Well, here I am!
This Classics blog is going to be my new project for a while. A friend of mine suggested to me a while back that I should think about writing a Classics column as a career, and initially I thought he was a little insane.
But then I watched ‘300′ last night, and I thought again.
‘300′ caused a lot of drama in the political as well as the academic community. While the Classicists bewailed the total loss of several hundred years worth of studies on hoplite armour, discarded in favour of leather speedos and gigantic capes, the Iranians were enraged at the depiction of Persians as lascivious, corrupt, effiminate, cowardly and monstrous. As a Classicist, I dread drinks parties and the inevitable ‘So, what are you studying?’, followed by ‘Oh. And what exactly can you do with that?’, which is incredibly frustrating for reasons I will no doubt discuss in later posts. It’s reactions like that of Iran which continue to prove that Classics can be a powerful tool in real life.
So here I am. My aim here, I guess, is to publish sporadic bits of information on how Classics is not only beautiful and excellent training for all walks of life, but also incredibly powerful and relevant. Here goes, I guess…
