#...Also you notice how Odysseus is basically shipped with everyone but Penelope is never shipped with anyone other than Odysseus?👀

[dootznbootz]

allow yourself to be a little arrogant! if you were to claim that you know more than most people about a specific character from greek mythology, which character would it be?

*puts on the hat of arrogance so I can take it off right afterward*

Penelope 😅 😂

Like most of what we find of her is in the Odyssey, and even then, in my opinion, Homer I almost feel purposefully makes her a bit of an enigma. As we're in Odysseus' "POV" most of the time, and it's kind of a "She tricks the trickster, she tricks the narrator, she tricks the suitors, she tricks the reader, etc."

But even with this lil bit of "sneakiness" with her, we still get so many hints of her character and who she is and I adore it 🥹

Even then she has a lot of background lore that is just SOOOO much fun to play with. Her being of Naiad descent (whether 50-75% depending on what myths you go with), her many brothers and one sister, Her dad being a racer, her being cousins with Helen, Castor, Pollux, Clytemnestra Sparta itself, And that's just background lore!!!! There's so much to play with and that makes it so fun!

And well, like, I KNOW I'm the reason for a big boom of "Water Wife" lol 😅 Were there "Naiad Penelopes" before I came back on Tumblr? YES! :D Absolutely! I'm definitely NOT the first "Naiad Penelope" person!

But I DID create "Water Wife" AND I know I help cause more Water Pennys to be in the world >:3 Even if folks weren't directly inspired by me, they probably got it from someone else who was! :3 and I know my headcanons are often being used by others.

*The hat of arrogance droops a lil on my head so it becomes a lil bit of the sad arrogance hat*

I sometimes don't really like that I'm like, "the biggest, loudest Penelope fan", you know? ;~;

I know I'm not the only Penelope fan <3 I know there are others. Many lovely fans and creators :3 This isn't to negate them and the love and works. <3

But in fandom in general, In some ways, I...I'm a lil sad that like, a lot of the info that some people have on her in the fandom I know is because of me 😓 Like...Why did it take someone else to be a nerd about her for others to be a nerd about her, you know?

Like, it makes me happy that people are finally giving her love and seeing a lot more fics and headcanons with her as a focal point but like, I'm sad feeling like I started it in fandom (again, Penelope HAS been praised throughout the ages after all) recently. Why did it take ME to get others so nuts about her? Why do I see most folks caring about her simply because Odysseus and Telemachus do?

It's like, there are many Odysseus bloggers, there are a few Telemachus bloggers (Hi! :D ), but there are few, (if really many others) blogs that are like "most stuff I do is Penelope, Odysseus and others are there sometimes but It's mostly Penelope in here".

(granted I have not really...looked too much recently as it started making me sad to think about her not getting a lot of love) I am also very picky. I won't stand for cardboard Penelope who is only there to prop up her husband and/or thinks he "cheated" or have Odysseus cheat. Penelope, and women in general, are not props for their husbands/sons.)

As like, I got most of my info FROM the Odyssey AND just simply looking stuff up about her and Sparta and her family. And so I get this lil feeling of "...We both read the same book, why did it take me pointing out that Penelope is constantly wishing violence on the suitors for people to know that she does that? Why did you think that Penelope didn't come up with the archery contest when it explicitly says she did?"

And it's not like, even a feeling of "gatekeeping" or wanting to be like "You're a Penelope fan, huh? Well then tell me the names of all her possible brothers? >:(" It's more like a

Me: "I love Penelope!" Person:"YEs! I love Penelope too!" Me: "Yippee! Can you tell me about your Penelope? :D I love all Penelopes! I wanna talk about her!" Person: "Well, she's more quiet and reserved but that's her secret >:3 she strikes when you least expect it!" Me: "YES!!! That's so fun! I have her 'Likeminded' with Odysseus and she's silly, reckless, hotheaded just like he is :D Can you tell me some headcanons about her? What do you have for her childhood? I'm really excited!" Person: "Oh I don't have much for her childhood actually." Me: "That's okay! Do you wanna brainstorm together? Maybe bounce some ideas so you can get some down?" Person: "Oh no, that's okay. I've got all I need,as I really only have her when she meets Odysseus." Me: "o-oh okay.:'D "

As like...I dunno. When you love a character, you wanna meet others who also will ramble nonstop about them too, you know?

