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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

On the contrary, I fear these are exactly the people with whom vice-chancellors will do their best business.

Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

In light of the brouhaha over @bretdevereaux.bsky.social's comments about fascism, I am reminded of George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf: 'However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.'

I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett's edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Did they accidentally send the April Fool’s post on May 1 instead? This is a terrible change.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Bluesky's censorship policies will never not be funny to me.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

I can understand, even if I dislike, arguments about the 'irrelevance' of Classics. Shutting down Middle East Studies when America is once again embroiled in a Middle Eastern war, however...

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Thinking about this @brianphillips.bsky.social classic again as we start another Winter Olympics: grantland.com/features/cit...

grantland.com

» Citius, Altius, Frigidiores

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Given that Odysseus thought the most beautiful man in the world was Memnon the Ethiopian, casting a black woman as Helen may have been the only defensible choice.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Nearest book, page 42, second sentence: οὐ at the end of a sentence: φῄς, ἢ οὔ; do you say or not? πῶς γὰρ οὔ; for why not? Also οὔ, no, standing alone.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Feel good about my AIA paper today, which means I will feel bad about it tomorrow, good again on Wednesday, and then inevitably bad on Thursday when actually presenting it.

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Katuwestākos Göransson @seadogdriftwood.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

A single word, even a single letter, can mean a lot more when it's in a classic work. A little papyrological rediscovery and some time-travelling detective work (literary rather than literal) by @theonash.bsky.social has unearthed evidence of medieval misunderstanding & meddling in Homer's Odyssey.

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Marco Perale @mperale.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

New issue of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, edited by @sofiatorallas.bsky.social , with contributions on literary papyri from @theonash.bsky.social and myself.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Real-world Quellenforschung: identifying which AI system a student used to write their essay.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Elite private universities are actually a pretty American phenomenon.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

'sit' is, I believe, the only English word to preserve all of its original IE ablaut grades: 0: nest e: set long e: seat o: sat long o: soot

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

I am reminded, reading this, of the anecdote about Shackleton Bailey refusing to attend a conference entitled 'What is Philology?' on the grounds that he would rather be doing it. To its practitioners, the project is so self-evident that introspection becomes heresy.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

This would be the end of international PhD students in America: www.chronicle.com/newsletter/l...

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

The American School of Classical Studies seems to have removed the traditional exam for the Regular Year, opting instead to interview students: www.ascsa.edu.gr/programs/reg...

• An Interview (on Zoom) with members of the Admissions and Fellowships Committee will be scheduled following the deadline for applications. The Committee's questions will be circulated in advance of the application deadline.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

What Big Grammar won’t tell you is that the semicolon has completely starved out the good old-fashioned colon, a much more interesting piece of punctuation.

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Michael Lauer @mrlauer.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Holy shit (It’s real: genai.umich.edu/resources/st... )

genai.umich.edu

U-M Guidance for Students | U-M Generative AI

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

The University of Michigan is now claiming that students have an ‘ethical responsibility’ to use AI.

Questions to ask yourself
As GenAl poses to be a revolutionary tool that can change the academic space and beyond, it is important for you to understand why and how you intend to use these new, powerful tools. These are a few questions to consider and note that the answers to these questions will vary for each person.
• Is using a GenAl-based tool helping me learn more and think better?
• Is using a GenAl-based tool enabling or hindering my mastery of the stated course objectives?
• Is the content I generate accurate and verifiable? Is it free of biases that might harm other groups of society?
• How will I treat content that might have been generated using a GenAl-based tool?
• Is using a GenAl-based tool equitable to my peers in my course?
• How can my actions in using a GenAl-based tool lead to the greater good of society?
Understand that your usage of GenAl-based tools can give you the means to better not just yourself, but also society as a whole, and there is an ethical responsibility towards doing so.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

magnanimously? munificently?

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

More conservatively, it shows that the paradigm hadn't yet been levelled from /hen/, /hem-os/ to /hen/, /hen-os/. The fact that Mycenaean never writes final nasals makes this essentially unprovable, even with the possibility of future discoveries.

