#aeneid book 1

[aeneiddaily]

what if the saddest, wettest man in all of Troy had to give a motivational speech. would you cheer for him. would you clap and cheer

[lilacerull0]

you think you can't catch up with time and you are too old and your mother's body is your body and it's dragging behind you and your friend thinks this makes you an ancient goddess and this is her lifeline. you live in a time where everything is about subversion in all spheres of life and your friend exists as a physical manifestation of these ideas and your form, your form that you hate and feel trapped in, is the only thing that can't be altered by time in your friend's eyes and you feel this way too. it's your greatest fear. but to her, this was life-saving somehow. what if you felt like you were in a perpetual state of waiting no matter how fast you were running and no matter where you went and your friend saw this quality of yours as her greek temple.

[chaoticvintagelesbian]

The Aenead so far is a lot less of a shit show that the iliad. Tho only read book 1. Some notable things tho:

- Venus sprinkled her son is sexy dust

- Juno went to the winds like, yo I'll give u brood mare wife if u start a storm to kill those Trojans over there, winds went, bet.

- iulus seems to be between a year old and 13, we do not know, he says his first word after he has done archery and ridden a horse.

- oh and love is an infection.

[lastwave]

i dont think we as people get insane enough about the imagery in book 1 of Mars- the gruesome, bloody version- chained up under the capitoline hill. city Literally founded on war and bloodshed. vergil when i catch you.

[hiemihymni]

:}

[mask131]

The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

[tylermileslockett]

"Atalanta and the Argonauts" (#5)

When the call went out to Greece’s greatest heroes, for fame and glory, to join Jason and his quest for the Golden fleece, only the bravest answered the call. Heroes like Hercules, Orpheus, Telamon, Peleus, and yes, Atalanta mustered her courage and journeyed to join them.

Appollonius of Rhodes wrote the epic poem “Argonautica” about Jason’s quest for the golden fleece around the 3rd century B.C. based on a much older tale, (referenced in Homer and Pindar). Apparently Appollonius elevated the romantic relationship between Jason and Medea, which in turn inspired latin poetry and Virgil’s Aeneid. In Appollonius tale, Atalanta shows up to join the Argonauts, but Jason turns her away, fearing having such a beautiful woman on board would cause conflict between his men. However, In Appollodorus “Library” (1-2nd century A.D.)  he lists Atalanta as being one of the heroes who accompany Jason for the Golden fleece. Unfortunately, there are no surviving versions where we see the entirety of the journey with Atalanta involved, which begs the question; what would the adventure be like if Atalanta joined?

On the topic of sea quests, lets take a quick look at ancient Greek seafaring. The Argo ship is portrayed as a sort of Trireme (ancient warship with three rows of oars and curved prow). Developments in astronomy helped ancient sea sailors navigate through constellations like Ursa Minor (little dipper) , as well as moon cycles and eclipses. They also used “sounding weights” to measure sea depths, which helped to inform distances to land. There is evidence from around 100 B.C. of an ancient “Orrery” (solar model) tool for celestial navigation called the Antikythera Mechanism. This ingenious, hand-powered device contained gears and could predict and track astronomical positions and eclipses.

Like this art? It will be in my illustrated book with over 130 other full page illustrations coming in Aug/Sept to kickstarter.  to get unseen free hi-hes art subscribe to my email newsletter

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Thank you for supporting independent artists! 🤘❤️🏛😁

[saintetheldredablogshorrormovies]

okay

this one is for all the ancient myth, folklore, urban myth, cryptid and supernatural people of tumblr

i am trying to start a folklore reading group on discord for 2025 covering all of the above categories

every month we pick a category of folklore to read around. categories can be anything. could centre around culture/period/place (eg ancient chinese myth and legend) or individual text (eg the aeneid, the poetic edda) or specific monster (eg vampires) or specific approach (eg theories of myth and their puprose eg joseph campbell)

anything is fair game from aztec myths to angelology to modern urban myths to aliens and cryptids

wed be a reading group but SUPER low key so it can fit in with everyones lives

like. im not gonna assign the same book to everyone to read by the end of the month

use whatever sources you wish - the internet, your local library, buy the specific book you think looks most useful, read/watch fictionalised retellings you think look fun

we can all use our own sources and most importantly we can recommend the ones we find the most useful to the rest of the group to help each other (or just to gush about it)!! < 3

oh and if youre an artist and you want to make art (drawing the monsters/creatures, writing your own adaptation of the story, write a self-insert where you get to shoot the monsters w/ dean winchester or dana scully or smth, writing mothman x reader fanfiction) youll get so many brownie points and everyone will think youre really cool

point is well all be reading the same broader points. so we can chat about it and discuss interpretations and make memes and show love for your favourites or complain about the dryness of your least favourites and there is so much weirdness to make fun of in myth and folklore

every month we will vote on the next topic (dont worry there will be a channel to argue about why your suggestion is the best haha) and by the end of the year well all know so much weird shit itll be great. dont you want every month of your 2025 to be defined by a weird little folklore era

well its about halfway through january when i post this meaning we'll only have half a month for the first one, no time for a vote either so if you want to hop in and start nerding out immediately january is going to be your

