#based on tales from ovid

[as-nowilove]

we have quickly come so far, 8/20/24

[anghraine]

Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:

I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.

IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.

I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.

Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).

Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.

At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).

Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.

So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.

Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.

Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).

Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.

The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.

[tylermileslockett]

Atalanta #6 "the Hunt for the Calydonian Boar"King Oineus of Calydon makes the egregious mistake of not sacrificing and offering the first fruits of the Season to Artemis (Homer). The wrathful goddess unleashes the giant Calydonian boar to trample the citizens and ravage the crops of the kingdom. The king sends out a summons and Atalanta, Theseus, Jason, Peleus and many other great heroes answer the call to fell the beast. It is Atalanta's arrow that draws first blood (Ovid) but the King's son, Meleager, who strikes the deathblow. Meleager, having fallen in love with Atalanta, offers her the Boar's hide as trophy. But this causes a rift with the royal uncle who deems a woman unworthy of such an award, and when the argument comes to blows, Meleager kills his two uncles, Prothous and Cometes, by the sword. Meleager's mother, and sister to his uncle, Queen Althaea, enraged by the murder, throws a wood log magically tied to Meleager's lifespan into the fire, killing him instantly.This most famous hunting episode in Greek mythology was said to have taken place a generation before the Trojan war. I find this aspect of the wooden log which was supernaturally linked to Meleager's lifespan to be quite fascinating. The playwright Euripides wrote a play based on the character called "Meleager" of which only fragments remain. The first mention of the Calydonian boar hunt occurs in Homer's ||iad with no reference to Atalanta's involvement. It's Ovid and Apollodorus who include Atalanta into the hunt.The motif of a king sending out heralds to plead for help from worthy heroes brings to mind the epic of Beowulf (6th century C.E.) who answers the plea of a kingdom suffering from the attacks of Grendel. No doubt this tale held special importance for ancient Greeks, emphasizing the dangers of neglecting the gods and goddesses, and the potential for brave individuals to overcome impossible oddsLike 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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[what-even-is-thiss]

Hey do you have any literature recommendations for people who want to broaden their knowledge on the classics and Greek/Roman myths without taking university courses?

So like for people (such as myself) who have read Bullfinch's Myths of Greece and Rome and Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes but want to deepen their knowledge and maybe go to intermediate level type stuff. Or whatever the level above the mentioned literature is.

Well those two books are quite old and skip over quite a few things. Both are very important to our culture, historically, but I'd recommend reading through some more modern popular retellings like Stephen Fry's Mythos series if you're looking for pure entertainment and a dummy's guide to Greek myths.

The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology is a useful reference book if you have difficulty keeping track of all these names and whatnot. It's just a reference book but you know. Having a reference book handy is quite useful. I personally prefer reference books when it comes to checking stuff when I'm doing mythology things anyways. They're generally more organized than the internet.

If you're looking for entertaining retellings of less popular myths, I'd actually recommend going to videos and podcasts for that. YouTubers like MonarchsFactory, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Jake Doubleyoo, and Mythology & Fiction Explained are all people who do a lot of research themselves on the myths they retell and I would recommend all of them to basically anybody. As far as podcasts go, Mythology & Fiction Explained has a podcast version and Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! is a very informative podcast that talks about sources for the myths and has interviews with experts on the subjects. It's also a podcast that is specifically Greco-Roman based.

As far as doing slightly more in-depth research, I cannot recommend theoi.com enough. I really can't. It has overviews of the most common myths, it has pages about god and hero cults, it cites it's sources and has an online library of translated texts. It's just really good. Go clicking around it for a while. It's a lot of fun if you're into that sort of thing.

As far as primary sources for myths go, there's a few places you could start. The Iliad, perhaps. The most recent English translation is by Caroline Alexander but I personally prefer Stanley Lombardo's translation. The Odyssey is a more accessible read in my opinion if you're not used to reading epic poetry. Emily Wilson's translation is especially accessible, written in iambic pentameter and generally replicating Homer's simple conversational language.

The third traditional entrance into the epic cycle of the surviving literature is the Aeneid. The newest translation of that is by Shadi Bartsch, which is pretty good, but it reads more like prose than poetry. Would still highly recommend it though. Robert Fitzgerald's translation is also good.

If you wanna get fancy you can read the Post-Homerica which attempts to bridge the gap between the Iliad and the Odyssey. It's not often read but it's one of the latest pagan sources we have from people who still practiced ancient Greek religion.

If you want a collection of short stories from ancient times, Ovid's your guy. Metamorphosis is specifically Roman and specifically Ovid's fanfiction, but it's also a valid primary resource and Ovid generally views women as people. What a concept!

Though I think the absolute best overview from ancient times itself is The Library aka Biblioteca by pseudo-apollodorus. Doesn't matter what translation you get. The prose is simple to the point where it's difficult to screw it up. Not artistic at all. It is, quite simply, a guy from ancient times trying to write down the mythological history of the world as he knew it. It has a bunch of summaries of myths in it, and most modern printings also have a table of contents so you can essentially use it as a reference book or a cheat sheet. I love it.

