Our Top Articles: Editors’ Choice

Which articles are our editors’ favorites? Or which keep them coming back to read and share again and again, because they changed their outlooks on topics or just made them snort Diet Coke out of their noses? These!

Tori Lee, Assistant Editor

These are articles that bring me lots of joy every time I think of them. They are mostly humorous, which makes sense given me.

Trump’s Winged Words by Bill Beck: Doing philology on non-literary texts amuses me to no end. It’s like when you put babies in grown-up shoes, or fluffy cats into tiny, strangely-shaped boxes. Also, I use these examples every time I need to explain what an epithet is to my students.

Toward a Critical Edition of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ by Curtis Dozier: Stay for the stemma and edition at the end. They are so worth it.

Object-ifying Language: In the Classroom, Syntax Can Be a Tool or a Weapon by Daniel Libatique: This is a magical piece that teaches you a new thing about grammar and subsequently changes the way you hear people speak.

Spinning Out of Hades: A Journey from the Thesmophoria to Spin Class by Kourtney Murray: This article makes me feel validated as a woman who loves spin class. Fitness trends are one of those things that everyone likes to make fun of for some reason (think avocado toast or kale chips), and it’s usually at the expense of women, and it frustrates me to no end. This isn’t cigarettes or pet rocks! This is a healthy habit that people actually like. Can we maybe not mock it? Can we compare it to ancient religious rituals instead?

A Sexual Encounter, Narrated through Entries in the Index of Herbert Weir Smyth, (Ancient) Greek Grammar (1920) by David Rohrbacher: The kind of piece that makes you go “hehehe” under your breath the entire time.

Donna Zuckerberg, Editor-in-chief

Over the years, many people have told me (somewhat sheepishly) that they just aren’t interested in writing for the public. I always tell them that that’s absolutely fine — I don’t think anybody has an obligation to write for broad audiences, and I’ve never forced anyone to write for Eidolon. But the second part of that claim isn’t exactly true. Although technically I’ve never forced anyone to write for Eidolon, there have been a few times where I have wanted SO MUCH for a (very busy) specific writer to write a specific article that I’ve begged, cajoled, and pleaded the piece into existence. (Not surprisingly, all have custom art by Mali, because when I wanted piece to exist this much I also tended to have a very clear idea for a hero image.)

Barbarians Inside the Gate, Parts I and II by Dan-el Padilla Peralta: Another writer brought me the idea for this piece but didn’t think he was the right writer for it, and honestly, I’m not sure anyone other than Dan-el could have done justice to the topic. After he sent me a very dense 3500-word draft, I encouraged him to spin it out into two separate pieces — “one looking at the issues from a primarily micro perspective (the rhetoric of xenophobia and racism, the stances of individual politicians) and one from a primarily macro perspective (population movement, legal structures, economic trends)” — and to do it before the debate on 11/10/2015, which I was sure would be the death knell for Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions. This was also the first piece I got Mali to do custom art for, and I adore it.

Black Athena, White Power by Denise Eileen McCoskey: In my opinion, this article by Denise McCoskey is one of the most important ones that Eidolon published. Denise, Curtis Dozier, and I were discussing the legacy of classicists’ response to Black Athena on a podcast, and as we spoke I knew that I wanted Denise to dig deeper into the topic in an Eidolon article.

How Harrius Potter Helped Me Read More Latin by Justin Slocum Bailey: I feel a little bit conflicted now about Eidolon’s Harry Potter special, which produced so many wonderful articles in honor of the work of an unrepentant TERF writer whose fantasy world had a huge impact on my adolescence. I didn’t write for the special myself, but I did beg Justin Bailey to write a “really strong, joyful celebration/defense” of the Latin translations of the first two Harry Potter books. I even offered him the option to write the defense in Latin, if he felt inspired.