~ ancient japanese myth era ~

well discuss sources in the discord if you dont know where to start

but if you just want to join to wait it out so you can vote on next months subject, youre so welcome to

everyone welcome. contribute as much or as little as you like. friendliness and good vibes only!!

also ill be making a tag, "folklore2025" for people to post stuff related to this reading project thing on their tumblr if they wish

discord link below

[finelythreadedsky]

currently obsessed with the idea that the dido we see in aeneid 1 and 4 isn't the real dido-- and not just because she's acting under the influence of venus and cupid. she's literally not the real dido, she's an eidolon, an imago.

because as vergil and his readers know, carthage was founded in 814 bce, and the trojan war ended in 1184 bce, 370 years too early for aeneas to actually run into dido. now there are a couple of ways you can deal with this: you can say that vergil moved the foundation of carthage 370 years earlier for the purposes of his story. or you can say that aeneas and his men travel to the 9th century when they go to carthage and then back to the 12th century when they leave for italy.

or you can say that actually nobody and nothing moves in time. aeneas goes to carthage in the 12th century, 370 years before it was founded by dido. he sees a mirage of a city ruled by a phantom queen. so when he goes to the underworld in book 6 and sees the shade of dido, she doesn't know him and turns aside because that's the real dido who lived and founded carthage in the 9th century and killed herself to avoid being forced to marry iarbas and never met aeneas. that's how the underworld works, it's populated by people who haven't been born yet by aeneas' time but are still there already dead. dido isn't like a ghost like anchises, she's a ghost like marcellus.

[aeneiddaily]

this is i, aeneas the trojan.

[vamptember]

IT'S TIME TO GET READY FOR THE VAMPIRE PARTY AGAIN! 🦇

Welcome back to Vamptember, everyone! Miss us? We missed you! 🖤

For the month of September please join us in MAKING VAMPIRE STUFF! Fic, art, headcanons, playlists, fic recs, meta, anything you can think of! Base it on the books, the movie, the show, the musical, or even that other movie! Canon or AU!

RULES 1. There are no rules. Please have fun! 2. Each day has THREE PROMPTS in case one doesn’t speak to you! Pick one or combine them or rearrange them, it's up to you! 3. Tag your posts #vamptember so that we can reblog! If your post isn’t showing in the tag please don’t hesitate to DM it to us!

Tell your friends and share to spread the word! Daily prompts (3/day) under the cut! 

5+1 / Pantheist / Leather

Dissection / Rome / Bathed

FREE DAY

"And why were such things made in the world?" / Folk Horror / Second Breakfast

Fix-It / Midnight Sun / Stain

Rio de Janeiro / “You should leave.” / Aeneid

Reverse AU / Fragrant / Calendar

Metamorphosis / St. Patrick’s Cathedral / “What’s out there?”

Fatal Domain / First Time / Doctor

FREE DAY

Royalty AU / Flowers / Les Innocents

“Love never dies a natural death.” / Creamy / Les Diaboliques

POV Switch / Bittersweet / Ocean

Vision / "You knew?" / Creature

The Paragon of Animals / Dress Up / Jungle

Coffee Shop AU / Email/Text Message / Kemet

FREE DAY

Fairy Tale / Baby / Aliens

Genderswap / Priest / Favorite Song

Cowboy/Cowgirl AU / Pearls / San Francisco

Sense of Humor / 1990s / Heaven or Hell

Strip / Mad Scientist / Carnival

Enemies to Lovers / Good Luck Charm / Egypt

FREE DAY

Snowed In / Urban Legend / Heartbeat

Secret Lover / Amnesia / Outsider POV

Fake Dating / Glasses / Uruk

News / Jealousy / Present Day

Unreliable Narrator / Sunlight / Fight & Make Up

Sonoma Compound / “Take me home.” / Bed Sharing

[hildegardavon]

Apollonio di Giovanni, ca. 1415/17-1465 (miniaturist)

Venus reassures Aeneas about the fate of his companions. Parable of the 12 swans (Aeneid, Riccardiana, Ms492, f°68v), ca. 1466/1500, illumination. Virgil, Aeneid, Book 1, 2F, 68v

Florence, Riccardiana Library Inv. Ricc.492

[best-nun-tournament]

Round 1, Match 12

Sister Illuminata of Perugia (Pentiment) vs Iris (Fire Force)

Sister Illuminata is a Benedictine nun. She is the librarian of Kiersau Abbey.

