erastes

1. I’m back from the library with Oscar Wilde and the dead man's smile By Brandreth, and First man in Rome/Masters of Rome By McCullough. Ordered Dissolution by C J Samson but that wasn’t there. Also emptied my car of wine bottles. I tell you, if I’d had a crash, the airbag might save my life but I would have been cut to ribbons by the four enormous bags of bottles…

I do wish someone would invent a bottle bank that didn’t smash. It’s rather embarrassing to have the people behind you in the car counting every single smash and then looking knowingly at you as they get their mere three bottles out of their car…

2. Erastes/eromenos: Nearly four years after an academic journal nixed plans to publish a piece about sex between adult and adolescent males of antiquity, the controversy is erupting again. This time, however, it’s not conservative critics yelling the loudest. A group of classicists, now twice thwarted in efforts to publish on the provocative subject, have taken aim at one of the world’s largest publishers, saying Taylor & Francis Group has placed reputational concerns above the legitimate scholarly pursuits it ought to promote. The story dates to 2005, when Haworth Press announced amid heavy criticism that its Journal of Homosexuality wouldn’t publish an article or book chapter about sexual relationships between men and boys in antiquity. READ MORE

3. Apparently, an Argentinean condom company used an upcoming football match between rivals Brazil and Argentina to show Brazil what they were going to do to them whilst cleverly advertising safe sex.