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sibyllacumae.bsky.social

@sibyllacumae.bsky.social
2.1K followers 748 following 3.4K posts

Basic Bibliographic Bitch. Antiquarian Bookseller. Renaissance Platonist.

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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 2h
Just learned that Marguerite Yourcenar wrote a novel about the Siege of Münster????? The main character is an alchemist????
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 7h
People often tell me to let them know when I’m in NYC, but usually I’m just in and out for dinner engagements with little time to spare. Perhaps I should announce “office hours” at the Penn station bar, where I can be found hanging out waiting for my night owl train back to Philly.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 8h
I have felt this way at the last several Met exhibitions I’ve visited. They let way too many people in, and for exhibitions where people want to get to close to small or detailed objects, it’s a nightmare. I basically missed most of Raphael because I couldn’t handle the crush.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 23h
In Vienna at the KHM I was surprised to run into one of my favorite paintings, Michaelina Wautier’s Triumph of Bacchus, which I saw earlier this summer in London at a show devoted to the artist. It surprised me how different it seemed on the wall with other big paintings! I still love it though.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I had a phase in the aughts where I was for some reason obsessed with wearing as many visible layers as possible. I feel like we can leave that behind.
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Sophie Bacchus-Waterman @sophiebwaterman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
As part of the Women and Their Books study day on Saturday the 3rd of October, we're displaying a book written by Richard Hooke owned by Magdalene Wake, who inscribed the title page: "Magdalene Wake her Booke Given her by Maister Hooke 1655".
Christ Church WG.8.10 title page
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Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 30/09/2026
Fantastic bookshop find: a Latin textbook in Welsh, complete with glossary and a guide to spotting Latin borrowings in the modern language.
Cover of Llyfr Dysgu Lladin — Latin TextbookExplanations of Latin grammar in Welsh. Examples include Insula Mōna - Ynys Môn and Urbs Dēva - Dinas CaerA classic Latin glossary with principal parts and everything, but the translations are into WelshTable showing the outcomes of various Latin consonants in Modern Welsh, with examples
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Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I’m home! A crazy three weeks of wedding festivities, boat rides, climbing hills, trains, visiting libraries, dinners in embassies and palaces, a book fair, Eastern European wine tastings, art, gardens, goulash, Turkish baths, opera… 😴
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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Men messing with women's (or gorgon's) heads du jour: Medusa's shrieking head on shield of Perseus, 1597, by Caravaggio. It's his birthday.
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Laura Estill @lauraestill.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
frustrated 19th C book collector of Rowe's 1709 Shakespeare: "Of all bibliopegistic sins, cropping is the least pardonable. I often wonder what religion Bookbinders are. Whether they believe in a failure state and where they expect to go to?" McGill U copy @archive.org archive.org/details/McGi...
handwriting:
"Of all bibliopegistic sins, cropping is the least pardonable. I often wonder what religion Bookbinders are. Whether they believe in a failure state and where they expect to go to?"
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Yesterday I took a bath in a 16th-century ottoman bathhouse and it was awesome
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Steffen Hope @hopesteffen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Reposting this for the morning crowd. I'm trying to say something intelligent about my intense dislike of generative AI, & why using this technology helps authoritarian projects.
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Bruno Dias @brunodias.dev · 28/09/2026
What is happening is not that AI-generated cultural goods are replacing human-made cultural goods; what is happening is that capital is flowing out of the production of cultural goods *entirely,* making us all poorer for it.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
In a ruins bar in Budapest where my boyfriend is explaining Lycophron to me, pour one out for Matthew Corvinus and his lost humanist library, he would have loved this I think
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
A theme of this trip is: all the stuff was looted and taken to Vienna
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Something I’ve learned on this trip is that the way I “don’t know” German is completely different from the way I don’t know Czech and Hungarian. Feeling great about my ability to read signs and express basic needs in German ngl
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I went to the papyrus museum at the ONB yesterday. It was really well done and interesting but it did leave me with a sort of melancholy weight of the antiquity and inevitability of paperwork.