Iris is a sister of the Holy Sol Temple.

Poll Runner's note: I was going to make some comment about St. Lawrence here, but he's specifically patron to professions where fire is an occupational hazard (like librarians) while St. Florian is patron saint of firefighters. Ah well.

Sister Illuminata of Perugia

No propaganda submitted

Poll Runner's note: Sister Illuminata takes her responsibility as librarian very seriously. She is also, as you would expect, quite familiar with literature and poetry. Early in the game Andreas has a long conversation with her about the books the monks borrowed and she has some strong opinions about them, especially on how Dido is treated in the Aeneid.

Iris

No propaganda submitted

[mossnstudy]

100 Days of Productivity - Day 24/100

7/12/24

Hello Hello!! So today I basically got everything I wanted to done!! Made my friends birthday presents (it was a protection spell candle :)) and wrapped it all up. Cleaned up around the house and washed some more clothes!!

I got half of book 1 read of the Aeneid but I got distracted because i really desperately needed to cook for my friends party so!! Im making that an acceptable excuse.

I spent most of the evening at hers so I didnt get much done after that!

Thats my updates!

[valeriianz]

9 Books I Plan to Read in 2025

i have not been in the habit of reading physical books lately... i miss it a lot. i really do wanna get better at it. tagged by @seiya-starsniper, thanks! starting with those that are currently unread on my shelf (mostly non-fiction):

Divine Might by Natalie Hayes - i really enjoyed her first collection of Greek Myth essays, "Pandora's Jar" and so when I saw this at a book store, i snatched it up. I've only read a few pages, but intend on finishing it this year.

Adult Children of Emotional Immature Parents by Lindsay C Gibson - this was recommended to me by a friend here on tumblr. i have... a strained relationship with my parents, but especially my mother. i've been putting off reading this because i gotta wait to be in the right headspace.

The Name of This Band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin - a hefty biography of one of my fav bands. i'm stoked to read this.

World Travel by Anthony Bourdain - not a book i yet own, but i love Bourdain's writing and he's one of my fav chefs.

The Mother Act by Heidi Reimer - the only fiction on this list lol. snagged this spontaneously while in a Barns n Noble. it's about an estranged relationship with a mother and daughter, who are both theatre actors/writers. can you tell i have mommy issues yet?

The Aeneid translated by Shadi Bartsch - the newest translation of this epic. i've never read it! but i've been told that it's a must haha.

Educated by Tara Westover - this is a memoir i started in 2021 as an audiobook, got maybe 1/4 of the way through before my loan expired and i never picked it back up... wanna try this year. i relate to it too hard lmao so sometimes it's hard to read. but im invested.

Lost Connections by Johann Hari - hello, my name is Kris, and i'm massively depressed lmao. this isn't a self help book (i hate those, genuinely) it promises to be more of a study with the author's personal and non-biased reflections. the last book i read by this author was Stolen Focus which was incredible (and i HIGHLY recommend it, esp if you struggle to stay off your phone or just stay focused in this social media focused world). so i'm going into it with high expectations.

The Iliad translated by Emily Wilson - slowly trudging through this one. i am a big fan of Wilson's translations, she makes the text so much more human and, most importantly, easy to understand. also, i adore the cover.

no honorable mentions because i highly doubt i'll even get through all of these ahhh

i'll tag... @tj-dragonblade @beatnikfreakiswriting @magnusbae @delta-pavonis

[faworsley]

I was tagged by the lovely @grahhams to post 9 books I’m planning to read this year so here they are! Right now I’m about halfway through the Iliad and I DO want to finish it but I’m not listing it since it doesn’t count in my heart if I started it January 31 2024 lol

1. I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination by Francis Spufford

2. Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure by F. A. Worsley (HEART EYES EMOJI)

3. Shackleton’s Valiant Voyage by Alfred Lansing (Skeptical it was valiant on Shackleton’s part because I’m a hater but I will enjoy anyway)

4. The Aeneid by Virgil

5. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

6. The Odyssey by Homer

7. Cook and Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved by Robert M. Bryce

8. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

9. The Book of Common Prayer (kind of a long story and not really a light reading type book so I’m including a bonus)

10. May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth (I’ve been trying to get my hands on this one for so long, surely I can do it if I give myself another entire year lol)

And tagging some other folks who might want to do it heart hands emoji:

@wiwaxiacorrugata @c-horses123 @averagepolarexpeditionenjoyer