I sometimes feel like, idk, some folks are like "Think up Penelope headcanons for us! :D " especially as like... I've had that whole "Oh no, I've got all I need!" experience more than once :')

Ngl, like, part of the reason I go so "apeshit" about her is yeah, because I am, but also like, in hope more people will join me? Which yeah! People have! And that makes me happy!

But even then, I just... I DO like this joke, don't get me wrong, but with how whenever I fangirl about her, people are like, "Found Odysseus" and yippee! :D I think it's fun to be called Odysseus!

But also like...Why does it still tie back to him? Why is it still about Odysseus? (even my own tag of "Shot by Odysseus" is still technically about him! (I'm keeping it because I'm stupid but still)) Why aren't Odysseus fans called "Penelope" then? She loves him just as much, right?

I think there's more "OdyPen fans" than there are Penelope fans. Because most Penelope stuff HAS to do with Odysseus, and it's usually like, STILL centered around him. Which is really weird to me, as I don't know how you can be a big Odysseus fan without being an equally big Penelope fan. They are way way too intertwined to not be equally talked/headcanoned/etc. about in my opinion. They're like the same person imo in a way lol.

In my opinion, you cannot bring up Odysseus without mentioning Penelope, you cannot bring up Penelope without mentioning Odysseus.

It's literally like that in the Odyssey. (Explain that part of Homer's passage here.)

...So why are there so many fics with Odysseus doing so much without Penelope, and yet, very few Penelope fics that don't have much of anything to do with Odysseus?

*takes off hat of arrogance*

And like...I'm a goober just like every other fan, you know? I'm not some "mastermind". All my "good" headcanons are simply loving her and thinking about her often. It's...not hard to love a character. I just rotate her around a lot. :3

[knight-of-the-graces]

I’m reading through The Odyssey properly for the first time since we read it in school, and I have… some thoughts. A lot of thoughts, actually. Here they are.

Firstly, Athena. Just… Athena. What are you up to.

The fact that she —disguised as Mentes but obviously knowing who Telemachus is— immediately comments on how tall Telemachus is after questioning if he’s really Odysseus’ son…

Odysseus really is a short man, isn’t he. Even his patron goddess is making fun of him for it. Disguised, but still. Do you think Mentes ever has to pay for the comments Athena makes while pretending to be him?

(Plus Telemachus immediately gets philosophical in his own defense, which… excellent. Excellent. Good job.)

Also Athena’s solution to all of Telemachus’ problems is literally just “Hey, why don’t you take a ship and go find your dad? He’ll murder all these guys for you, trust me, I know the guy. From, uh, childhood.” And Telemachus is like “Hm… okay, I’ll think about it.” Definitely living up to ‘goddess of war’, aren’t you?

And when she leaves, she just… turns into a bird and off she goes. Athena. What. You are in a crowded hall full of people. How is Telemachus the only one who noticed this. Divine magic and the power of alcohol, probably, but… what.

(Also why is everyone except the goddess being referred to as ‘godlike’? Like, we’ve got Nestor, then Telemachus, now Penelope. Seriously, how many of them were ‘godlike’, except for the goddess herself?)

Also Telemachus is definitely being a bit of a broody teenager. Like, come on, if a song is making your mom sad you just change the song. I get that you’re the man of the house, but still. If my brother said something like that to my mom she might actually kill him. And she’s not the formerly Spartan queen of Ithaca.

(And now the bard is godlike too. What is up with you guys, describing people as godlike. Are you trying to offend the actual Greek gods, ’cause we all know how that’ll end for you. You were literally talking about how offending the gods goes like, ten minutes ago. Why are you all like this.)

Then when he’s basically saying ‘get out of my house’ Antinous tells him “Zeus will never give you the throne” and Telemachus’ response is basically “Yes he will”. Boy… I mean kinda, but wow.

