Sean McGrath

PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin working on ancient Greek fish poetry 🐟
These tweets are sponsored by the Irish Research Council #LoveIrishResearch

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@montgomeryandy Thanks so much, that's even longer than I'd thought. I'll definitely have a look one of these days!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

Teaching about how the sheer volume of Cicero's corpus influences our perspective on the late republic today. So I decided to visualize the word count of his oeuvre: Cicero vs other authors of the Roman republic and vs other large ancient corpora.

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

Despite me nitpicking, go check out Plinivs! (sadly only available in French, Spanish, and English fan translations) I'm constantly blown away by the wealth of citations and references of ancient literature, including some of my favourite fish stories from the Naturalis Historiae

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

The good news: I have probably found the first reference to Silius Italicus in the history of manga.
The bad news: he's being cited by Pliny the Elder, who died before the Punica was published.
(From Mari Yamazaki's manga Plinivs, a fictional biography of its namesake)

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

More specifically, Yamazaki's Pliny cites the Punica among his sources for the Vesuvius being a volcano. But the problem here is that Silius' passage is generally considered to be inspired by the Vesuvius eruption in 79 - the very event where Pliny would pass away.

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@CaitWhite19 @opurdue @glaragy_history Amazing job Caitlin, congratulations!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

Wild.

[sententiae antiquae @sentantiq]

A show of Fick's edition of the Iliad with Doric (Aeolic) alphas instead of etas and the DIGAMMAS restored for anyone who hasn't eaten lunch yet

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@GeorgiosPrekas You'll get there, I believe in you!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

Places where I was not expecting to come across ancient Greek, part 1: the Delphic maxim & Socrates' motto γνῶθι σεαυτόν ('know yourself') engraved on Fumi's ridicously large sword in Queen's Quality chapter 21.

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

Author comments, chapter 23

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

For what it's worth: the story context is that she finally accepted her repressed despair and got a cool spiritual sword as a reward, so the phrase is actually quite fitting here!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@MetalClassicist So when Antigone defies his decree, she is in his eyes defying the order he is trying to create and rekindling the threat of civil war - and also harkening back to the times before Creon's rule and hence calling his authority/legitimacy into doubt (like others have pointed out).

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@MetalClassicist I take it that he's using this decree as a symbol to demarcate the end of a period of chaos/civil war and a return to law and order (concretely, his rule). The significance of Creon's rule as a new start, a new dawn is also highlighted in the first choral ode.

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

Hot take: destroying centuries of history to turn the Parthenon into a symbol of Greek nationalism was probably a mistake.

[Arys🏺🪶 @ArysPan]

Parthenon's many lives

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

😱 I'm a fraud

[Dr Alecto Hardwick @AlexHardwick95]

Oppian's Halieutica is a didactic poem about fishing, the vegetarians are Not Keen

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@JamesRomm Absolutely, it's a fantastic book!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@JamesRomm As someone who is wrapping up a PhD on Oppian, I'm so excited to hear this! It's really frustrating at times that the most recent English translation of the Halieutica is so severely dated. Really looking forward to seeing your progress!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@DrUsherwood Can confirm, really enjoyed their seminar!

[Sean McGrath @SeanEMcGrath]

@irish_athens It was a pleasure, thanks for having me!