Posts Tagged ‘Persia’
“Now I will tell the captains of the ships, and all the ships together”*…
Ethan Mollick has created a new site that’s fascinating in two different ways. First and most overtly, it’s a beautiful (and thorough) visualization and explanation of the ships used by the protagonists of The Iliad.
But at the same time, it is a powerful demonstration of (at least one of) the ways that AI might be useful in scholarship and education: Mollick spun up the site last month, using Claude…
In the second book of the Iliad the poet pauses on the brink of the first battle, calls on the Muses, and counts the fleet: twenty-nine contingents, forty-six captains, some 178 place-names, 1,186 ships [and by Thucydides’ reckoning, around 100,000 men]. This site puts every entry on the map, rebuilds the ships from the archaeological evidence [pictured on this site], and lets you read the lines beside the ruins they describe…
“The Catalogue of Ships” from @emollick.bsky.social.
* Homer/The Poet, The Iliad, Book 2, lines 492-3
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As we set sail, we might recall that it was on this date in 331 BCE (long, long ago– but hundreds of years after the action described in The Iliad) that Alexander the Great and the Army of Macedon defeated King Darius III and his Persian Army in the Battle of Gaugamela, effectively the final blow to the Achaemenid Empire, resulting in its complete conquest by Alexander.
With hope that you will be in Heaven thirty minutes before the devil knows you’re dead…
From Liz Danzico and her bodacious blog Bobulate:
Forget what you’ve heard about first impressions; it’s the last impressions that count. Last impressions — whether they’re with customer service, an online shopping experience, or a blind date — are the ones we remember. They’re the ones that keep us coming back. But there’s one kind of final impression that people seem to forget.
The closing line of email — that line that you write before you type your name — has been all but forgotten.
Danzico proceeds to offer a kind of taxonomy of ta-ta’s:
If a closing line can be so meaningful, so important, why are emailers squandering the opportunity, putting no thought in the closing? Time, perhaps, iPhone-finger exhaustion, multi-tasking—they’re all possible excuses. And many times, acceptable ones. We can’t be expected to neatly tie up every email every time. But once in a while, it would be delightful if people applied the same sincerity to the last impressions that we do to first ones.
Enjoy Danzico’s analysis at “Second Chance for a Last Impression.”
Your humble and obedient servant,
(R)D
[TotH to GMSV]
As we concentrate on the complimentary close, we might recall that it was on this date in 490 BCE that– because there was no postal service, and thus no facility for sending messages with closings of any level of courtesy or creativity– Pheidippides of Athens set out on the run that inspired the Marathon. Pheidippides was on a mission seeking military support from Sparta in defense against the invading Persian army. Tradition (that’s to say, Herodotus) holds that he ran the ran 246 km (153 miles) between the two city-states in two days. The Spartans, constrained by religious law, were unwilling to help until the next full moon. So two days later, Phidippides ran the return leg alone.
Pheidippides then ran the 40 km (25+ miles) from the battlefield to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon; he uttered the word Nenikékamen (“We have won”), collapsed, and died on the spot from exhaustion.
Statue of Pheidippides on the Marathon road (source)
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