Also, Eurymachus, you do not get to call someone ‘friend’ when you’re trying to marry his mom, living in his house against his will, and basically stealing his stuff. Excuse me. What. And if you were paying enough attention to notice ‘Mentes’ how didn’t you notice the whole ‘turns into a bird and flies off’ thing?

The sheer audacity of literally everyone I’ve met so far is definitely something. I’m remembering why this book killed me to read in school now, with the sheer Audacity and Chaos so far.

And Telemachus is immediately called ‘Odysseus’ well-beloved son’ in book two— all I can think of is him introducing himself to people as ‘father of dear Telemachus’ in The Iliad—

(Also don’t try to read The Odyssey through online libraries; the formatting is so messed up it’s actually painful. Alas, I will suffer.)

[sometimesrosy]

1: Do you think it’s odd that C fell in love with L after she was not only responsible for Finn’s death, causing C to have to mercy-kill him, but also the reason C was forced to kill all those people in Mt Weather? I’m trying to understand their relationship and how it all worked. Her people were so angry at C for falling for L, but she wasn’t trying to betray them; it was innocent. And she chose her people in the end, right before L was killed. L’s made to be this great love for C. Is she?

(I’m answering your 1 and 2 separately because I think they are separate questions about two separate characters’ experiences with the same narrative element.)

Okay. So I didn’t understand in season 3 what all was going on with that and did a lot of work to understand how Clarke could so easily forgive and love L for what she did and what I came up with is two different interpretations one authorial (the Doylist explanation) and one in narrative (the Watsonian explanation.)

Before I start, no. I don’t think L was made to be this great love for C. I think the fandom fell in love with L for many decent reasons, and picked up on some archetypes in the story as a whole, and the traditional romantic tale of the warrior king and the captive princess, and they just really wanted that story, even deserved that story, so the fandom interpretation made The 100 INTO that story. 

I have rewatched the story looking for that great romance, and while there’s some hints of it, and it’s NOT subtextual (which is possibly why the LGBT community was so happy to get it since they are denied that in most of pop culture) the romance of C and L was for me far, FAR too political in nature for me to find it a great, passionate romance. It was all power games except for the episode with Pauna, if I must be honest. And their love scene, in which L had already sentenced her people to death and Clarke had already decided to go home and it was just two women outside of politics consummating their connection. That part didn’t bother me, it was lovely and a moment of peace. I didn’t love that they didn’t talk about anything important, that they COULDN’T, because for me, intimacy and a great love REQUIRES that kind of openness and honesty, at least for the moment. What I need to see in a romance wasn’t there for me. But I’m sure what other people need to see in a romance WAS. It is quite clear that a large portion of the shipping community LOVEloveLOVES the dynamic of powerful dominating warrior who kidnaps and falls for the warrior princess turned vulnerable maiden (witness the latest craze in Star Wars which is also something I *do not like.*) My distaste for that dynamic does not mean that others are wrong for loving that dynamic. I don’t have to get it. It’s not my preference to reconcile with my life and understanding. It’s theirs. Ship and let ship.

Okay, onto my understanding of what the heck was going on with CL in Polis after L betrayed and harmed her so terribly. The doylist interpretation, why they would write that story and what their intention is, is about themes and symbolism and the journey of the hero. No problem there. But my watsonian interpretation, about why Clarke, the character, would submit herself to that, is psychological, and has gotten me into major trouble. But I’m gonna say it anyway, so if you love Lxa and are offended by people looking at the dark side of the CL relationship please do not read.  I’ll put it under the jump, but for some reason that doesn’t work all the time, so when I warn you to stop reading please stop. Be a responsible consumer of the media. And if you choose to read it anyway, recognize that it was your choice and I gave you plenty of opportunity to not be offended, so don’t send me nasty anons please, because you accepted the risk to your sensibilities.