The Homeric Hymns weren't actually written by Homer but that's what they're called anyways. They're a lovely bit of poetry because, well, they were originally hymns. They've got some of the earliest full tellings of the Hades and Persephone story and the birth of Hermes in them. They also provide an insight into how ancient people who were most devoted to these gods viewed them. Go read the Homeric Hymns. They're lovely. You can buy the Michael Crudden translation or you can read a public domain translation online. I don't care. Just read them.

If you're into tedious lists, the next place I'd recommend you go after you read all the fun stuff is Hesiod's Theogony. Hesiod, the red pill douchebag of the ancient world, decided he was gonna write down the genealogy of all the Greek gods. That means lists. I'm not exaggerating. Be prepared for a lot of lists. But this work also has the earliest and one of the most complete versions of the story of Pandora, the creation of humans, and the most popular version of the Greek creation myth. So, it's very useful. If you can take all the lists.

The Argonautica aka the voyage of the argo by Apollonius of Rhodes, is also here. That is also a thing you can read. About the golden fleece and whatnot. And Jason. You know Jason. We all hate Jason.

Greek theatre also provides a good overview of specific myths. The three theben plays, Medea, the Bacche, etc. We've only got thirty-something surviving plays in their entirety so like... look up the list. Find one that looks interesting. Read it. Find a performance of it online, maybe. They're good.

If you want to dive into the mythology as a religion that was practiced, Greek Religion by Walter Burkurt and Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide by Jennifer Larson are pretty good books on the topic and often used as textbooks in college courses.

If you wanna get meta and get a feel for what the general public today thinks about Greek myths and what the average person that's sort of knowledgeable about Greek myths knows, the books you already mentioned are good. That's what people usually read. In addition to those, most people's intro to Greek myths generally involves The Complete World of Greek Mythology by Richard Buxton, D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, or The Percy Jackson series.

I've been flipping through the big stacks of mythology books I keep on my table trying to remember if I've forgotten anything but I don't think I have so, yeah. Hope this helps. There's no correct starting point here. Once you get started there's a nearly endless void of complications and scholarship you can fall down that you'll never reach the bottom of. This post is basically just a guide to the tip of the iceberg.

[jasper-book-stash]

June-August 2024 Reading Wrap-Up

Hey, sorry for disappearing off of the face of Tumblr for uhhhh three months, but I read twelve books in that time and I'm here to complain.

Religious Text

None applicable.

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

Moonbeams and Ashes: Tales of Mystery, Love, and the Paranormal | Margarite Stever

I picked this up from some bookstore here in Missouri under the local authors shelf. I wish I hadn't. These stories were all poorly written, and a good chunk had nothing to do with mystery, love, OR the paranormal. They weren't even bad in the fun way.

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

My Mother Road | Phyllis York

I picked this up from some OTHER bookstore here in Missouri under the local authors shelf. I wished this book had ended 480 pages sooner. The only highlight was at the end when the grandpa physically kicked a guy off of the porch.

Athena's Child | Hannah Lynn

A Greek myth "retelling" centering around Medusa and intercut with Perseus. It...was just mediocre. There wasn't anything interesting about what it did or changed or told, there was no taking the myth and running in a new direction with it, and worse of all we opted for the Ovid's Metamorphoses route but still used the Greek names for the gods.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Crossword Poems, volumes 1 and 2 | Robert Norton

Two itty-bitty volumes covering what were apparently once commonly-known poems that you'd be able to remember based on half of the hint. Decent enough stuff, just kinda boring without that historical note.

Shelling Peanuts and Other Odd Odes | Howard Nelson

Another collection of poems that were ultimately mediocre with a few funny or insightful ones. Not bad, just not especially good either.

Songs of Honour | Noble House Publishers

These were, on the whole, better than the other two, but I knocked it down to 6/10 based on the fact that it took me the entire month of July and a third of August to finish. The formatting was lovely and each poem only took a page, but it was ultimately just "good-to-mediocre" on the whole.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa | Scott McGough Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa | Scott McGough Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa | Scott McGough

While I personally listed Guardian as a 9/10, I figured I should keep the entire Kamigawa Cycle together. This is the story of Toshiro Umezawa, everyone's favorite fuckup self-centered protagonist dealing with the consequences of his and everyone else's actions. There were a couple times when something was referenced that didn't make sense in the setting (such as angels, Hell, or pixies), and you can definitely feel the "early 2000s white man writing a Japanese setting based on vibes alone" emanating from most of the pages, but I had a good time calling Toshi a dumbfuck over and over again.

9/10 - Very Very Good

None applicable (besides aforementioned Guardian).

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

The Tale of Despereaux | Kate DiCamillo

In my book club, we randomly pulled this one as the one for all of us to read at the same time, and let me tell you, this book hits different when you're a queer young adult in your early twenties than it clearly hit the grown women in their 50+'s. Great book, absolutely adorable, and I love the fact that we accidentally timed it to coincide with the release of Bloomburrow.

