Our Most-Viewed Articles
Eidolon Classics Journal
You have reached the ultimate boss level of Eidolon. The top 30 most-viewed articles *ever* are compiled right here. Read them, and you’ll be participating in a self-perpetuating cycle that will ensure they remain the most-viewed. But the fact that they have so many views must make you want to read them?? Oh well.
30. What Would James Baldwin Do?
Classics and the Dream of White Europe
By Denise McCoskey
“But I believe we can take Baldwin himself as inspiration for adding another term to that list or, more precisely, for debunking the very idea on which all the others reside: the whiteness of ancient Greece and Rome.”
29. Making a Monster
Why We Need to Talk about Holt Parker’s Arrest
By Sarah Scullin
“It’s no surprise, then, that Parker’s arrest has me thinking about how I might navigate these oppressive waters: should I consider the biography of a scholar relevant to an evaluation of his or her scholarship?”
28. What Is the Best Way to Learn Latin?
A Conversation between Eleanor Dickey and Daniel Gallagher, led by Michael Fontaine
“… there never really was a single way of learning Latin, even in the ancient world. The method of learning Latin depended on — among other factors — where and into what social class you were born into, the purpose for which you were learning Latin, and the resources available to you.”
27. Teaching Latin to Humans
How to Honor both the Language and the Learner
By Justin Slocum Bailey
“If MR is what a language-knowing brain knows, linguistic Skill is what a language-knowing person can do”
26. “The Slaves Were Happy”
High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies
By Erik Robinson
“Caesar’s value as an exemplar of clear and conveniently grammaticized Latin is indisputable; yet, how can we use the horrors which Caesar describes as a tool to inform our common humanity?”
25. White People Explain Classics to Us
Epistemic Injustice in the Everyday Experiences of Racial Minorities
By Yung In Chae
“In plain language, we need to talk about white classicists thinking that they know more than classicists of color because they “look the part” and we don’t.”
24. On Not Knowing (Modern) Greek
By Johanna Hanink
“The time I have dedicated to Modern Greek is some of the best I have spent as a classicist, since it has given me a sounder, more internalized sense of the ancient language”
23. Not Bringing Home a Baby
On Academic Infertility and Miscarried Hope
By Nandini Pandey
“They don’t tell you, when you start on the long road toward your classics professor career, how much it might cost.”
22. How to Climb Mt. Olympus
A Concise Travel Guide
By Luke Madson
“This is by no means a comprehensive guide to the mountain or a strict itinerary. The resources posted here are just a framework for planning any trip to the region.”
21. The Bad Wives
Misogyny’s Age-Old Roots in the Home
By Stephanie McCarter
“The etymology of “misogyny” is “hatred of women.” But the Greek word gynê means, more specifically, “wife.” The household, perhaps even more than the state, remains a bastion of patriarchy.”
20. Like Dionysus
BTS, Classics in K-Pop, and the Narcissism of the West
By Yung In Chae
“… it’s impossible to honestly discuss the story of BTS’s success without placing it within this larger context of imperialism, especially because the story itself reenacts the dynamic of America setting a standard that South Korea then tries to meet.”
19. This Is Not Sparta
Why the Modern Romance With Sparta Is a Bad One
By Sarah Bond
“The rise of Sparta in the romantic imaginations of Bannon and others that occupy the Alt-Right is about more than weapons.”
18. The Whitening Thief
Latent White Supremacy in Percy Jackson
By Maxwell T. Paule
“The field of classics cannot keep pretending like we’re above popular culture and its reception of Greek and Roman antiquity.”
17. We Condone It by Our Silence
Confronting Classics’ Complicity in White Supremacy
By Rebecca Futo Kennedy
“As long as Classics justifies itself by claiming to be the foundation of Western Civilization (feel free to do a random check of university department web pages), it will continue to find itself uncomfortably at the contested center of the continuing culture wars.”
16. Re-Queering Sappho
By Ella Haselswerdt
“But why did I care so deeply? Why do I so badly want a female Sappho? And why do I so badly want a queer Sappho?”
