bookandswordblog @bookandswordblog@scholar.social

Most of us know that Thucydides did not say that thing about warriors and thinkers (thanks Neville Morley!) ... but did you know that the one about "of a hundred fighters, 10 should not be there, 80 are just targets ..." goes back to Gabriel beloved-of-Ninurta Suarez?

Sententiae Antiquae has the story https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2019/02/19/horrible-things-happen-to-heraclitus-on-the-internet/ #ancientGreek #classics #quoteAttribution #presocratics

New post: "in the modern era where informants read the anthropologist’s work, disputes among informants lead to all kinds of complications, and one must be especially careful in preparing the final script for publication both to safeguard the interests of informants, and to provide as accurate and unbiased an account as possible, taking into account the views of the different factions" https://bookandsword.com/2019/02/18/a-herodotean-sentiment/ #ethnography #anthropology

My fourth pitch to a magazine was successful. I wonder if there is anything similar to "The Writer's Market" with less of a USA focus? #freelanceWriting #publishing

The CEO of #patreon has posted a worrying interview that they need to collect more money from creators to "create a sustainable business" (ie. increase their investors' profits over the current 30-50% annual growth) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon-announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators-in-2019.html Patreon has helped many of the artists I follow and I like the basic idea but I am not sure about their future.

New post: Max Jähns, Red Figure Vases, and Linen Armour https://bookandsword.com/2019/02/09/max-jahns-red-figure-vases-and-linen-armour/ #ancientHistory #linothorax #philology #hoplite #assyriology

Episode #327 of Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff has some #assyriology content in addition to the usual #roleplayingGames and #gamesDesign advice http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/episode-327-good-luck-getting-any-wood/

A new (ok, printed 1914) volume of Latin sources just arrived by interlibrary loan! #libraries #latin #classics

The (first) End Of Archives was 2502 years ago this summer. I should blog about that ... #assyriology #babylonia #cuneiform #prosopography

Classic post: monster-headed axes, and #dragon headed hammers from ancient #iran to medieval #italy https://bookandsword.com/2016/05/14/monster-headed-axes/ #mastoArt

Classic post: the paraskeuastikon of Peter son of Jack https://bookandsword.com/2016/12/17/the-paraskeuastikon-of-peter-the-son-of-jack/ #poliorcetics #LotR #peterJackson #peterConnolly #film

New post: Historiography, Geschichtsschreibung, and Forschungsgeschichte (with some bonus #receptionHistory) https://bookandsword.com/2019/01/26/historiography-forschungsgeschichte-and-geschichtsschreibung/ #methodology #history #deutsch #wissenschaft

One of my old professors (and the author of "Books Before Print") has a new post on the oldest surviving printed advertisement from Britain https://medievalbooks.nl/2019/01/24/the-oldest-surviving-printed-advertisement-in-english-london-1477/ #codicology #bookHistory #incunabula #caxton

I love snarky French historical dictionaries. "This edition is just a tweak of that one without the notes; not usable." "This word in an 'old' language is first attested in 1952." Burn! #philology #historicalLinguistics #dictionaries

Person looking for attention on the Internet: "Almost nobody [in the United States] [uses a search engine other than Google]" Me: *3% of my search engine traffic in 2018 came from Bing and Yahoo and another 2% from DuckDuckGo, DDG are growing at 50-70% a year, and media people love to talk about Uber drivers or professors or startup coders and other tiny but 'cool' groups* But nice try scaring people into inaction, Mr. Bad Magickian! https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

In which I manage to cite Rocheberg "Before Nature," Old Babylonian mathematical texts, and Jo Walton's "SF Reading Protocols" https://bookandsword.com/2019/01/22/rochberg-on-omens/ #assyriology #historyOfScience

awat ummâni: in the second watch of the night, 21st day, Sîn will vanish from the heavens. Please report any unnatural births, dead kings, or rampaging barbarians to the Ebabbar at Babylon http://planetary.org/blogs/bruce-betts/2019-total-lunar-eclipse.html #astronomy #assyriology

in light of the conversation about how scientists should respond to quacks: Jona Lendering, "Why Roger Pearse's Mithras Pages are Important" https://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/why-pearses-mithras-pages-are-important/ #scienceCommunication #humanities #mithraism #religiousStudies

"The use of the terms possible and impossible are, among other things, relative to one’s accepted knowledge of how and what things are. - Francesca Rochberg, "Conditionals, Inference, and Possibility in Ancient Mesopotamian Science," Science in Context 22.1 (March 2009) pp. 5-25