Scaredy Squirrel: In a Nutshell | Melanie Watt

Yes, this is an Easy-level book. But somehow, this squirrel with anxiety and possibly OCD (yes, I'm projecting slightly, I kept going "he's just like me for real" aloud when I read it) is now one of my favorite fictional guys. And when he was having a meltdown, the other characters actually gave him space and respected his boundaries. Do you know how impossible that is to find in fiction? One of my favorite books now, hands down.

[seaprofound]

Hot Take: so long as you're willing to adapt to another person's portrayal, it's perfectly fine to have a default interpretation of a certain character and their relationship with your muse.

and, by this, I don’t mean “oh, I really like the way my mutual portrays this character—so, we are now affiliated with each other”—I mean this is how you personally view said character without any outside influence.

to use myself as an example, I’ve always been vocal about preferring Medusa as how she was portrayed by Hesiod because—undying distaste for Ovid aside—there’s something just so heartwarming about a monster being loved tenderly by one of the deathless immortals. (the imagery of Po laying with Medusa in a soft meadow during the springtime will forever be engraved in my heart, okay.)

that said, I always felt sorta strangely guilty for also preferring Medusa’s true form to be that of a hideous monster—hideous in the same way as the Beast from Beauty and the Beauty, though, rather than having zero attractiveness whatsoever—because of how prevalent the interpretation of Medusa as a beautiful maiden generally is. (also, speaking of that interpretation, the idea that Medusa was once famed for her beauty did NOT begin with Ovid; it started becoming popular, in fact, with late classical poets that predate him—with one myth even claiming that Medusa was so vain, that she boasted that she was more beautiful than Athena. as a result, she got cursed—but I digress.)

the reason why I prefer the monster to be the true form rather than the maiden, btw, is because it’s more narratively powerful. feeling a strong kinship with monsters is a core aspect of Po’s identity—for a variety of factors—so, I like to interpret her romance with Medusa as not so much a straightforward Beauty and the Beast tale but rather as a case of two monsters finding a home in each other.

these thoughts are, by far, not my only ones on Medusa and Po’s relationship with her—I also have it so that Po didn’t sleep with Medusa in Athena’s temple, for example, because it would be OOC for her to do so based on how I write her—but they are the most prevalent ones that come to mind whenever I think about them.

to get back to my hot take: although I’ve had all these thoughts and ideas swirling around in my head for as long as I can remember, I’ve hesitated to make them part of my personal canon because what if a roleplayer who writes a certain character gets offended? like. “wow. who are you to dictate what my muse is like? 😤”

over the past couple of years, though, I realized how incredibly flawed that line of thinking is. people are going to have their own unique interpretation of your muse before ever interacting with and learning about yours. it’s inevitable. that doesn’t make them selfish any more than it makes your interpretation inferior.

people are going to see characters differently and that’s the beauty of roleplay.

so long as we can respect each other’s differences, we should be okay.

[boldlycrookedsalad]

Literary Canon (from kissgrammar)

The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version [At a minimum, the books of Genesis, Exodus, Job, Psalms, from the Old Testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Apocalypse from the New.] Whether or not you are Christian is irrelevant. The civilization in which we live is based on and permeated by the ideas and values expressed in this book. Understanding our civilization, the world in which we live, is probably impossible without having read -- and thought about -- at least the most famous books in the Bible. Historically, the King James Version is considered the most artistic, and thus has probably had the most literary influence.

Homer, The Iliad

Homer, The Odyssey

Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex)

Sophocles, Antigone

Plato, The Republic, especially "The Myth of the Cave"

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Saint Augustine, The Confessions

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Giambattista Vico, Principles of a New Science

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Romeo and Juliet

King Lear

Hamlet

Othello

Macbeth

John Donne, "Holy Sonnet XIV"

John Donne, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"

Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

A Modest Proposal

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Michel de Montaigne, Essays, especially "Of Experience"

Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

Moliere, The Misanthrope

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile

Voltaire, Candide

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Parts One & Two

Honore de Balzac, Old Goriot (also translated as Pere Goriot)

Stendhal, The Red and the Black

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Emile Zola, Germinal

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House

William Blake

William Wordsworth

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Lord Byron, Don Juan

John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"

Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist

A Tale Of Two Cities

Hard Times

A Christmas Carol

Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Francis Thompson, "The Hound of Heaven"

Samuel Butler, Erewhon

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

George Eliot- Silas Marner

Middlemarch

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil

The Will To Power

The Birth of Tragedy

On the Genealogy of Morals

Alexander Pushkin - Eugene Onegin

The Bronze Horseman

Nikolai Gogol -The Overcoat

Dead Souls

Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

Fyodor Dostoevsky -Notes From the Underground

Crime and Punishment

Leo Tolstoy -The Death of Ivan Ilych

War and Peace

Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

Emily Dickinson - "Because I Could Not Stop For Death"

"The Tint I Cannot Take"

"There's a Certain Slant of Light"

Walt Whitman  - "Song of Myself"

"The Sleepers"

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

"As I Ebbed With The Ocean of Life"

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown

The Scarlet Letter

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Edgar Allen Poe - "The Raven"

The Cask of Amontillado

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Kate Chopin -The Story of An Hour

The Awakening

Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

Henry James

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Luigi Pirandello

[coutelier]

WTF is Mab?