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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 26/09/2026
I worry that they don't have to do much more right now than run the clock down with these bullshit stories to create the social norm that it's computer gremlins Who are committing the crimes so there's nothing that can really be done about it
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 24/09/2026
Have fun with your formal logic trees, which are strange and threatening to me. I’ll be over here slamming Greek words together until the entire cosmos starts thrumming in a beautiful, harmonious chord that only I can hear.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
How my vacation is going
OP holding an extremely fluffy white Pomeranian in a wine bar in Prague
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Berlin Book Fair opens tonight! If you’re in town, stop by booth 29 at the Kronprinzenpalais! :) yes I am very tired
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Andrea Reyes E (she/her) @altibel.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Speaking of Sanssouci, Lindner has a delicious bread called like that. www.lindner-esskultur.de/produktwelt/...
lindner-esskultur.de
Sanssouci Brot
Brotspezialität aus der LINDNER Bäckerei: Sanssouci Brot - urig, runder Brotlaib aus Roggen- und Dinkelmehl mit kräftiger Kruste.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Change of topic but I can’t believe the audiotour at Sanssouci doesn’t mention that Frederick had gay orgies with Voltaire
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A lot to process but thinking a lot about library science in service of the surveillance state—and accountability for its crimes, vs AI’s destruction of the idea of the archive and role in our new techno-surveillance world. Not cheerful.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I’m not really posting because I’m having fun on my trip but just stopping in to say I’m currently at the Stasi Archive which is deeply disturbing and scary.
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Jesse Locker @jessemlocker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
From the Museum Chartaceum ("Paper Museum") commissioned by 17th-century scholar and patron Cassiano dal Pozzo: a selection of Corals, Patterned Stones, Asbestos, Fossils, Ivory, Ammonite and Hard Stone, 1620s (Windsor Castle, Royal Library)
A sheet of drawings of Corals, Patterned Stones, Asbestos, Fossils, Ivory, Ammonite and Hard Stone,
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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
After finding the secret herbal garden of Prester John, picking mint sprinkled with dew in the deserts of Inner Mongolia and soaking the tomatoes for three full moons in the lapis lazuli from the slopes of Tien-Shan I have cooked the Ottolenghi pearl-barley stew.
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Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I like opera but I’m not super into knowing who all the famous singers are, etc—however, I can tell you that Anthony Roth Costanzo is freaking amazing. I’ve seen him before at the Met but last night I was up close and it just hit me. incredible.
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BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Me when I handle books with my bare hands: This is just like jumping off a bridge
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Going to have to sacrifice one of the large hard cover novels currently taking up an egregious amount of suitcase space so that I can fit my jacket. Ah well.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Instead of having a quiet evening to finalize my travel plans and get my ducks in a row, I’m going to THE OPERA! Mozart’s Mitridate!
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Pausing doomscrolling to read Gerard Manley Hopkins has been found to decrease heart rate and increase life expectancy by 15-20 years
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
One of the skills I brought to my new job is how to toggle the Greek keyboard on a mac so we can use Greek titles. But something I’ve been thinking about is how weird the idea of “italic Greek” is… so I just don’t italicize Greek titles. Probably someone has written an essay on this I should read.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
If you’re a subscriber to The Book Collector, my article “Friends and Subtle Enemies,” about the women who led the charge of the study of incunabula in America, is out now! thebookcollector.co.uk/friends-and-...
thebookcollector.co.uk
Friends and Subtle Enemies: Some American Early Bookwomen of the 20th Century | The Book Collector
FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE: Most Anglophone bibliophiles today with an interest in incunabula will be familiar with Goff numbers (referring to Goff’s Incunabula in American Libraries; a Third Census, 1964...
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Steffen Hope @hopesteffen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Today is the feast of the translation of Saint Sunniva, whose body was moved from the island of Selja in Northwestern Norway to Bergen in 1170. A brief account of this translation is found in the 9th lesson for the feast of the Saints of Selja, whose leader she was, in Breviarium Nidrosiense (1519).
Page from a printed liturgical book, showing two columns of texts with interspersed red initials and rubrics that mark the type of liturgical text to be read or sung. The top of the page contains the rubric "Sanctorum in Selio", i.e., the Saints of Selja.
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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Who's behind the masks? Pieter Bruegel's enigmatic and unsettling drawing of a team of beekeepers from 1568. Today is his day.
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BCP Minus Context @bcpminuscontext.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
What help is there for us?
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I’ve avoided saying much about the AI book scanning thing (it doesn’t affect my business) but I’m grateful for this grounded article to send to people who ask me about it.
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andy™ @andylevy.net · 08/09/2026
werner herzog on AI filmmaking (from here www.indiewire.com/features/int...)
Q: A couple years ago at IDFA, I saw this movie "About a Hero," which is this partly Al-generated hybrid documentary that tries to recreate the atmosphere of your films.