Other ways I’d slice this

Articles that made me cry the most (a totally unverifiable list based on my feelings):
Spinning Into Hades by Kourtney Murray, with its course packet epilogue
Nandini on Not Bringing Home a Baby
Yung In’s BTS article

THESE ARTICLES ARE SO FUNNY, PLEASE LOVE THEM LIKE I DO:

The limerick translation of the Ars Amatoria
McGonagall’s tenure review file
Pindr
everything by Tori Lee, I couldn’t pick one

Articles that seriously changed the direction of the journal:

Ode on a Grecian Crisis by Johanna Hanink
Making a Monster by Sarah Scullin
White People Explain Classics to Us by Yung In Chae

Yung In Chae, Editor-at-Large

In an effort to make us appear a little less self-centered, I excluded articles from the editors or the editorial board, but these would have made my list anyway.

Beyoncé, Plato, and the Foundation of the Polis by John Richard Ahern: I learned so much about both music and politics from this article, which shows that non-classicists can produce some of the best work on the classics. I remember talking to Sarah about how “magical” it was before publication; years after publication, it still is.

Altar of Facts by Elena Giusti: I was really struck by how Elena Giusti effortlessly weaves together philological analysis of Virgil and critique of modern Italian politics (so much of our political content has, for obvious reasons, centered on America, so I appreciate the exceptions). And her writing is in turns beautiful and harrowing.

The Measure of a Man by Bill Beck: I get asked why classical statues have tiny penises a lot, so it’s great to be able to point to an article that answers the question with genuine humor and insight.

Sarah Scullin, Managing Editor

Dear writers, I love all of you equally and could never choose a favorite, just like with my kids. However, also just like my children, some of you have been ever so slightly neglected! We’ve compiled a list of our most-viewed articles elsewhere, so here’s my list of “articles that didn’t quite place on that list but that I love and you should love too”:

Definition, Please: Dr. Bailly, Coffee, and Orthography by Tino Delamerced: Zippy writing, anti-pretentiousness, and radical ideas about spelling.

A Tale of Two Kingdoms by Andrew Tobolowsky: What happens when partisanship reaches such extremes that one side erases everything the other accomplished and when an outgoing leader doesn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power? Seriously, someone please tell me I’d like to know.

Breaking Up With Plato by Heather Harwood: I love pieces like this that take a deep, painful dive into a personal relationship with a problematic work.

Cupid Cleans House by Stella Fawn Ragsdale: Parts of this article are artful written and other parts are actually art.

Can a Middle-Aged Woman Seize the Day by Stephanie McCarter: Bookmarking this for my impending middle age.

Articles that make me very mad because of how effortlessly well-written they are

Spinning Out of Hades by Kourtney Murray (displays a level of mastery over the genre creative non-fiction I will never achieve. Rude.)

Honest Ads for Cars of Myth by Bill Beck (this is such a funny conceit I will never not be completely outraged that I didn’t think of it first)

Life as an Iphis by Lisa Franklin (why am I not this funny UGH?)

Classics Beyond the Pale by Dan-el Padilla Peralta (this article ever so kindly and gently reminds me that I am just a baby writer. An infant. A babbling, insensate, amateur toddler scribbling in chalk on the sidewalk while Padilla Peralta makes Leonardos out of sentences)

Articles with my favorite original artwork:

Fine, the articles that made me cry:

“Did You Eat?” by Woojin Kim (it’s just so sweet and it feels like we will never be able to feed our students ever again)

Intergenerational Trauma and the Novus Homo by Heather Galante (the interweaving of “Latin and English is so propulsive, I sort of slow-cried throughout the whole thing)

Why I (Sometimes) Teach Bad Latin by Elizabeth Manwell (I don’t know why but I burst into tears when I finished reading the first draft of this and then everyone made fun of me for crying about Latin of all things)

Her Absence Is Like the Sky by Jason Nethercut (full disclosure: I’m the wife in this essay)

Crossing Cultures as a First-Generation Classicist by Nandini Pandey (Actually I’ve cried at every article Pandey wrote?)