So, in the Shakespeare-verse there are two fairy Queens.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream we have Titania, whose name we can trace all the way back to Ovid as an epithet for Goddesses such as Diana – a daughter of Titans. But in Romeo & Juliet Mercutio has this speech:

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman…

And goes on and on about Mab and how she awakens desires in people until the other characters make him stop. Thing is though, no-one knows who the hell Mab is.

We might assume that Shakespeare’s audience knew WTF he was on about, and indeed most of his fantasy characters are named after figures from myth and folklore. But pretty much all the literature we have that mentions a Queen Mab, such as Nymphidia by Michael Drayton, came after Shakespeare – we don’t know any folklore mentioning her before him. Some have thought it may be a reference to the legendary Irish Queen Medb, but that’s a theory based solely on their names looking similar, and the similarities pretty much end there. Some nineteenth century texts claimed she’s from a Welsh legend but give no sources. There are some other possibilities from folklore, but again its mostly based on vaguely similar names and it can be hard to tell if those were the original names or if the tales were influenced and changed by the popularity of Shakespeare.

So we’ll probably never know for sure where Queen Mab came from, and usually when there’s a gap in knowledge we fill it with Aliens. On this occasion though I’m just going to let her remain a mystery.

[mask131]

Roman sources 1 : Roman myths

I was asked by @subjects-of-the-king if I knew of some actual ancient Roman sources about the Roman gods in their specificity. Note that I am NOT an expert on Roman religion, and that I mostly rely on books written by experts and people that studied the Roman religion and culture - but I do know of a few “direct” sources, and I will split them down briefly in two.

The first part here being entirely focused around myths. All the texts below are about Roman authors writing the myths and legends of their mythology - and... if you are interested in the pre-Hellenized Roman gods, it won’t be of any real big use, because as I said, almost all of Roman mythology is just a copy-paste or remake of the Greek one. BUT these texts are without a doubt much needed to understand how the Romans received the Greek legends and how they re-adapted them to their own religion and culture (plus if you want to compare the Greek and Roman versions of the legend, you’ll need them) 

The same way the Greeks myth have two huge literary monuments at their base (Homer and Hesiod’s works), the Roman mythology relies on two big authors that made a bridge between Roman and Greek culture by importing the Greek legends into the Roman world, or creating the first literary Roman legends. These authors are Ovid and Virgil.

Ovid is of course most famed for his “Metamorphoses”, (Transformations), a collection of tales of transformation from the Greek legends, re-adapted for the Roman religion (plus with some purely unique Roman legends). “Metamorphoses” is especially famous due to the reverse-influence it had on the reception of the Greek myths - as I said before, Ovid invented a LOT of rapes of “Classical mythology”, and turned a lot of consensual or un-ambiguous Greek mythological relationships into rapes and sexual abuses. Ovid however wrote many other works that are of relevance to the Roman mythology - two I can quote of the top of my head at “Fasti” (The Festivals) which details the Roman calendar, its various festivals and celebrations and the legends tied to them (so we do have here some additional info about Roman religion itself), and the Heroides (Heroines), which is basically a set of invented letters presenting mythological heroines in a confessional mode. 

The other big behemoth of Roman mythology is without a doubt Virgil, thanks to his most famous work: Aeneid. THE Roman epic poem, conceived as a direct sequel to Homer’s “Iliad”, and inventing a cultural/legendary/historical link tying the Greek mythology to the Roman one, with the founding hero of the Roman civilization, Aeneas. Just like with Ovid, while the Aeneid is his most famous works, Virgil wrote many other pieces very informative about the Roman gods - such as the Georgics, which is... a poem about agriculture basically. But when you remember that originally the pre-Hellenized Roman gods were agricultural and nature gods, centered around a farmer-religion, it makes sense a poem about agricultural chores turns out to contain a lot of info about myths, legends, rites and gods. 

Beyond those two main guys, there are several other authors that made their mark and influence over Roman myths.

# Statius, who wrote two Roman epics; the Thebaid and the Achilleid (two Roman rewrites of Greek myths, respectively the fight of Eteocles and Polynices for the throne of Thebes, and the life of Achilles). Another big Roman epic we know about (but unfinished) is the Argonautica, by Valerius Flaccus - which as the title says is a Roman retelling of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. 

# Seneca, who was one of the most famous play-writers of Ancient Rome, and left us numerous famous Roman theater plays presenting Roman versions of Greek myths: Medea, Phaedra, Thyestes, Troades, a Roman Oedipus, etc...

# Another BIG author when it comes to Roman myths is without a doubt Hyginus, who produced two works entirely about collecting myths. The first is “Fabulae”, which is one of the biggest myth compilations ever produced by a Roman authors, around three hundred different stories compiled together - though, due to the huge number of stories, Hyginus sacrificed the poetic complexity of Ovid and Virgil, and so he often tells the myths in very short, simplified forms so he could cram as much as he could. His second work is basically the same thing - but this time with a theme, “De Astronomica”, a compilation of myths entirely centered around astronomy and the constellations. 

