you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

I can't decide whether it's unreasonable for me to even be contemplating applying/auditioning to two vastly different kinds of graduate program, or whether I should be able to do it, if I were more focused and organized and single-(double)minded.

On the other hand, some excerpts from Gwyn Morgan's 69 A.D.: The Year of Four Emperors (Oxford, 2006):

No sooner had Helvidius returned, however, than he took advantage of a senate meeting to try to settle scores with Marcellus. In later days, Helvidius too would be idolized by supposedly freedom-loving senators, but he must have been almost impossible to deal with in person. (49)

Tacitus asserts that nobody had the desire ore the nerve to claim Galba's corpse that day, but this need not contradict Plutarch's assertion that the insufferable Helvidius Priscus undertook the task. (72)

Also to humor the senators, the emperor attended meetings and acted as one of them, even when trivial matters were discussed. But one result was a confrontation with that prickly champion of "free speech," Helvidius Priscus. Helvidius seems to have proposed a motion contrary to Vitellius' wishes. (160)

Once they turned to the restoration of the temple, the stiff-necked Helvidius Priscus threw a wrench in the works. So was Rome robbed of any guidance, says Tacitus: the defeated Vitellians grumbled, the victorious Flavians got nothing done, and later senate meetings bogged down in petty quibbles and pointless recriminations. (257)

Helvidius Priscus resumed his career as the noisiest critic of every emperor from Nero on, until the otherwise equable Vespasion put him to death in 75. (267)

Wait, wait wait, Professor Morgan -- I think you are being too subtle with respect to your assessment of Helvidius Priscus' career.

I hate inputting Greek. Even though I am getting good at getting the accents in before their vowels, and figuring out that final-sigma is actually "w" and upsilon is actually "y" (I *know* that this makes sense from a transliteration perspective, but I keep sticking in thetas instead, and then started putting upsilons in where I wanted thetas...)

But it is all okay, because as a result of my painful, letter-by-letter analysis of Epictetus, I have not only realized how amazing the Helvidius-as-praetextum metaphor is, making his behavior all about what senators should do and traditionally do, and his exemplarity into a specifically senatorial and Roman thing which other senators and Romans should look to, but that it also problematizes all of this by making him into a passive exemplar, and only useful when historicized, which is more or less EXACTLY what Tacitus complains about re: martyrs. So yay, even though I'm not sure I'm going to be able to write it all up by Tuesday.

Also, I kind of what to start watching Battlestar Galactica, now that I have learnt that it is The Aeneid in Space. But I don't have time -- maybe this summer.

Also 2: my translation of Antigone suggests that I imagine Constable Elbow when reading the speeches of the Sentry. Except that then the Measure for Measure parallels become a little too much. And since this is the House of Oedipus we're talking about, the idea that Creon might proposition Antigone or Ismene suddenly isn't as unbelievable as it should be.