I hope you’ve all had a good week! Round here it’s all been pretty chaotic, which is the norm for the final week of September, when new students are being allocated and MA students from the year before are submitting their dissertations. The overlap makes life interesting for tutors, I suppose – although I’d happily swap it for a version of ‘interesting’ that allows me to take a week off and watch daytime tv while wearing slippers and eating chocolate…
Aside from the work-related chaos I have home chaos too, being in the middle of a big decorating project. In a way it’s all worked out nicely – I have no time to sleep, and no bed to sleep in even if I did!
Hopefully in a week or two the chaos will settle into a form of order which will be better than I had before – at least that’s the plan. Photos will be forthcoming.
As you may have noticed, today is the start of October. Last year I took part in the social media Inktober initiative, which encourages people to do a drawing every day of the month, based on a prompt. This year a couple of us put our heads together and decided to create a Classics version, called ClassicsTober (yes, we thought and thought, and completely failed to come up with a better name). So here are the prompts, if you’d like to join in! You can share your drawings (or any other creations) on social media using the hashtag #ClassicsTober, or keep them to yourself – and you don’t have to do it every day! Much fun will be had.
I have no idea whether I’ll be able to keep up this year, but I’ll give it a go! I’ll post pictures on Twitter, but I’ll also do a round-up of the week’s drawings in next week’s blog post, with some highlights from other artists too.
It will be interesting to see how it goes. Last year I just started doodling with no plans and no particular direction, and by the end of the month I was the servant of a cartoon dragon who had become a friend to many and a big internet hit, and I’d set up an online shop so that people around the world could buy mugs and notebooks and tote bags with my little dragon on. There were even tattoo requests. Smol Dragon – and my October drawings – ended up being turned into a little Latin book by Legonium. It was a weird rollercoaster of a month! I’m rather hoping that this year’s experience will be a little less exciting. Wish me luck!
Things to note this week
Don’t forget to check out the Rogue Classicist’s daily posts for all the week’s Classics news: https://rogueclassicism.com/
From the Classical Studies Support Archives
In case you’re new to the site… you might like to check out Comfort Classics, an interview series which I ran all through lockdown last year. Somehow I managed to collect over 150 interviews with academics, students, teachers, artists and authors (including some of my personal heroes), about the things from the ancient world that make them happy. I’m really not sure how it snowballed like that – I was only planning on interviewing a few people. And I never did get around to ‘interviewing’ myself! But it was an entertaining project, and popular with a lot of people (the interviews attracted over 100,000 views), so it was time well spent – and it was a pleasure to talk to so many people who had previously just been names on the front of books to me!
Oxford Classical Dictionary: Free Articles
The updated OCD has a lot of online articles that are freely available to anyone – even without an institutional subscription – with more being added every month. Do take a look: they’re excellent and very readable, and browsing through them is quite addictive!
In Our Time Classics Podcasts
If you’d like to spend some time just listening to people talk about Classics (and who wouldn’t?!), check out this comprehensive and regularly updated list made by Andy Keen at Keener Classics. It pulls together all the Classics-related podcasts from the Radio 4 programme In Our Time, and is great to dip into when you have a spare hour!
Rhea Classical Reviews
Their first review is now up, of a book that looks really interesting, and includes a Q&A section with the author, which I think is a great feature of this new initiative.
Happening on Saturday
The Classical Association of Scotland is hosting this great free seminar, and there may still be time to join if you’re quick! Email Dr Alex Imrie at A.Imrie@ed.ac.uk if you’d like to join in.
And finally…
From Classical Studies Memes For Hellenistic Teens, and available on merchandise in their shop…
Classical Studies Support 
Printed out the list for ClassicsTober but I doubt anything I produce will be as awesome as Smol Dragon. My first contribution was a bit of a cheat!
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Your contributions are brilliant…!
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Thank you!
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