# Not a Roman author, but a Greek one tackling the Roman stories: I will briefly mention here Plutach’s famous “Parallel Lives”, of their full title “Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans”. As the name says, Plutarch decided to present biographies of famous, noble and legendary Greek and Roman figures, placed together in parallels - and I include the text here because it covers the mythical first rulers of Rome, such as Romulus and Numa Pompilius. 

# I will finish this first list with a very... unusual work. Apuleius “The Golden Ass”, also known as The Metamorphoses of Apuleius. It is a late Roman novel (written somewhere on the second century) and... it is a very strange, unusual weird story. It is an humoristic, bawdy, almost erotic story of a man ending up turned into a donkey by mistake and following the adventures of various people, but it also sometimes turns into grotesque and nightmarish horror (mostly thanks to the constant involvment of terrifying witches), and it ends up as a mystical quest under the Roman cult of the goddess Isis (it shows here the “late” part of the “late Roman era”, since Apuleius’ text depicts a Roman religion stuffed with “foreign gods”). And it contains numerous very influential tales of Greco-Roman legends - most notably, it is in this story that you will find THE most famous and complete version of the myth of Psyche and Cupid, so famous that during European Renaissance it was THIS version of the myth that was known, and no other. 

(A second part of this post will arrive one of these days, centered about texts talking of religion and rites, rather than myths)

[iseiis]

καλλιπάρῃος   Βρῑσηΐς      —   literature,   mythology,   and   headcanon   based   writing   blog   for   𝙱𝚁𝙸𝚂𝙴𝙸𝚂   of   𝚃𝙷𝙴   𝙸𝙻𝙸𝙰𝙳.    (   selective   +   mutuals   only   )

also found on @andr0phonos & @ifegeneia .

01.  for  those  unfamiliar  with  briseis'  story  from  myth,  hers  is  a  survivors  tale  with  many  disturbing  themes  and  instances.  there  may  be  mentions  of  past  sexual  abuse,  violence  towards  women,  and  other  such  subjects.  i  will  not  be  engaging  in  any  non-con  or  sexually  violent  writing  on  the  dash  under  any  circumstances  and  any  mention  of  violence  will  be  tagged  accordingly.  i  fully  understand  people  who  don't  want  to  engage  with  these  sort  of  subjects,  but  they  are  integral  to  briseis'  general  backstory  across  all  verses.  

02.  problematic  and  bigoted  behavior  are  obviously  blockable  offenses,  and  i  personally  prefer  not  to  see  dub-con/non-con  smut  scenes  written  out  on  the  dash  or  nsfw  reblogs  without  a  readmore.  

03.  i'm  not  well-versed  in  the  intricacies  of  soft-block,  hard-block  etc  etc  but  in  general  i  will  follow  you  if  i  want  to  write  with  you,  unfollow  you  if  i  don't  anymore,  and  block  whenever  the  situation  calls  for  it.  i  typically  won't  follow  back  if  i  don't  foresee  a  way  for  our  muses  to  interact  but  i  can  definitely  be  persuaded!

04.  similarly,  i  ask  that  only  people  that  are  mutuals  with  me  interact  with  ic  posts,  memes  i  reblog,  and  so  on.  once  we  follow  each  other,  feel  free  to  reach  out  in  dms  or  ask  for  my  discord!

05.  i  do  enjoy  shipping  based  on  chemistry  but  this  is  not  the  main  focus  of  all  my  interactions  on  this  blog.  briseis  obviously  has  a  complicated  story  so  shipping  will  be  dependent  on  verse,  timeline,  and  prior  plotting.  in  my  personal  canon  she  is  bisexual  :-)  i  will  not  be  writing  smut  on  dash  or  anywhere  else!

06.  i  will  be  using  rose  byrne  as  briseis  in  troy  2004  as  my  main  faceclaim,  this  does  not  mean  i  consider  anything  from  that  movie  to  be  canon  or  even  close  to  relevant  to  her  character.  the  main  inspiration  from  her  character  is  the  book  the  silence  of  the  girls  by  pat  barker.  (this  is  not  a  safe  space  for  the  tsoa  fandom!)  as  well  as  the  illiad  itself,  heroides  3  (ovid  is  my  enemy  but  some  parts  are  cool)  and  my  own  canon  /  meta  for  her.  

07.  verses  will  be  worked  out  and  expanded  upon  further.

08.  if  you  made  it  this  far,  hello!  i'm  molly,  going  by  she/her  pronouns  and  24  years  of  age.  i'm  a  big  history  nerd  and  my  favorite  fandoms  to  write  in  are  asoiaf,  dune,  any  medieval  dark  fantasy  setting,  and  of  course  anything  related  to  mythology.  <3

[morgan--reads]

Wake, Siren - Nina MacLaughlin

Summary: The myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses, told from the point of view of the women, goddesses, and female monsters in the tales. 

Quote: “Want is the only thing. One wants to eat the other. I want this to stop. Someone else wants it not to stop. Whose want wins? If we are basing it on duration, mine does. Because my want for it to stop does not ever end. If we are basing it on who gets what they want? His.” 