15. Putting the “Neon” in “Neo-Nazi”
The Aesthetics of Fashwave
By Jip Lemmens
“Fashwave artists have names like CYBERNΔZI, and their songs have titles such as “Right Wing Death Squads,” “Germania.exe,” and “Gas the Xenos, Galactic War Now!” Unsurprisingly, the music is absolutely terrible.”
14. Why Students of Color Don’t Take Latin
By John Bracey
“ It’s pretty obvious to me what the answer is — but then again, I’m black. Because I am one of few people on the planet who can call themselves both black and a Latin teacher, I have some unique insights into this problem as well as some practical solutions.”
13. Black Athena, White Power
Are We Paying the Price for Classics’ Response to Bernal?
By Denise Eileen McCoskey
“… we cannot effectively combat today’s use of Greece and Rome by white nationalists until we admit our own role in bringing such ideology about, until we grapple honestly with the fact that in no small way Classics’ response to Black Athena is coming home to roost.”
12. Drag Her by the Hair and Heart
The Manosphere and Ancient Love Curses
By Britta Ager
“Whiny dudes, it seems, whine in much the same way across the millennia.”
11. “Learn Some F*cking History”
By Donna Zuckerberg
“Almost a year ago I encouraged my colleagues to call out historical errors of this type. While I still believe that work is necessary and important, I’m disheartened to see that some scholars believe that identifying basic errors is equivalent to fighting white supremacy. It isn’t.”
10. Don’t Look Now, But There’s an Ancient Roman Depiction of a Dolphin Under Your Bed
A Horrifying Inquiry, with Pictures and Benjamin Franklin
By Donna Zuckerberg
“… it’s impossible to take this Cupid with his dinky little bow seriously, considering that he’s riding on what appears to be a feral hog with scales and fins.”
9. Plato Would Have Wanted You to Unplug
Technology Addiction, Technophobia, and Kids These Days
By Sarah Scullin
“Classicists might be dead language pushers, but the ancient texts that we promote were once new; and when they were first written people were also shaking their fists at the youth of the day and were terrified of contemporaneous cutting-edge technologies — in their case, paper, reading, and formal education.”
8. The Measure of a Man
Minor Classical Phalluses, Major Modern Fragility
By Bill Beck
“Now when we go to the museum, we’ll laugh, not at the size of the dicks, but at the culture that preferred them that way.”
7. The Body in Question
Looking At Non-Binary Gender in the Greek and Roman World
By Grace Gillies
“Central to the dialogue is the unsolvable riddle of Megillos’s body, a common theme for invective works written by men about women who have sex with women — how do they do it? Is she a man? Is she a woman? Is she a pickled artichoke?”
6. Why is Stoicism Having a Cultural Moment?
By Chiara Sulprizio
“By concentrating on the similarities between us, we can succeed not only at living in accordance with nature, but also at creating a new, expansive sense of community that transcends local differences.”
5. Why I Teach About Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World
By Rebecca Futo Kennedy
“Something has gone wrong in the classroom when even those people who have taken courses on the Classical world view discussions of race and ethnicity in Classics as part of a politicized liberal agenda rather than as scholarship designed to understand the ancient world and the history of its study.”
4. What Women (Don’t) Want
Tiresias on Female Pleasure
By Tara Mulder
“What is the purpose for us of asking whether men or women experience more pleasure in sex? Can Tiresias’ “experience” tell us anything useful about our own gendered approaches to sex?”
3. Emanscapation
Between the Public and the Pubic in Ancient Greece
By Angele Rosenberg
“To shave or not to shave?”
2. Dick Pics, Ancient and Modern
By Nikolas Oktaba
“… the penis is versatile and appropriate for many situations while the vulva is typically associated with either sex or terror. Therefore, genital intrusions such as the dick pic are acceptable for both public and private showing, while most things vulvate are not.”
1. How to Be a Good Classicist Under a Bad Emperor
By Donna Zuckerberg
“This is my call to arms for all classicists. No matter how white and male Classics once was, we are not that anymore. In spite of the numerous obstacles that remain, our field is now more diverse than ever, and that is something to be proud of.”
