This is Painful Signs, Or, Joel's Substack.
It is an extension of the sententiaeantiquae.com multiverse designed for longer essays, threaded projects, and revision and renewal of older ideas. I have spent over a decade building a website bringing together translations and commentary on ancient Greece and Rome with great collaborators and partners. This site will feature only my own work and, in its first months/years, focus in particular on the Iliad.
As sententiaeantiquae.com nears 10,000 posts and the twitter feed @sentantiq dies a Musk-fueled death, this new space provides something of a tabula rasa to think again about writing outside of the cycle of academic publication, about public engagement, about how to think and write about the past, and how to develop and sustain new projects.
This site will have free and paid subscriptions. Free subscriptions get access to regular shorter posts; longer posts and the archive go to paid subscriptions.
All funds generated by paid subscriptions will be donated to non-profit groups working to support the study of the ancient world and emphasizing public engagement. I will make annual statements about where funds are sent.