmental justice to high school students across China

#History Hypatia of Alexandria: mathematician, martyr and feminist icon You're Dead to Me Sat 10:00 BBC Radio 4 @gregjenner.bsky.social is joined by Professor @edithmayhall.bsky.social and Olga Koch to learn about the life of mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

n my experience, most specialists in Greek comedy have zero sense of humour; the funny one all do tragedy. This miserable-looking if not paranoid Thalia, Muse of Comedy, 3rd c. CE, in Rhodes, seems to be setting a trend. More pictures of Thalia to follow.

Congrats 🥂 @edithmayhall.bsky.social Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer's Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World Longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman Award #Blueskybooks Edith will be with us in May View full programme here: www.campdenmayfestivals.co.uk/literature/e...

I like the comic & tragic masks on this 1814 visualisation by Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson, btd 1767, of youthful winged Muses of Comedy & Tragedy, but dislike this misspelling (in Greek, bottom right) of Euripides. No Shakespeare/Goethe/ Alfieri (natch) beside French dramatic titans!

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

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!