Allright. Doylist:

Clarke is the hero, and Lxa is Clarke’s shadow, her dark side. Her animus.The masculine version of herself who is a ruthless mass murderer willing to sacrifice anyone and anything for her goals. She has always had this side. Maybe her first kill, Atom, was one of mercy, but her second kill, the grounder holding her hostage was NOT. It was to get free and save her people. But Atom and the grounder guard were killed in the same way. Get close, distract with gentleness, then insert blade into jugular. Clarke’s shadow side is the one that allowed the bomb to drop on TonDC (notice she was egged on, if not bullied into it, by L.)  It was the same part of her that even contemplated killing all of MW to save her people. Her shadow betrays her allies for her own people. Clarke was unable to do it on her own until Bellamy helped her. Bellamy is a different kind of dark to her light, but with a similar symbolism, yin/yang, and kind of actually ends up being the light to her dark, which is a whole other symbolic journey that totally transforms the yin yang of CL into something healing seasons later and not what we’re talking about but if you can recognize that similarity to the archetypes there you can recognize what it is about that dynamic that people love so much.

Okay, so the whole point of having that shadow side for a hero is that the hero has to EMBRACE their shadow side in order to be a full identity. They need to stop resisting their darkness and encompass it in their selves, only then can they step into their full powers. I think this is considered Jungian analysis, if you want to read up on it. That’s where you get a lot of the archetypes and symbolism going. Also, you can see it in the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell which builds on Jungian analysis to create a mythic journey we see in many archetypal tales.

Oh, also. Another doylist interpretation. Clarke in Polis is like Odysseus on Circe’s island. Odysseus stays with Circe and is enchanted with her, despite her turning his crew into pigs. He stays for years with her. All while Penelope is left behind to fend off suitors. So Clarke in Polis would be alluding to The Odyssey, a text that is OFTEN referenced on this show. Yes, that would make Bellamy Penelope. (does that mean the suitors are Pike and Kane as well as Gina and Echo? I think it might, actually.)

So why does Clarke fall for L after all that damage? My Doylist interpretation says because Clarke needed to embrace the shadow and because they were reinterpreting The Odyssey. L was Clarke’s shadow the way Circe was Odysseus’ shadow. Anima/Animus. Also, this embracing and acceptance of the shadow story continued on all the way until s5, and I think you can see it in the “be the good guys/maybe there are no good guys/there are no good guys/be the good guys” journey, which was NOT embraced until Clarke talked with flame Lxa and she said she was wrong, betrayal was wrong and love was not a weakness. Shortly after that, Clarke identified the good guy, and it was Bellamy. Then Monty told them to be the good guys and Clarke has not wavered since.

OKAY. Watsonian incoming. All CL and L faithful, please turn away.

okay, so it turns out that when i write about something that once got me harassed or made friends/fandom turn against me, I have to emotionally prepare for it. 

So here’s the thing. The 100 is about Clarke Griffin as the protagonist (and Bellamy Blake as the secondary protagonist,) and s3 is about TRAUMA. Trauma and recovery. Both Clarke and Bellamy are traumatized by MW and encounter a shadow self that represents who they COULD have been, if not for the presence of the other. Clarke could have been the tyrannical leader who thinks she is always right and Bellamy could have been the vengeful leader out to exterminate his enemies. Here you connect the symbolic shadow symbology to the psychological wounding of the trauma and recovery.

If you read Polis as Clarke’s mental journey, it starts to make sense. She lost it and became feral, L kidnapped her and dragged her to Polis. She imprisoned her and, through a series of positive and negative reinforcements (the carrot and the stick), gaslighting, and power games, she turned Clarke to her side and made her empathize with her captor and betrayer. She gave her a way to survive the trauma of what she’d done by telling her everyone does it, it’s okay. 

Why does she believe her? Because she is traumatized and she’s been isolated from her people in a dangerous place where only L keeps her safe. 

Why does she begin to empathize with L? Because this is a psychological phenomenon that is actually common when a person has been kidnapped, removed from their world, and forced to join the other side. We call it Stockholm Syndrome, and the most basic definition is when a kidnap victim begins to have feelings for and empathize with their kidnap victim.

