Armchair Classicist (Ryan Schaller)

@armchairclassicist.bsky.social

3773 Followers 4434 Following

Ancient history and lit, photos of my cats. Writer, reader, fantasy, sci-fi, 🏳️‍🌈Ally, No🚫GenAI content. Lawyer by day. Probably followed you for mentioning reading, history, or writing in your profile. "Armchair Classicist: The Page" on FB

"Greatness lies, not in the possession of good things, but in our use of the, since even infant children inherit their father's kingdoms and dominions."

A very tall dark turquoise Maine Coon cat stretches up to a cat tree.

A long haired brown tortoiseshell cat naps on an empty book shelf surrounded by shelves full of Greek history books

Brown tortoiseshell Maine Coon cat lays belly up on the floor.

Large gray cat with his arms on a human arm.

Quote: "Remember that accidents rule men, not men accidents."
From Herodotus, 7.49, translated by Henry Cary

Two large cats on a lap

Screenshot of a post by existennialmemes
"Don't Chase your Dreams!
Humans are persistence predators.
Follow yoru dreams at a sustainable pace until they get tired and lie down!"

Three cats sitting on the floor

A photo of the cover of "Historical Sources in Translation, The Ancient Near East" Edited by Mark W. Chavalas.

"The Fathers of Greek Mythology - Acrisus
Father of Danae, Grandfather of Perseus, by Armchair Classicist: The Page."
That text is above a black and white depiction of Danae being rescued from her chest.

Brown tortoiseshell cat on a tile floor using an orange toy as a pillow

tiny gray cat in left photo. Giant gray cat in right photo.

Photo of the cover of the book "Sumerian Mythology" by Samuel Noah Kramer.

“For often fire has fallen out upon
unwatchful shepherds, fire at first
in secret shrouded in pitch-rich bark
has seized the heart of the wood,
slipped into its leaves both low and high
and growled like a beast in the sky.
The Conqueror from then on
he flames into pursuit, he rules
over the branches and the highest heights,
he’s doused the entire grove in flames
and rushed up a black cloud to the sky
all fat with pine-pitch mist; and all this
is underscored if a windstorm at its height
has been brewed amid the woods, the wind
balls and clusters the flames and sparks
and bears the fire on aloft.”

"Now, the greatest punishment, if one isn’t willing to rule, is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself. And I think that it’s fear of this that makes decent people rule when they do. They approach ruling not as something good or something to be enjoyed, but as something necessary, since it can’t be entrusted to anyone better than—or even as good as—themselves. In a city of good men, if it came into being, the citizens would fight in order not to rule, just as they do now in order to rule.”

quoted post by "beckafreewrites"

Husband: You're not buying new books are you?
Me: Absolutely not. These books were published years ago.

Cover of the book "Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth" by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer

"And how am I to persuade you, if you aren't persuaded by what I said just now? What more can I do? Am I to take my argument and pour it into your very soul?"

"and how Chinese come out silkworms' fibrous skins from mulberry leaves."

Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine,
That, bravely mask'd, their fancies may be told;
Or, Pindar's apes, flaunt they in phrases fine,
Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold.
Or else let them in statelier glory shine,
Ennobling newfound tropes with problems old;
Or with strange similes enrich each line,
Of herbs or beasts which Ind or Afric hold.
For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know;
Phrases and problems from my reach do grow,
And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites.
How then? even thus: in Stella's face I read
What love and beauty be; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her Nature writes.

The most complete injustice, the one that makes the doer of injustice happiest and the sufferers of it, who are unwilling to do injustice, most wretched. This is tyranny, which through stealth or force appropriates the property of others, whether sacred or profane, public or private, not little by little, but all at one.

Dark brown kitten naps with head on an open book.

“So don’t think that in searching for justice, a thing more valuable than even a large quantity of gold, we’d mindlessly give way to one another or be less than completely serious about finding it.”

"Fortune fears the brave and crushes cowards...It is never inappropriate to be brave." from Seneca's Medea

Large gray cat

A photo of the cover of the book, "The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character" by Samuel Noah Kramer

Cover photo of "Myths of Enki, The Crafty God" by Samuel Noah Kramer and John Maier.

A collage of photos of a brown tortoiseshell Maine Coon cat

“Approach my liege Maecenas
of my repute the greatest part and duly
and traverse with me the work begun,
set sail skimming the broad surface of the sea.
To embrace all inside my verses
I do not wish, not if I had a hundred tongues
and a hundred mouths, a voice of iron.
Approach and skirt the shore’s edge, land is near.
I will not hold you’re here inside the fiction of my song
over paths that wind and detours long.”

“If one misses the right moment in anything, the work is spoiled.”

Same cat lying in front of a tv

Brown tortoiseshell long-haired cat curled into a circle and asleep on a cat tree.

Socrates: “I enjoy talking with the very old, for we should ask them, as we might ask those who have travelled a road that we too will probably have to follow, what kind of road it is, whether rough and difficult or smooth and easy.”

