#btw that scary-ass god who lives in Tartaros & can look at the Gorgon's head & perjures himself on the Styx
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deathlessathanasia · 15 days ago
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"Then her (the witch Erictho's) voice, more powerful than any herb to bewitch the powers of Lethe, began to utter dissonant cries, far different from any human speech. The dog’s yowl, the wolf’s howl, were there, the restless barn-owl’s hoot, and the screech-owl’s call, beasts’ wails and shrieks, the hissing of snakes, they were all expressed within; and the roar of waves beating on rocks, the forest’s moan, the thunder through a rift in the cloud, all such things formed that single voice. Next she began a Thessalian spell, in accents that penetrated Tartarus: ‘You Furies, and you Stygian horrors, you torments of the guilty, and you, Chaos, ready to confound innumerable worlds in ruin; and you, ruler of the world below, a god whom lingering Death torments through long centuries; and Styx, and that Elysium no Thessalianwitch deserves; and Persephone who shuns her mother in heaven; and the third form of our patroness, Hecate, through whom the shades and I converse silently; and the Janitor of the wide realm, who throws men’s flesh to the savage hound; and the Sisters who must re-spin the thread of life; and you, ancient ferryman of the fiery wave, weary of rowing shades back to me: hear my prayer! If I invoke you with sufficiently foul and impious lips; if I never chant these spells fasting from human flesh; if I have often slit open those breasts filled with divinity, and laved them with warm brains; if any infant whose head and organs were laid on your platters might prevail with you, grant me my request. …
With this, foaming at the mouth, she raised her head to find the shade of the unburied dead close beside her. It feared the lifeless corpse, the loathsome confinement of its former prison; it shrank from entering the gaping breast, the flesh and innards ruined by the mortal wound. Oh wretched ghost, iniquitously robbed of death’s final gift, that is: to die no more! Erictho marvelled that fate could be delayed so, and enraged by the dead she lashed the inert corpse with a live serpent, and through the clefts where the earth had been split by her spells she growled like a dog at the shades below and shattering the silence of their realm, cried: ‘Tisiphone and Megaera, unheeding of my voice, will you not drive the unhappy spirit with your cruel whips from the void of Erebus? Or shall I summon you by your secret names, Hounds of Hell, and render you helpless in the light above; there to keep you from graves and funerals; banish you from tombs, drive you from urns of the dead. And you, Hecate, all pale and withered in form, who paint your face before you visit the gods above, I will show them you as you are, and prevent you altering your hellish form. I shall speak aloud about that food which confines Proserpine beneath the vast weight of earth above, by what compact she loves the gloomy king of darkness, what defilement she suffered such that you Ceres would not recall her. I shall burst your caves asunder, Ruler of the Underworld, and admit light instantly to blast you. Will you obey me? Or shall I call on one at the sound of whose name earth ever quakes and trembles, who views the Gorgon’s head without its veil, who lashes the cowering Fury with her own whip, who dwells in Tartarus beyond your sight, for whom you are the gods above, who swears by Styx while perjuring himself.’"
- Lucan, Pharsalia, Book VI
First, Erictho is genuinely terrifying and makes my skin crawl, I recommend reading the full section she appears in. Second, I find it funny when people claim that the Romans ruined Hades and Persephone's beautiful and consensual romance considering that the idea of Persephone/Proserpina refusing to leave her husband for her mother and the… stuff in this particular passage come from Roman sources.
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