It’s how you survive. And it’s not a thing that is just about Clarke. It turns out that it happened to a LOT of women in tribal times when one tribe would raid another and kidnap women to bring back as wives or slaves or what have you. 

The women who were kidnapped JOINED the kidnappers tribe, because what else could they do?

Anyway. Clarke is dealing with her dark traumatic experiences, L kidnaps her and draws her to her side, she empathizes with L, falls in love, psychologically accepts that her dark side is the right side to handle all this horror, and then returns to her people, not quite whole, but partly healed and limping along in her journey. 

Polis itself was part of the seduction. It was beautiful and comfortable and passionate and romantic and candlelit. A lot of the fandom saw the romance of the seduction and decided that meant the creators were saying that CL was beautiful and L was the new hero of the story, without noticing that it was Clarke’s unreliable narrator, traumatized POV that was clinging to that beauty so she didn’t have to face the pain of what she did, and her people. Shoot. No matter if some people, when getting confirmation from the writers that Polis was a dark psychological story for Clarke, then blamed the FANDOM for never noticing and saying that the only people who did were screaming “ABUSE!” and so were then clearly unreliable. Yes. They were talking about me. Because I TOLD them, personally, in a huge meta discussion, that it was a dark psychological journey and I laid it out for them, and they well. Turned on me, blocked me, ignored me, and then blamed me for them not understanding the damn story. I am still salty to this day. But then, they are no longer in the fandom.

Other people, CL fans, didn’t like that I said Clarke was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, but if you look it up, you’ll see she fits the definition. L literally kidnapped and imprisoned her and this is evident in narrative, dialogue and word of god. 

Why do we think that’s a romantic story? Because it is an old school, traditional romance tale of literal raiding warriors kidnapping women and bringing them back as wives. So romantic. It had to be, because otherwise the women suffering from trauma would not be able to survive. 

There are no more raiders in modern western society, but the story is imbedded in our collective unconscious and our archetypal stories.

I hate them.

Some people love them.

And the people who love them are immensely offended that the people who hate them recognize an abusive, oppressive and traumatic story within them. And then they send us hate anons and mock us for being abuse survivors and “irrational” and telling us “it’s just fiction, Janice.” and on and on and on. 

[misscrawfords]

11, 12, 16

Sorry for the delay in answering @cinquespotted and thank you for asking! :) Been a manic couple of days and I needed to think about non-fiction books about classics because that’s not so easy to answer when I haven’t been in academia in the subject for almost ten years. (Yikes…)

11. recommend a piece of non-fiction about the classical world

I was thinking about this on and off for a couple of days and then the answer hit me. Adam Nicholson’s The Mighty Dead. I’m not sure that “non-fiction” is quite the right way to describe this utterly brilliant book. It’s a lyrical, imaginative, semi-fictional investigation of Homer’s influence and power, as simultaneously oblique and direct, beautifully written and πολυτροπος as one of Homer’s heroes. 

I also pulled out my undergraduate dissertation bibliography which was the last time I read classical scholarship seriously and I remember being blown away by some of the things on it. (Unlike many students, I absolutely adored writing my dissertation - I was very lucky.) Here are a few of the academic books I read which I recall enjoying even at the distance of 9 years:

-  Chew, Kathryn. “The representation of violence in the Greek novels and martyr accounts”-  Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A study of the structure of romance (not classical per se but brilliant and influential - I read more Frye for my masters and I’m a big, big fan)-  Konstan, David. Sexual Symmetry-  Loraux, Nicole. Tragic ways to kill a woman-  MacAlister, Suzanne. Dreams and Suicides: The Greek novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire

Yep, my dissertation was basically about sex and death. (What else is fiction about?) No, I didn’t do it on purpose…

12. who is your favourite poet? why?

(Oh how nice, this meme was created by someone writing British English. How delightfully unusual!)

