Eidolon is a platform for scholarly writing about Classics that isn’t formal scholarship.

a brief history of eidolon

Eidolon makes the classics political and personal, feminist and fun. The journal was founded as part of the Paideia Institute in 2015, where it began producing non-traditional classical scholarship in a freely accessible, online format. Two years later, after reaching over 700,000 views, Eidolon relaunched as an independent entity committed to progressive and inclusive approaches to classics. The editorial mission is committed to opening the field to diverse voices and creating a Classics without fragility.

The Eidolon team has compiled special issues on childbirth, Harry Potter, parenting, and tattoos; multiple regular columns, including Philomela’s Tapestry, which examines harassment in Classics; cartoons and listicles; and a spin-off blog, idle musings. After publishing over 400 articles and surpassing 1.3 million total hits, Eidolon cultivates a strong, intelligent community of readers, both within and external to the discipline of classics. Some of the journal's most popular pieces include those on classics and white supremacy, systemic racism, Beyoncé, technophobia, ancient dating apps, and female orgasms. Two articles have inspired books, and countless more have sparked Twitter threads, Facebook debates, and face-to-face conversations about the ways in which the ancient and modern worlds collide and the relevance of antiquity to contemporary society.

Eidolon stopped publishing new content in December 2020.