#euripides is old

[sorrydetka]

desire, love, godliness

fleabag 2.06 // hippolytus by euripides (trans. anne carson) // munich, winter 1973 (for y.s.) by james baldwin // the meeting in a dream by jorge luis borges // hannibal, ‘secondo’ 3.03 // epipsychidion by percy bysshe shelley // les misérables by victor hugo // know-nothing by sharon olds // eros, the bittersweet by anne carson

[regkatouargou]

Diomedes offering Oeneus a sword to kill his brother gives me a good feeling….

[yesthefandomfreakblr]

Holy fucking shit.

Currently reading The Underland Chronicles with my baby brother for the first time and had to pause midway through.

Where do they get milk/dairy/cheese from? Do they have cattle? Do they use mice?

(@yesthefandomfreakblr? 👀

[bluelavenderhaze]

[ratnix]

Something that I think is really funny is that the word Anaklysmos (Riptide) doesn't even exist, it's just a combination of a suffix that means above and the verb κλύζω which means to ripple😭 [Help, even my Greek keyboard doesn't even recognize the word]

I read these books when I was 12 and as a native Greek speaker that also studied ancient Greek for 6 years, I fully thought this was an actual word because it sounds Greek but it's not 😭 Mf Rick Riordan gaslit me in my own language. Apparently he asked an ancient Greek professor and told him that this was the closest word he could use but like, my question is why😭? There are so many already existing words that are related to the sea and even if they don't directly translate to 'Riptide', just pick a Greek word and paraphrase it when translating it to English like it's not hard 😭

[aldoodles]

Please have this very messy drawing that resulted from me randomly remembering that they blindfolded all the younger kids to protect them from seeing carnage, but not 12 year old gregor

[siena-sevenwits]

So a herdsman just ran onstage saying basically, "My young mistress! Surprising news! Two nice young men just arrived onshore! They would certainly make a pleasant offering, a sacrifice to our goddess, Artemis! Come, Iphigeneia, quickly, prepare the rites for the blessing and their purification!"

... I feel like Iphigeneia was expecting that speech to go on differently when he told her there were two nice young men just arrived. As though the opening scene in Pride and Prejudice went like this:

MRS BENNET: My dear! Mr Bennet ! Wonderful news! Netherfield Park is let at last! By a single man of large fortune, my dear! He came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place. His name is Bingley, and he will be in possession by Michaelmas, and he has 5,000 a year! What a fine thing for our girls.

MR BENNET: How so? How can it affect them?

MRS BENNET: Oh, Mr Bennet , how can you be so tiresome? You must know that I’m thinking they might bring him to the altar as a sacrifice. To Artemis, naturally.

MR BENNET: So that is his design in settling here, to ritually spill his blood in a pleasant manner?

MRS BENNET: Design? Oh how can you talk such nonsense?

[squiffyfungi]

All this talk of being young and free in the cult of dionysus but tbh I just wanna be like cadmus and tiresias

[jeannereames]

Hi there, this may seem like a random question, but do you think Alexander would have liked sitcoms, like a show like the Big Bang Theory? He seems to have been a serious person, but also a people-person?

What were his favorite plays? Did Greek stories ever delve into daily life and relationships between friends? I've never wondered about this sort of thing with a historical figure, but Alexander's personality interests me.

Let’s begin with a quick summary of what sorts of entertainment were available in the theatre (or elsewhere).

Greek plays were either tragedy or comedy. We also had rhetors and epic poetry which might be performed in more private settings (or during some of the Contests, such as the Pythian Games). A serious shift in plays occurred between the Classical and Hellenistic Eras, in part owing to political changes instituted by Alexander. But Alexander, himself, was a product of the (late) Classical period. That was his “entertainment” world. That was the era of classical tragedy and Middle Comedy.

Both epic poetry and Greek tragedy were rooted in myth, and cyclic stories well-known to everyone. Even in old-style epic, most of these are “tragic” tales. Consider the Iliad. Does that really end well for anybody? Seven Against Thebes? Jason and the Argonauts? The Herakles Cycle? All of these, even if there’s a temporary victory at points, end badly for most of the participants.

Yet this was the popular stuff!

I think it a very important distinction to recognize for the Archaic and Classical world, as opposed to later periods, never mind popular genres today such as genre Romance, action-adventure, or dramady.