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Matthew Scarborough 𓀀 @mattitiahu.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

41. The reason we can likely be confident of this is because the Linear B syllabogram 𐀛 <ni> is also used ideographically for figs, and is also used in Linear A and so probably assigned by the acrophonic principle. This was first pointed out by Günter Neumann in Glotta 36 (1957) 156–158.

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Matthew Scarborough 𓀀 @mattitiahu.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

40. The only word in Ancient Greek that we know (in my opinion) that we can be *absolutely* certain to have been borrowed from a language related to the one the Minoans spoke is νικύλεον, a kind of Cretan fig according to Hermonax in Athenaeus's Deipnosophists 76e.

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Kristel Clayville @kristel.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

And Indiana Jones wept. A list of languages I've taken at the University of Chicago: Akkadian Aramaic Ugaritic Classical Hebrew Rabbinic Hebrew Modern Hebrew Ancient Greek German All of them were important for my work, and I wasn't in any those departments.

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Jonathan @jonathankessel.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

People don't even realize the Oriental Institute's importance. Even in popular culture. They are murdering Indiana Jones. I knew things were bad when I read the mealy-mouthed stuff I get as an alumnus but this is just disgusting. So sad.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

This isn’t an impoverished regional school – this is the University of Chicago. Devastating.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Hence my favourite opening sentence in a preface, from Woodman’s commentary of the latter half of Velleius Paterculus’ second book:

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Sad to share the Penelope Mountjoy, the doyenne of Mycenaean pottery, has passed away.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

More Vesuvius Challenge sorcery: they got the title of P.Herc. 172. ΦΙΛΟΔΗΜΟΥ ΠΕΡΙ ΚΑΚΙΩΝ Α. More here: scrollprize.substack.com/p/60000-firs...

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Roberta Mazza's Stolen Fragments reviewed without a single mention of Dirk Obbink: curious. bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.04...

bmcr.brynmawr.edu

Stolen fragments: black markets, bad faith, and the illicit trade in ancient artefacts – Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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VIEWS project @viewsproject.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Our Visiting Fellow @theonash.bsky.social gave us a seminar on regionalism in Linear B this week. You can watch on YouTube if you missed it! youtu.be/pOeTV0wvSEc

youtu.be

Theo Nash - Regionalism in Mycenaean Writing: Comparing writing practices at Pylos and Thebes

YouTube video by Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Please tune in! (Or, even better, make the trek to Cambridge so you can join us for a beer afterwards.)

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

My review of Philippa Steele's (@viewsproject.bsky.social) latest, Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean, has just been published in JAOS and can be read on Academia.edu: www.academia.edu/127918039/Re...

academia.edu

Academia.edu - Find Research Papers, Topics, Researchers

Academia.edu is the platform to share, find, and explore 50 Million research papers. Join us to accelerate your research needs & academic interests.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

academia.edu

Academia.edu - Find Research Papers, Topics, Researchers

Academia.edu is the platform to share, find, and explore 50 Million research papers. Join us to accelerate your research needs & academic interests.

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

‘But those were small things: a sixteenth-century member of the college, dropped in the first court now, would be instantaneously at home. And we felt it. However impervious one might be to the feeling of past time, there were moments when one was drugged by it…

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

‘For Tolkien fans put off by a stream of ersatz offerings, from Amazon’s Rings of Power to the animated War of the Rohirrim, The Collected Poems offers up the pleasure of Tolkien’s creativity unalloyed.’

thecritic.co.uk

Lines from The Shire | Theodore Nash | The Critic Magazine

There are in fact 24 poems in The Hobbit, a much higher number than I think many would remember

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

It’s me! Come along on March 12th to hear about the trainee scribe at Mycenae who just can’t get the dative right!

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Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

The state of archaeology: excavations completed in 1950, no major publications until the 1990s, and significant work is still needed in the 2020s.

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