My rating: 3.75/5.0  Goodreads: 3.81/4.0

Review: Like many adaptations, MacLaughlin sometimes clings too hard to her source material and the retellings can feel stale, as though they are simply the Ovid stories translated into modern English with a slight shift in narration. In addition, MacLaughlin’s narrative style often feels like it’s trying too hard to be casual and relatable. But some of the stories go beyond these flaws to engage critically with Ovid or to really bring home the horror of some of the concepts. These stories don’t make for happy reading, but when they work they are visceral, moving, and terribly real. 

Content note: sexual assault and rape play a prominent role in most of the stories

Read-alike: Women and Other Monsters - Jess Zimmerman

[tylermileslockett]

Atalanta #6 "the Hunt for the Calydonian Boar"

King Oineus of Calydon makes the egregious mistake of not sacrificing and offering the first fruits of the Season to Artemis (Homer). The wrathful goddess unleashes the giant Calydonian boar to trample the citizens and ravage the crops of the kingdom. The king sends out a summons and Atalanta, Theseus, Jason, Peleus and many other great heroes answer the call to fell the beast. It is Atalanta's arrow that draws first blood (Ovid) but the King's son, Meleager, who strikes the deathblow. Meleager, having fallen in love with Atalanta, offers her the Boar's hide as trophy. But this causes a rift with the royal uncle who deems a woman unworthy of such an award, and when the argument comes to blows, Meleager kills his two uncles, Prothous and Cometes, by the sword. Meleager's mother, and sister to his uncle, Queen Althaea, enraged by the murder, throws a wood log magically tied to Meleager's lifespan into the fire, killing him instantly.

This most famous hunting episode in Greek mythology was said to have taken place a generation before the Trojan war. I find this aspect of the wooden log which was supernaturally linked to Meleager's lifespan to be quite fascinating. The playwright Euripides wrote a play based on the character called "Meleager" of which only fragments remain. The first mention of the Calydonian boar hunt occurs in Homer's ||iad with no reference to Atalanta's involvement. It's Ovid and Apollodorus who include Atalanta into the hunt.

The motif of a king sending out heralds to plead for help from worthy heroes brings to mind the epic of Beowulf (6th century C.E.) who answers the plea of a kingdom suffering from the attacks of Grendel. No doubt this tale held special importance for ancient Greeks, emphasizing the dangers of neglecting the gods and goddesses, and the potential for brave individuals to overcome impossible odds

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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[arthistoriansdiary]

Jupiter and Io

Antonio da Correggio, Jupiter and Io (1532–1533). Oil on canvas, 163.5 cm × 70.5 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Antonio Allegri da Correggio's Jupiter and Io, a masterpiece from the High Renaissance, offers a fascinating glimpse into the amalgamation of divine mythology and sensual expression. This analysis seeks to explore the various facets of this captivating work, painted circa 1530.

Mythological Backdrop: The painting is based on a tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Jupiter, the king of the gods, seduced Io, a mortal woman. Correggio portrays this mythological encounter with a blend of divine grandeur and intimate tenderness. Jupiter, disguised as a cloud, envelopes Io, depicting the moment of their union.

Artistic Technique and Style: Correggio is renowned for his skillful use of sfumato, a technique that creates soft, gradual transitions between colours and tones, akin to smoke or vapor. This technique is masterfully employed to render the cloud form of Jupiter, merging seamlessly with Io’s figure. The fluidity and delicacy of his brushwork lend an ethereal quality to the scene, enhancing its dreamlike and sensual ambiance.

The Sensuality of the Divine: A striking aspect of Jupiter and Io is its explicit sensuality. Correggio does not shy away from portraying a bold, erotic theme, a daring choice for his time. Io's blissful expression and the tangible depiction of her embrace with the cloud illustrate a harmonious blend of the human and divine realms.

Symbolism and Interpretation: The painting is rich in symbolism. The cloud not only represents Jupiter's disguise but also suggests the elusive and omnipresent nature of the divine. Io’s yielding posture and closed eyes might symbolize the surrender to higher powers or the overwhelming nature of divine encounters.

Contextual Significance: Created during the High Renaissance, a period known for its humanistic approach to art, Jupiter and Io reflects the era's fascination with classical mythology and its exploration of human emotions and experiences, even in divine narratives.

Myth and Sensuality: Your View How does Correggio’s depiction of the divine in Jupiter and Io resonate with your understanding of mythology and art? Do you see this painting as a celebration of love and sensuality, or as a reflection of the power dynamics between the mortal and the divine?

[pastedpast]

Yep, I'm a pushover for an attractive book cover. This one by Edward Brooke-Hitching (I have another by him: 'The Devil's Atlas') features a section of the central panel of the triptych 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch, painted between 1490 and 1510. It is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain [been there, seen it!]. I've not bought as many books as I usually do this year, so I felt justified in indulging on a splurge this festive season and this is one of my fancies. I started looking through it last night.

