Sure! I can read Greek from all sorts of periods, so it should be fine. You can email the details here: m.perisanidi@leeds.ac.uk, if it’s easier.

I’m happy to do it, if you want to send me the details.

Oh wow! Thank you ☺️ I wish I spoke Russian. I’d love to learn it one day and do more with the overlap with Byzantium, including the idea of the fool, which is apparently relevant to this story. I wish the current political situation were more favourable too though 😥

It’s apparently a very famous story that has become proverbial!

The story I initially came across was a translation into Greek of the lazy version as an audiobook: youtu.be/7i_OYoKMFgo?... Although I wouldn’t want to teach my lo to wait for other people to improve her situation, this will surely make for some interesting discussions in a couple of years!

Apparently the story changes in film adaptations created during the Soviet regime replacing the lazy protagonist with a kind and brave representative of the ‘ordinary people’ oppressed by the king. For more, see intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

Russian peasants belonged to their landlords, legally until 1861, but factually long afterwards, during collective farming under the Communist regime. At the time that the story was recorded, they had “no incentive to improve their material situation, no motivation to work harder or to work at all”.

Thank you ☺️

The book (and podcast) do not discuss celibacy/sex at all! I recommend listening to the conversation or even better reading the book 🥰

Nope, it's about Byzantium, where clerics could very well deploy what McNamara called "the most obvious biological attributes of manhood" 🙃

Ευχαριστώ! 🥰

Could you add me please? Historian of disability in Byzantium.

I’d love to be added! Thank you!

Newly arrived and excited to find you!