Comedy then (as now) required a “happy” ending. The original form was Old Comedy, which would be much closer to “Saturday Night Live” or Monty Python, than “Big Bang Theory” or “Black-ish.” It was POLITICAL. The settings were largely ridiculous, and meant to be, in order to highlight political satire. It was about ideas, not people.

Following the Peloponnesian War, the sharp sauce of Old Comedy stung overmuch, and comedic theatre moved into Middle Comedy. Here, we come a bit closer to the modern sitcom. Unfortunately, we have almost nothing from this period, just a little bit of Aristophanes at the end of his reign, and I’m not too sure we should use even his “Plutus” as an exemplar. We have more examples of New Comedy, where Romance took over. It’s hard to say if that was also true of Middle Comedy. But both sorts of comedy are sharp departures from Old Comedy. They represent more “escapist” entertainment.

We don’t know what his favorite play was, but we DO know Euripides was his favorite playwright, and, as with Homer, he could recite whole chunks of Euripidian content by heart. Then again, Euripides had a long-standing connection to the Macedonian court, having lived there as a guest of King Archelaos after the Peloponnesian War. Similarly, Alexander’s favorite poet was Pindar, another literati with connections to Macedonian royalty, in Pindar’s case, to Alexandros I, king during the Persian Wars.

There’s no real evidence that Alexander was a fan of comedy—but also no evidence he didn’t enjoy it. That said, we might understand why tragedy might have appealed more to him. If tragedy was about the fall of great men (according to Aristotle), it did focus on “great men”—heroes. In contrast, comedy (Old or Middle) tended to be about the average person and their foibles. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Alexander, who emulated the heroes, might prefer tragedy.

So, would he enjoy "Big Bang Theory"? Hard to say. It's a very geeky sitcom, and would take a fair bit of cultural knowledge to "get." But I do think, if he enjoyed comedy, he probably preferred wittier plays. We should also recall that Macedon might have been a bit behind the times due to the political/cultural chaos following the murder of Archelaos, when the kingship was passed around among various branches until Philip's father Amyntas (III) was able to keep it a while. Yet even that wasn't all that stable a period. Not until Philip secured the throne do we see a new influx of Greek culture from the south. Ergo, the average Macedonian may have found New Comedy less appealing than Old Comedy, as it was less familiar.

[erophile-eros]

~ Artemis & Hippolytus~

[helenoftroydidnothingwrong]

Having to explain to my bf that while, yes, by modern standards I am mostly researching dead white dudes, during their time the idea of whiteness as a race thing didn’t exist, so it’s limiting to call them that, but also yes they are part of this racist idea of The West and stuff, but also there’s nuance, and then I realize I’ve completely lost him

[kylixproductions]

Remember when Euripides just changed the Medea myth so she killed her children instead of the Corinthians? What if we just did that again to make Agamemnon look even worse? Gods I hate him.

[gwensparlour]

Can we all appreciate Peleus in Euripides' Andromache?

[jaimelire-france]

Hécube est une tragédie puissante et intemporelle sur la nature humaine du poète tragique grec Euripide.

[bluelavenderhaze]

"Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched." - Euripides Medea.

[isayeed-blog]

NOIR AND THE AUDIENCE

The mystery of film noir and the quality of the audience must be resolved.

In 1940-60, American (and some - but not all - European) directors produced masterpieces for viewers barely out of high school, and long before the explosion in tertiary education worldwide in the ‘60s, when brawn paid nearly as well as brain.

We should not be surprised for the scene should immediately recall an earlier one - when illiterate yokels gawked at the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Herder nailed it when he observed that the greatest art - from Homer to the Old Testament - proceeded from the illiterati.

The oral tradition spans our civilisation, and great messages would not be so great had they been timebound and exclusive to a few.

One has only to think of the religious life of humankind to record the hoary antiquity of the sublime.

In the film “Detour”, we see a man pitted against merciless fate - something that is almost Euripidean - and losing at every turn.

On the other hand, we see the fates pursuing a woman to her own ruin and that of others for overstepping her allotted sphere in life in the noir masterpiece “Too Late for Tears” - terrible retribution awaits her hybris.

Thou shalt neither covet nor kill.