Screenshot of a post by user "karmicpunishment" that reads:
"ASK CHATGPT????? i would NEVER. I ask all my questions to the pythia at the oracle of Delphi like Apollo intended.

Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot,
Love gave the wound which while I breathe will bleed:
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
I saw, and liked; I liked, but loved not;
I loved, but straight did not what love decreed:
At length to love’s decrees I, forced, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.

The following quote in white text over a black and white image of a statue of Bacchus:
“Now you Bacchus
shall I sing and the olive late to grow
her brambling growths and progeny.
Come here to us
O Father Lenaeus
everywhere brims with your gifts,
the field blooms loaded with autumn’s birth
of vine shoots and in full-topped vats
the vintage froths
O Father Lenaeus
come here to us,
join me and touch your feet
bare up to the ankles,
your buskins cast away,
in the sweet new sticky wine.”

White text over a black and white background:
"For me, however, love is at rest in no season, but like the Thracian north wind ablaze with lightning, rushing from Aphrodite with scorching fits of madness, dark and unrestrained, it forcibly convulses from their very roots, my mind and heart."

A black and white photo of a tree with the text of "The Goat and the Goatherd" in white.

a dark painting of Eurydice being bit by a serpent.

The text of Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 1:
"Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Long haired brow tortoiseshell cat sits on a stool in front of a bookshelf.

A quote in white text above ruins of ancient Sparta:
"So many wars through the world.
So many faces of evil.
None of the esteem right for the plow.
The fields sit squalid.
Kidnapped the farmers,
Curving scythes are melted into the stiff sword."

Cover of “The Ancient Near East” by Mario Liverani,

An old title page of the described book from 1903

Black and white photo of the described ancient limestone tablet with cuneiform.

"WIRED" news headline that reads "US Law Enforcement Warns of 'Anti-tech Extremism' as AI Hatred grows."
Below is the meme of the guy and girl walking with the guy turning around to check out the girl passing the other direction.

Girlfriend is labeled "Bell Riots"
Guy is labeled "Life Imitating Art"
New Girl is labeled "Butlerian Jihad"

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

Lines of poetry quoted in white text over a black and white photo of a tree and field:
“If ever the farmer within doors is confined
by storms of slush or frozen rain he has a chance
to attend to much that beneath a clear calm sky
must be done in a rush.
There is time to let labors ripen.
To replace the blunted edges of his share
the plowman forges teeth of iron hardened
by cold water immersion. He hollows out
tree trunks to make drinking troughs.”

“He brands every member of his herds,
affixes signs to ownership upon
every one of the grain piles he has built.”

“Your awe for the gods forbids you not
to drain rivers, stretch out a fence
to close in a field, set traps for birds,
burn out wasps in fumes and smoke,
sink a flock of sheep who bleat and bleat
under a river of approved sanitation.”

This is a photograph and sketch of a stone described as an "Ancient Kudurrru" referred to as DP 2 and held at the Louvre museum. The name comes from “Documents Presargoniques” – a French publication of PreSargonic cuneiform tablets. Since it's PreSargonic, it dates to before 2340ish BCE. (If you're not familiar with Mesopotamian history, that date is well earlier than the various famous Babylonian and Assyrian kings you may have heard of. We're going way back here).
The "ancient" in the name "ancient Kudurrus" is actually important here. These PreSargonic stones were named "ancient Kudurrus" because they resemble boundary stones found in a much later period of Babylonian history. We always add the "ancient" to make sure readers aren't confused which 'kudurrus' we're talking about.
The ancient Kudurrus were mostly found in palaces and temples, sometimes far away-taken as loot in conquests. Because none (as of the date of the book I'm relying on) have actually been found in the field, there is some disagreement over what actually their function was if they weren't boundary stones like the later kudurrus. They are stone inscriptions and not clay tablets.
They record the details of real estate transactions but generally, there are multiple unrelated transactions described on a single ancient kudurru. I may be too stuck in my 21st century title lawyer brain, but I reason that if you have multiple transactions from different sellers all compiled onto one stone, its function is as some sort of register or record of how a buyer acquired all of the property that they claimed to own.
My resource for these Ancient Kudurrus is a book published by the University of Chicago titled "Earliest Land-Tenure Systems in the Near East: Ancient Kudurrus" begun by the late Ignace J. Gelb, and completed by Piotr Steinkeller and Robert M. Whiting, Jr. If there have been developments since then, feel free to point them out to me.
In the Gelb book, this DP 2 stone is the first ancient ku…

On the left is a black white picture of a fragmented and broken stone tablet with Cuneiform on it. On the right is a sketch of the tablet with legible versions of the different signs used.

Off-white or cream colored figurine. The hands are held together in front of the torso just below the end of a long, pleated beard. The eyes are large compared to the rest of the face.

Small tabby on packing paper

White text over a black and white landscape photo: "To gain another language can be to see into another soul."
Geraldine Brooks, March