It is filled with pictures of paintings, many of which I have never seen before (and a few I wish I could now 'unsee' e.g. the fresco depiction of Hermes and his disturbingly outsized phallus!). One chapter which caught my attention is called 'Dead Man's Fingers - Ceyx and Alcyone', which mentions the soft coral, 'Alcyonium digitatum', (known commonly as Dead Man's Fingers, and just do happens to be the strange spongey thing I found on the beach the other day). The stuff I found was all dried up. This is what it looks like when it's alive:

The chapter tells of the Greek myth of Ceyx, king of Trachis and his wife, Alcyone. They inadvertently got on the wrong side of god of gods, Zeus (not difficult to do, he was pretty petulant) and eventually ended up being transformed into seaborne birds known as halcyons (what we now call kingfishers). The book explains that the belief at the time, based upon that of Roman author and naturalist, Pliny the Elder, was that the kingfisher laid its eggs on the shore and that its nest was in the soft coral.

I need to read up a bit more on this, e.g. Wikipedia page on Alcyone and Ceyx in order to link it up with a previous post of mine about 'halcyon days' (link here). Basically, it's about the fact that Alcyone's father was King Aeolia (aka Aeolus) of Aeolia, god of the winds (you may remember him from Homer's 'Odyssey') who had the power to restrain the winds and calm the waves did so for a brief period so that his daughter, now in the form of a bird, could lay and nurture her eggs.

The book states that the gods "ordered that during the nesting period at the height of winter, the seas be calm and the weather still, so as not to interfere. These were the halcyon days." Brooke-Hitching references Pliny's belief in the soft coral being used by the birds as nest, but he doesn't link him directly to this myth , nor is Aristotle (as mentioned in my linked post) mentioned. Furthermore, the Wikipedia page connects the myth to the Roman poet Ovid and Latin scholar Hygius (apparently, it is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria in Egypt), both writing around the turn of the first century.

As with most myths and their various retellings by different authors and poets over the centuries, it's complicated and probably impossible to narrow the information down into one definitive explanation. Scan-reading the Wikipedia page, I pick out that the phrase 'halcyon days' has "come to refer to any peaceful time" but its "proper meaning, however, is that of a lucky break, or a bright interval set in the midst of adversity; just as the days of calm and mild weather are set in the height of winter for the sake of the kingfishers' egg-laying according to the myth. Kingfishers, however, do not live by the sea, so Ovid's tale (and therefore Pliny the naturalist's belief) is not based on any actual observations of the species and in fact refers to a mythical bird only later identified with the kingfisher".

I suppose I may return to this topic one day, but really I just wanted to link the story of the myth to my previous posts regarding the soft coral I found recently and the scrapbook snippet about halcyon days which I posted earlier this year.

first draft; NEEDS RE-READING.

POSTSCRIPT: My friend Gareth has mentioned Aeolian harps to me, which are instruments, usually stringed, played by the wind and named after Aeolus, god of the wind. An example of this concept is the Singing Ringing Tree near Burnley which I posted a picture of here.

[draculaney]

This is a vampire and supernatural creature specific blog, so in between the reblogs and shitposts, I like to dig into what rules we have created around these creatures. We seem to know all the agreed upon laws of what a vampire is - blood drinking monsters impervious to most methods of death other than a stake through the heart or burning up in the sun. Some can turn into animals or mist, some can have a magical thrall over humans. But where did those rules come from? We know a lot of the vampires we see in media don't adhere to all of those rules, or some make up their own. So what exactly is a vampire?

The rules for how vampires exist, drink blood or life essence, and die depend on what story you're being told and which one is the most present in your life. There are so many types of folkloric vampires that span many cultures across the world. Every human society seems to have a story somewhere in their history of an undead creature returning from the grave to drain the life of the living in some way. Vampires have been used as a way to explain plague, famine, disease, etc. Whenever mass death occurs, stories of supernatural coming to consume life arise.

Current Dracula based vampires have the most in common, with the folkloric strigoi in Romanian culture with ties to the Greco-Roman creatures, strix. The strigoi are particular in their stories of gaining vitality through drinking blood, being able to turn into animals, and become invisible. The theme is that blood is the life-giving source, and monsters want to drink it. A lot of previous vampire stories were the kind that would make a corpse turn into a vamp after death, or a monster/demon that's never been human at all; they were less focused on the act of biting.

Different cultures had different ideas of how one would turn into a vampire and also how to deal with them. A lot of practices were proactive. After a person would die and was suspected of turning into a vampire, some cultures would stake the body through the heart or put a stone on top of the grave or decapitate the corpse.

Many cultures throughout history have a fixation on blood as the life force. Greece & Rome had stories of blood sucking monsters in many forms. Like lamia, monsters that were devoted to the delights of Aphrodite, especially the flesh of human beings. Or empusa, demons that would seduce and devour young men. The Ovid mentions demons that would suck the blood out of infants, the focus on infant blood being “stronger and more pure.” The Filipino aswang is a creature with many different types of monstrous stories attached, a blood sucker that would drink blood with a proboscis-like tongue. There's Lamashtu, a type of female monster who would kidnap and consume children, taken from their mothers while they were breastfeeding. In Poland, a person born with teeth was at risk of turning into a vampire. In Eastern Europe, alcoholics were thought to turn into vampires after death, their insatiable thirst following them into their undeath.

