Say What You Like About Opening Paragraphs. Meanwhile, Agatha Christie:

hey you're doing a great job, just remember: a semicolon can be used to combine two sentences where you might otherwise use a period; this allows you to create longer and longer run-on sentences

anyway cicero

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version, here's a 2017 version.

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version. Here's Kenneth Brannagh's 2006 one.

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston. Here's the Ralph Fiennes 2011 one.

Cymbelline: Here's the 2014 one.

Hamlet: the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. The 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. The 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1969 Williamson-Parfitt-Hopkins one is there, and the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation, the Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 2000 Ethan Hawke one is here. 2009 Tennant's here. And have the 2018 Almeida version here. On a sidenote, here's A Midwinter's Tale, about a man trying to make Hamlet.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one. A theater Live from the late 2010's here.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here. The 1953 Orson Wells one is here.

Macbeth: Here's the 1948 one, there the 1955 Joe McBeth. Here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery, and the 1966 BBC version is here. The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here, here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. The 1988 BBC one with portugese subtitles, and here the 2001 one). Here's Scotland, PA, the 2001 modern retelling. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. Rave Macbeth for anyone interested is here. And 2017 brings you this.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here. Hugo Weaving here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie with Al Pacino. The 2001 movie is here.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version. Have the 1986 Duncan-Jennings version here. 2019 Live Theater version? Have it here!

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version. If you want a more meta approach, here's the commentary for the Tennant version. 1997 one here.

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier. The 1995 one with Ian McKellen is no longer available at the previous link but I found it HERE.

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version. Here's a stage production. 1954 brings you this. The french musical with english subtitles is here!

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1980 BBC version here and the 1988 one is here, sorry for the prior confusion. The 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here, and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. This one I'm not quite sure what it is or when it's from, it's a modern retelling.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one. Theater Live did a show of it in the late 2010's too.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, here for the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: have the 2018 one here.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

Malthusianism? That Malthusianism, the "theory" that human populations always eventually grow to the level that resources and technology can sustain, thus perpetuating a long-term equilibrium of general poverty, and that permanent improvements in standard of living are impossible? Repeated uncritically in my Roman history book, published in the year of Our Lord Hatsune Miku 2012?

At last! Something the socialists, libertarians, feminists and Catholics can all agree on! Someone give ol' Mathus a medal!

Some economists believe Malthusianism has some credibility, at least in limited contexts. Others think it's been wholly discredited. I've linked the Wiki article above so you can judge for yourself.

Personally, I'm very skeptical. I don't see why human birth rates would automatically, and always, increase to match what the environment's resources can support. Global fertility has been dropping for a while, and most estimates now expect the population to start leveling off around 10-12 billion. The effect is even more pronounced when you look at industrialized countries that have gone through demographic transitions.

I also think the Malthusian model overlooks cultural factors that influence people's reproductive choices. E.g. many people in the USA delay having children due to time spent in college, building careers, and lack of paid maternity leave. And many people I know choose not to have biological children now that it's socially acceptable.

That's just my view. I can understand why Temín thought the Malthusian model might be more applicable for the agrarian society of ancient Rome. But since the point of his article was to introduce useful economic ideas for classicists to use in their work, I think he should have discussed the serious criticism Malthusianism has received, too.

(First excerpt from Peter Temín, "The Contribution of Economics," in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, ed. Walter Scheidel.)

Notes on "The Contribution of Economics" by Peter Temín, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, ed. Walter Scheidel:

There are two main purposes of this article. First, to argue that economic theory is applicable to the classical world. Second, to introduce a few economic ideas that classicists and historians may find useful in their work.

I gotta be honest, I'm not a fan of Temín's writing style. Usually, I can overlook that, but in an essay about abstract concepts aimed at non-specialists, I think clarity and conciseness matter more. Several parts of this were hard for me to follow, and I like economics.

Temín might have some...interesting ideas elsewhere about monetary policy and the Great Depression, and in this article he's oddly accepting of the original Malthusian model. These points by themselves do not necessarily mean he is unreliable, or a crackpot, or politically motivated. It's also possible that the Wikipedia article is wrong. But economics is a controversial and politically charged field, so I try to be alert for biased sources.

In short, I don't know whether I can automatically trust Temín's claims about the classical world the way I would trust most authors in a Cambridge-published anthology. (I am also biased because I prefer Keynesian economics, which contradict the views Wiki attributed to Temín.)

So, what is Temín actually claiming?

First, he argues that the Roman world did operate according to competitive market forces, in a similar way that modern markets do. I actually think this is a very solid claim. Our written and material evidence seems to back it up.

Temín describes how supply and demand curves work, how comparative advantage could enable Rome and her colonies to both become wealthier through trade, how technological innovation improved productivity, and how incomes could rise and fall in response to plagues, peace, and wars. Most of his explanations here are normal, useful concepts explained in a rather dense way.

His explanation of Malthusian economics is...not wrong, or irrelevant, but I found it concerning that he didn't include the limitations or criticisms of the Malthusian model. It may be applicable to the Roman economy, I don't know, but I feel like you need to keep such claims very narrow and within a specific context.

He briefly mentions of Babylonian commodity prices exhibiting random walks a la modern stocks - see Temín, P. (2002) “Price behavior in ancient Babylon,” Explorations in Economic History 39: 46–60.

He also says wheat markets in the late republic exhibited competition that suggests the land was not being consolidated by large latifundia until the imperial era - see Rosenstein, N. (2008) “Aristocrats and agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic,” Journal of Roman Studies 98: 1–26.

I'm including the citations here because these are "HOLY SHIT"-level claims if you're interested in the Gracchi brothers or efficient market theory, but Temín zips past them and goes back to talking about Econ 101 material. I gotta check these out later!

On the whole, a mildly interesting article. But if you're a classics or history major who needs a crash course in economics, grab The Cartoon Introduction to Economics instead.

the swagful magistrate ⁉️

reading any dostoyevski book your main takeaway will always be yeah no i see why every other author was in love with this miserable russian man . and justice prevails slow and greets you when youve changed too much to still be in need of its comfort

holding onto this again:

it will not be like this forever. sometimes this is how it ends

I'm reading about the Victorian Aesthetic movement and I was violently reminded of...

...Sherlock Holmes's 'rose monologue' from The Naval Treaty, HI HELLO CAN ANYONE HEAR ME