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Seeing her legendary beauty for the first time with an adult’s eyes, I was not impressed. Helen was dainty and dark-haired like a woman in a fresco, but she was also cool and impenetrable. Why in the world had so many men wasted their lives fighting in her name, or had they even known what they were dying for? I would not have died for her.

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𐀪   𐂁
Linear B ideograms meaning “man” and “woman,” respectively.

As a correction to a statement I made in an earlier post, Linear B does appear to have had some diphthongs, but they are separate signs, and the script still does not represent all the sounds (such as the liquid /l/, /g/, and /h/) that the spoken language must have had.

I am slowly ( Read more... )

Orestes: The Young Lion has its first review, and it's a five-star one.  Wow!  I was having such doubts over whether people would like the book, and whether it was worth it to start the second one, but this fires me up again.

I normally don't find "the early years" parts of historical bio very interesting, but Ms. Gill makes the telling of Orestes ( Read more... )