Mythical Tinder
Swipe Right (or Left) on Your Favorite Heroes, Gods, and Goddesses
By Margaret Dunn
Author: Discentes
The Hero’s Journey
The Hero’s Journey
By Lily Nesvold
As a modern, musical interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid, “The Hero’s Journey” is an instrumental track created using GarageBand, a digital audio workstation, combined with Renderforest, a music visualizer service. I created this piece as my final project for CLST-143, “Great Books of Greece and Rome,” taught by Professor Alison Traweek…
Meet the Penn Classical Studies Class of 2021!
Meet the Penn Classical Studies Class of 2021!
By Elizabeth Vo-Phamhi
Every year, we here at Discentes have sadly bid another graduating class farewell while happily celebrating their achievements by featuring some of our newest Classical Studies and Ancient History alumni. The recently-graduated Class of 2021 is unique—they completed their entire senior year remotely, yet they excelled.
Carro cura carere
Carro cura carere
Re-evaluating the Roman Carrus
By David Picker-Kille
I. Introduction
As an aspiring classical archaeologist with an interest in Roman land transport, the recent groundbreaking discovery of the four-wheeled “chariot” at the Villa Giuliana north of Pompeii has highlighted for me the presence of an issue of translation between English and Italian that parallels a phenomenon of increasing influence and focus within my research of ancient Roman vehicle types and their corresponding Latin terminology…
Why Classics?
“Why Classics?”
By Olivia Wells
When people ask me what I’m studying, I often find that they don’t understand what I mean by “classics,” and in the rare case that they do, they sometimes can’t wrap their head around why I’d want to major in it.
Sadly, it’s not hard to see why I, as well as other classics majors, often find ourselves defending our discipline. Once regarded as a foundational precept of humanities, classical studies has since seen a decline in popularity over the past century…
Either Language
Either Language
By Jinna Han
What was that word again? It’s there just at the edge of my mind, hovering, waiting, expecting me to be able to grasp it while I’m still too busy stumbling over the other words that are falling out of my mouth in a room full of people who wait and listen. It’s a lot of pressure, getting these words just right. Every day is a performance, and not just in English, either…
The Wealth of the Countryside
Virgil, Georgics 2.458-542
Translated by Sara Chopra
In this final passage of Book 2 of his Georgics, Virgil presents his reader with an ode to the farmer, extolling the virtues of country living. However, as much as these closing lines celebrate the joys of an agrarian lifestyle, they equally express the poet’s distaste for the corruption that has taken hold of his city, Rome…
“When You Set Out for Ithaka…”
“When You Set Out for Ithaka…”
By Margaret Dunn
When I was ten years old, my grandfather gave me a copy of Mary Pope Osborne’s Tales from the Odyssey as a birthday present. He was an English professor, so gifts such as this one were not uncommon. Every year I’d receive a new paperback or two, plowing through each title so that I could answer his questions at Christmas…
Confronting the ‘Cis’ in ‘Classicist’
Confronting the ‘Cis’ in ‘Classicist’: Advocating for a More Gender-Inclusive Discipline
By Y. James Aykit
My journey in Classical Studies was sparked by homophobia. I was two weeks into my freshman year of high school when I confronted my Spanish teacher for having an anti-LGBTQ poster in his classroom. It was an incredibly bold move that had major—but not punitive—consequences: namely, transferring into Latin class…
Everything Old Is New Again
Everything Old Is New Again
Returning Translations to Their Original Meanings
By Olivia Wells
Have you ever wondered what’s lost in translation? Now, I could mean this literally or figuratively—here, I ask it literally, in a Classical sense. Is there a straight path from Ancient Greek or Latin to English? Does the context or background of a translator matter? How much faith should we put into a particular translator’s work…