Am I allowed to cheat and give two - one Greek and one Roman? Good! :P

On the Greek side, I have to go with Homer. I mean, I honestly feel he (he? As if we know!) might be my favourite author. Or at least sit up there alongside Austen. I guess at the moment I’m in more of a Homer mood than an Austen mood. Polite tea drinking and elegant sniping in a ball room really isn’t cutting it for me at the moment. (YES I KNOW THERE IS MORE TO AUSTEN THAN THAT. SHE’S MY FAVOURITE AUTHOR AND I’VE WRITTEN A DAMN MASTERS DISSERTATION ON HER. I’m just having a reaction against that kind of writing atm. I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do about it. I feel sad. But that’s another post.)

HOMER

I mean, where does one start? I’ve always loved The Odyssey from reading Book 6 for Greek GCSE and tittering over Odysseus covering his naked manhood with a fig leaf (lines inexplicably missed out from the Bristol Classical Press’ edition for fear of offending the sensibilities of school children, clearly not realising that by missing them out there is no indication that Odysseus isn’t stark naked in from of Nausicaa the entire scene lololololol). I did a final year paper involving reading the whole poem in Greek (spoiler: I failed, but I read about 2/3rds of it missing out the many books of recognition in Ithaca and it was a wonderful experience reading 100s of lines of Homer and getting a feel for the vocabulary and the rhythm of it all. I wish I had been a more dedicated student and had actually completed the whole thing.) It was my favourite paper. Professor Simon Goldhill (who looks and sounds like Zeus) opening the lecture series by booming, “The Odyssey is all about how to be a MAN”. ανδρα μοι εννεπε. First line of the poem. I get shivers thinking about it. Odysseus - his character. WHAT A GUY. (I don’t mean to say you have to like him or approve of him - that’s not what appreciating fiction is about, you clodpoles, but you have to admit he’s an amazing, amazing character and concept.) We actually had Professor Edith Hall come to my school today and she gave a talk on Odysseus as a hero and ngl I actually almost teared up at one moment. I just can’t believe such a great character exists and over 2000 years later, he still speaks to us and we can trace SO MUCH in Western culture back to these texts. Actually, while I was nursing a raging crush on Odysseus (I was 20 okay), it was Penelope who was the revelation to me in that paper. Did Penelope know her husband was back before the recognition scene? This had never occurred to me before and I was plunged into debates on the stability of the text and characterisation and feminism and narratology. I mean, it was just amazing! And whatever nitty gritty you might go into with it, I was just struck by this wonderful, admittedly overly romantic idea, that Penelope was absolutely Odysseus’ equal. That in this ancient epic, we had a woman who bested a man at his own game, that she was playing him - and he loved it. These two tricksters, separated for too long, finally getting their happy ending. And I know it’s not about that. But it also is. Emotionally, that’s what I got. And it made me so, so happy. Because, honestly, I don’t have a problem studying works written by, for and about men if they’re good, but there are SO FEW opportunities studying classics (at least traditionally; the approach is changing now which is great) to grapple with amazing female characters or figures - and here I had Homer’s hero and Homer’s heroine. I mean, there are many other things I love about the Odyssey but this is already long enough.

I always joked about the fact that I managed to get a classics degree from Cambridge without having ever studied the Iliad. (Ikr, it’s crazy!) And youthful, hubristic me was okay with that. I was an Odyssey girl through and through. I’d read the Iliad and it was all battles and death and the catalogue of ships. YOU FOOL. So the first time I really had to deal with the Iliad was when I found myself teaching it to A Level Classical Civilisation. And it was an absolute revelation. I’m teaching it for the third time at the moment and it’s not getting old. Every time I see something different, every time the students find something new, every time I cry quietly in class when we are reading. The places vary but the moments that are guaranteed to set me off are Achilles’ grief over Patroclus, him putting on his armour and his final unbending towards Priam. Why the armour? I’m not entirely sure. I think it’s something to do with this sense of inevitability of the approach of the end, of imminent climax (somehow more significant than the climax itself). It’s like how the lighting of the beacons in LotR is such a powerful scene. It’s not that the thing itself is particularly full of pathos but because of everything it signifies. I can’t altogether explain it but it always really affects me. When my uncle died the other year, I was reading the death of Patroclus with my class at that time and my mum came to visit. I didn’t know how to talk to her or talk about my uncle’s death and we had this absolutely awful walk around a country park in the rain (I am never going to be able to go back there for the memories it triggers) but somehow the only way I could articulate something of what I felt was by clinically and factually describing Achilles’ anguish and explaining to my mother how the ancient world mourned its dead and what Patroclus had meant to Achilles and what blinding grief and rage would drive him to do. And she gripped my hand and we both wept, silent tears, and we walked on in the rain talking about the Iliad. I’m actually crying again, writing this, right now. I am not sure there is ANYTHING in literature more powerful than Achilles’s rage and anguish.

