In May of 2021 a brand new trio of epic metal warriors arose from the metropolis of Dubai and released their debut recording, a three-track demo title Terror in Thrace. When a fellow member of a heavy metal Facebook group shared the Bandcamp link I was immediately intrigued by the release’s title, as Thrace was […]
From the sands of Giza, to the shores of Lindisfarne, to the paddy fields of the Mekong Delta, heavy metal music has long engaged with a broad range of historical subjects. History offers artists a nostalgic escape from the present to a past that appeals to their beliefs, cultural traditions, and sense of self, while […]
Euripides (c. 480 – c. 406 BCE) is the Vincent Van Gogh of Greek literature. His innovative approaches to the art of Attic tragedy were little appreciated during his lifetime, and even mocked by comedians such as Aristophanes, and he earned few first-place victories in the tragic competitions at the Dionysia festival. However, it was […]
For an introduction to Athenian tragic theater, see Part 1 on Aeschylus. Sophocles is often the first exposure people have to Attic theater. The first Greek tragedy I ever read was Sophocles’ Antigone, when it was assigned in my junior year English class at my public high school in suburban Boston. To remind us that […]
Many modern anthologies of classical myth, be it Edith Hamilton’s classic Mythology or your typical mythology textbook, may give the impression that the ancient Greeks all collectively inherited, as though from divine revelation, a monolithic canon of “timeless” tales that they bequeathed unaltered to subsequent “Western” civilization. This is a gross misconception. Originating in oral […]
While it has always been captured on analog and digital media like vinyl and mp3s, heavy metal music has been traditionally intended primarily for live performance, where the musicians and audience reciprocally feed off a sense of community, shared identity, and celebration of the values of a counterculture. Not uncommonly, these sentiments are communicated lyrically […]
Cleopatra VII Philopator, queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 BCE, arguably surpasses the likes of predecessors such as Hatshepsut and successors such as Irene, Elizabeth I, and Catherine the Great in the hall of fame of female monarchs who ruled in their own right. Her example, for better or worse, inspired literature and the […]
The Roman emperor Constantine I, enrolled in the club of historical “the Greats,” is inarguably one of the most consequential figures in world history. By championing the erstwhile persecuted, minority cult of Jesus Christ, he set Christianity on its course to becoming the dominant religion in Europe, and from there, the world. The so-called triumph […]
The Gorgon Medusa is one of the most iconic and recognizable figures from classical mythology. Most people are familiar with her image as a woman with snakes for hair and eyes that literally petrify anyone who looks into them. Many also recall her as the victim of the demigod Perseus, who avoided her gaze by […]
Many of us were taught that the Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, when Germanic barbarians dethroned the last Roman emperor, coincidentally named Romulus Augustulus (the names of Rome’s first king and first emperor). This anticlimactic event, hardly noticed by contemporaries, draws an all-too-convenient line between what we think of as classical antiquity and what […]
Heavy Metal Classicist 