There's a ton of overlap between what's considered a spirit, ghost, succubus, demon, vampire, etc. Folklore is always much murkier than one type of monster with one set of characteristics with no deviations. So much of it comes down to culture, which cultures were passing down these stories, these cautionary tales, these mass tragedies that people were trying to make sense of. The folkloric vampire has evolved in that way, each culture has its own details and rules surrounding the ways to identify and warn against a blood consuming monster.

SO HOW DOES THIS ALL TIE IN WITH TWILIGHT?

The Twilight saga has a controversial relationship with vampire folklore. There is a scene in the first book where Bella is asking Edward about the vampire characteristics, he brushes them off calling them myths. Stephenie Meyer also adds a whole new crop of traits to her vampires - no fangs, venom filled mouths, and sparkly skin in the sun. Their supernatural powers end up making these vampires more like superheroes than the standard blood drinking monster.

The reception of this choice was mixed. Young vampire fans thought nothing of it, enthralled by the first blush with vampire stories. Many older vampire fans treated this change like blasphemy and were vocal about it on the internet. They felt like a lot of the established rules being blown off so easily was too big of a change, especially with what is considered to be weak writing. Twilight being the most popular vampire franchise of the mid 00s threw this argument in contrast; either you either loved the new wave of vampires or you hated them with every fiber of your being. The further the Twilight vampires got from their folkloric monstrous form, the more critics disliked this change.

For me personally, this response to the series and the folklore of vampires falls apart under a little scrutiny. Vampires have never had the all same traits. Dracula can go out in the sunlight, he is only weaker and possesses less of his his powers. True Blood has vampire fangs come from two of the outer incisors instead of the canines. Some folkloric vampires have purple bloated faces, unlike so many of our sexy brooding modern vamps.

Smeyer does write about bloodlust and frenzy, the Twilight vamps are manipulative and coercive, they murder people without a second thought. There is a ton of evidence of the Twilight vampires being deadly, inhumane predators. These monstrous traits are used to contrast the Cullen family from the rest of the vampires we meet, to show that their abstinence is allowing them to stay closer to their humanity.

I think it comes down to whether or not you enjoy the narrative enough to give the details a moment to breathe, especially with all the wild shit that happens in the Twilight Saga as a whole. It's easy to gloss over the small character traits development in favor of reacting to the things in the series that you hate. WHY do you think Smeyer chose to write out these steadfast "rules" about vampires in her series? What was she trying to express with that, if anything? How does that affect our engagement with this series on any level?

[dailyadventureprompts]

Footnotes on Foes #3

thirteen-jades

Medusae?

As a fan of greek myth, I find the story of Medusa fascinating, in no small part because its a thematic clusterfuck that likely resulted from a few different stories getting sandwiched together.  Lets untangle some of these threads (mostly based on different versions I’ve heard, and how they bare relevance on the whole heroes slaying monsters thing): 

Medusa was a priestess of Athena who had an affair with Poseidon ( One of Athena’s main rivals regarding the founding of Athens) and defiled one of the goddess’s temples in the process. Unable to take revenge upon her uncle ( who was both family and a god) Athena curses Medusa to be a horrid monster. She also cursed her sisters for some reason.

Medusa was beautiful and was assaulted by Poseidon,  again unable to take revenge on her uncle ( but far more sympathetic this time) Athena makes it so that no man can ever touch or even LOOK at medusa again. After her death, Athena takes medusa’s head as an emblem on her shield/breastplate (not literally mounting the head there, how weird would that be?) as a symbol of her silent scorn #girlboss

The hero Perseus is tasked with killing Medusa by a king who wants him out of the picture in order to marry his mom. The gorgon in question is set up like all good mythic greek monsters, insurmountable by brute force and requiring a clever trick to overcome. (Mirror shield, give or take winged sandals and helm of invisibility).  Perseus, the mad lad, actually gives the king what he wanted, ending up turning him to stone in the process. What’s weird is how little Poseidon or Athena really feature in this tale (not at all and as vague guide respectively), which you think they would given how invested they are in Medusa’s creation. 

D&D also does this thing of making one signature monster into an entire species, trying to give a lone individual an ecology that somehow makes sense ( how do medusae reproduce and raise young?) 

Personally I’m very fond of the Theros god Pharika, mistress of venoms and cures as an origin for Medusae, much like how I have my Yuan-ti, Medusae are the results of a potent transformation brought about by alchemy and the snake goddess’s blessing, allowing the bearer to not only remake their own flesh in her image, but violently transmute the matter of others with but a glance. This allows you to treat a medusa’s appearance both as a random act of divine interference or as the culmination of some mad venom-mage’s ascension, much like lichdom. 

Edit: 

A helpful follower with more in-depth knowledge of greek mythology sent in this: 

Which makes total sense, and is inline with everything I know about Ovid (the transformation kink should have given it away), and while I knew about the “Medusa and her Sisters were born of Typhon+ Echidna” version, I failed to mention it in detail. My bad. 

I had multiple mythology books growing up as a kid and ALL of them mentioned the Medusa transformation chain of events. Weird that all these different writers decided to include Roman literature as an inseparable part of Greek Mythology, though I’ve no doubt that I’ve stumbled upon some classics major’s pet peeve.