A: The intention of this young filmmaker was never to remake any [of my films], but making something in the spirit. And I immediately said, "You will fail. It is such a stupid idea. It's phenomenally, abysmally stupid. I will not take part in it." He wanted me to explain things and have my voice in it.
I said, "You are alone. There's such a thing as free speech, which I respect. So go ahead and fail." And it is a failure, period.
It's so standardized that Al can step in because there's not real storytelling. It's mimicry of something that has happened before. And I welcome Al to replace all the idiots who are into nothing but repeating, repeating, repeating until it's ad nauseam.
When it's ad nauseam, please, please, please let Al step in and do the job.
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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
2/2 Miranda Richardson as Elizabeth I in Blackadder (1986) has also been nominated. Not quite the same costume but still v good.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I had a snarky reply about how annoying this type of clueless “article” is but then I actually did click through and read to see it’s mostly about Romance novels, so I get that it’s not just total ignorance of book history but also a little of your classic misogyny 💫
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Gemma Matthews - The Sewing Songbird @thesewingsongbird.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
It’s been an age I know, but after what feels like a mammoth stitching marathon, I can finally reveal my latest embroidery. Please feel free to dream away… 😉🪡🌿🌺🧚🏼‍♂️✨ *completely freehand stitched, no patterns, paint or sketch, just threads. #stitchedart #embroidery #thesewingsongbird
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I am excited for my trip but a bit sad to be missing all of Philadelphia fringe! Someday I won’t go on vacation in September.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I’m going to Brooklyn today to see Molière in the park, which is doing a free production of my FAVORITE Molière play in Prospect Park. I saw a production of this same translation, directed by the translator, when I was 16 at the DC Shakespeare Theater and I loved it so much I went back twice.
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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This is an obvious choice for me. Lovely red Cuprite might be full of copper but Orpiment, which literally means gold pigment is a poisonous pigment used since antiquity! Vote Orpiment! #MinCup26 But, have I got a story for you… Orpiment is used by the deep-sea worm Paralvinella hessleri 🧵
popsci.com
Deep sea worm wears Rembrandt’s favorite toxic color
Rembrandt painted with it. This worm survives on it. Say hello to orpiment.
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sibyllacumae.bsky.social @sibyllacumae.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Drivers like to complain about cyclists not following traffic laws, but IME what they hate even more than that is when you DO follow laws, like stopping at stop signs. That really makes some of them very mad that they can’t just roll through as if you aren’t there.
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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
It's the Five Senses, by French painter Lubin Baugin. In this version, several key things are hidden from the sense of sight. One is the money -- you can only touch and hear it in its purse. What else?
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Matthew Scarborough 𓀀 @mattitiahu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Just got my hard copy of a little summer project that I helped out a bit with: In advance of this Fall's Cambridge Greek Play, Antonia Ruppel organised the creation of a basic student reader of Euripides' Ion using the play's performance text.
Cover with the branding of this year's Cambridge Greek Play (Euripides' Ion)There are two ways to learn how to read ancient literary texts well. One, slowly read short bits of text and  nd all the needed information yourself, with the help of a grammar and a dictionary. Two, read a lot, at much higher speed, with all the needed information already provided in a systematic, easy-to-access way. This Reader aims at letting you do the latter. It presents the text of Euripides’ Ion as performed at the 2026 Cambridge Greek Play. The text on each left-hand page is complemented by three elements on the right: a set of notes that help with syntactic di*culties and o+er stylistic and other relevant background information; a running vocabulary which also identi es forms that perhaps are not straightforwardly recognisable; and a translation that aims at being literal, not literary, and thus at helping you understand how the original text says what it says.
The best teaching materials are those you know well: so do take a moment to  nd the list of abbreviations and the reference vocabulary list (which includes all those words not in the running vocabulary because they are rather frequent – consider memorising those words on the list that you do not know yet). Should you  nd any mistakes or have any other feedback on how to improve this Reader, please do send an email to ion.reader.2026@gmail.com. Thank you! Sincere thanks go to all those who made this project possible by giving signi cant amounts of their time and expertise to each create the commentary, running vocabulary and translation for a passage of the play: Anthony Bowen Patryk Bratuś James Clackson Nicholas Denyer John Gibert Richard Hunter Rebecca Lämmle Krishnan Ram-Prasad Richard Rawles George Robertson Matthew Scarborough Jo Willmott Should this Reader have made you want to know more, take a look at the editions of the Ion
by Gunther Martin (De Gruyter 2018) or John Gibert (Cambridge University Press 2019). Antonia Ruppel, August 2026
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