If Odysseus is the hero of romance and comedy, a clever hero whose very wiliness makes my heart sing and my academic brain bounce up and down looking for mythic parallels, Achilles does something else altogether. I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently - partly because I’m teaching the poem and once again we’ve got to Book 16 and Achilles’ tragedy is becoming the focus of the remainder of the poem (if it wasn’t before) so it’s literally my job to think about his character - but also in the context of my recent obsession with SW, Reylo and Kylo Ren’s Episode 9 possibilities. I’m not trying to be trivial here but it saddens me SO MUCH that people have the nerve to police interest in that character, one of the most fascinating and complex to grace the screens of a fantasy blockbuster series in - well, honestly, I can’t think of another one. What a treat we have. Nobody has a problem loving Achilles’ character and weeping over him (and making soft pastel shipping graphics of him and Patroclus…) but he was objectively speaking an awful person in many ways. A violent, unpredictable, psychopathic overgrown adolescent who holds an awful grudge. But of course, that isn’t the full story and it’s not the purpose of this post to educate the internet on the nuances of Achilles’ character and his profound tragedy. I’ve got emotional enough, but honestly, we NEED Achilles. We need that larger-than-life expression of all our deepest fears and regrets and violence and destruction - and also wit, compassion, sense of justice and deep love and loyalty. I think someone once said that everyone should read the Iliad at least once in their life. Whether they did or not, it’s true: everyone should.

Okay, so I was also going to talk about how much I love Ovid too but that would be literally going from the sacred to the profane, the sublime to the ridiculous and I have spent way too long on this already. So, yeah, I really love Ovid as well.

16. Cicero - love him or loathe him?

I unironically love Cicero. 

Okay, so I started along this journey from the worst of reasons. The first guy I ever liked in high school was obsessed with Cicero. At the time, I’d never read anything by him, so I decided to like him because liking the same things as your crush is an A+ way of getting him to notice you and like you back. (Spoiler: it failed.) Along the way, I got really inspired by Cicero’s wife Terentia. My first internet handles were Terentia. (I WONDER IF HE KNEW I HAD A CRUSH. lol he did. it was awful. I cringe.) Anyway, Terentia was fabulously wealthy and responsible for financing Cicero’s political career, married twice more after Cicero’s death, including to the historian Suetonius, and died aged 103. What a BAMF.

So first off, I love Cicero’s Latin. He’s my favourite Latin prose author to translate. Even if his speeches are sometimes on the dull side (we had De Imperio as an AS set text a couple of years ago and it was such a snooze-fest), the actual style of writing is so lucid and balanced and satisfying I can forgive him the content. I love all the rhetorical devices and how you can still see them at work in (good) political speeches today. I just get tremendous pleasure from translating him. It annoys me no end that the prose unseen author at A Level at the moment is Livy. I have no patience for Livy’s Latin; it doesn’t thrill me at all.

But I also kind of like Cicero the man. He lived at one of the most fascinating periods of history and although you can’t altogether trust his bias, he was a really important figure in that history and documented so much of it. I wish we had more sources to sit along side as I think he definitely puffs himself up, but nevertheless he’s invaluable. I even quite like his arrogance. He’s the ultimate self-made, intellectual man in Rome and I think he has reason to be proud of what he achieved. He must have been formidable to listen to.

Thank you for letting me ramble on about classics and literature like this. I miss writing on tumblr and not just reblogging pretty things.

Ask me about classics (or anything else obviously)