#homeric cycle

[hermesmoly]

The language of this passage tickles me in a good way. Helen going “The wife of Zeus destroyed me” (self pity/sorrow, stark awareness, distancing Menelaus from the destruction) to Menelaus going “what evil did she make for us” (bewilderment, referring to them as a unit, the “evil” Hera made is shared between them)

In a simple way, Menelaus remind Helen she is not alone in her grief, in her suffering, as they are married and share the same sorrow, as this passage points out: Where there are two, one cannot be wretched and one not.

;)

[into-the-very-fires-of-mordor]

did you know that the myth of thetis dipping her son into the river styx was a roman idea?

did you also know that in many of the old versions achilles isn't vulnerable in his heel and invulnerable elsewhere?

well, now you do

[miyetko]

sleep odydiopen doodle

[katerinaaqu]

Odysseus's fixation upon his son could possibly be explained by the timeline.

A small thing that needs to be said is that according to Homer Odysseus left Telemachus a "newborn" (or at least so Menelaus says in the Odyssey). Interestingly is hard to tell how long Odysseus and Penelope have been married before they had Telemachus because the time line is not cut and clear.

It seems like their marriage took place during the oath of Tyndareus period when Odysseus was at Sparta as a suitor to Helen. From the Oath till Helen's infidelity or abduction or forced seduction by Aphrodite we see there were around 10 years of difference (quite frankly according to some accounts Helen mentions she was 20 years in Troy). That means that he and Penelope were potentially married at least a decade (which makes sense given that he made a wedding bed for her from scratch making it seem that their palace was also being rebuilt at that time)

But if Telemachus was newborn or almost newborn (like let's say about 1 year old tops) that means that Odysseus and Penelope were childless for almost a decade. Either that means they were having some issues aka Odysseus running errands in the kingdom or that they were trying very hard to have children and somehow they couldn't

Do you imagine what this means?

Odysseus potentially had to leave behind a son he wished for for almost a decade full and not to mention that Palamedes nearly killed him, that very son that he potentially tried so hard for and wished for so much!

Hell no wonder he names himself "Father of Telemachus" and quite frankly one can understand why he would hold a grudge against Palamedes (be it Higenius you follow where he frames him or be it Pausanias who says he drowned him) one can imagine why his brain would snap like that! If this hypothesis is correct that is.

[pantheonsofgaynessanddespair]

this happened homer told me himself

[restlesskeychains]

the judgment of paris :3

[greeknerdsstuff]

#I'm back on my bullshit :3

[lyculuscaelus]

So lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts asking people to stop trying to make Odysseus look nice in their works cuz he’s a “messed-up person in the mythology”. Your opinion is valid however I have but one thing to point out:

You want to know who started all this? Who started to “make Odysseus look nice” in the first place?

It’s Homer. It’s nobody else but Homer himself.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would try to murder people out of his own interests. He’d murder Palamedes without remorse (and we’d be cheering over this but it’s a murder after all), he’d attempt to murder Diomedes just to get the Palladium himself, he’d volunteer to kill Astyanax…meanwhile you wouldn’t find any mention of either Palamedes or Nauplius in Homer’s poems, neither did he mention anything abt the Palladium heist (and Diomedes necessity did not happen until Conon’s version), the death of Astyanax, the distribution of war prizes, etc. And all the details in the Odyssey seemed to deny the existence of Nauplius’s vengeance at all, so Odysseus would not take any of the blame.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would be depicted as “cruel, treacherous”, meanwhile in book 10 of the Iliad Odysseus was not mentioned to have killed anyone during the marauding, neither did he promise Dolan anything at all. The negative interpretations are denied by these details subtly put by Homer.

A non-Homeric Odysseus would be widely known as a “coward” for only shooting arrows from afar. But Homer gave him a spear and had him absolutely slaying in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. That part of Ajax’s speech was invalid already.

Most importantly—a non-Homeric Odysseus would be having kids everywhere else, and the loyalty to his own wife as seen in the Odyssey is no where to be found. Meanwhile his lineage was a single-son line made by Zeus in the Odyssey, and his love for Penelope was one of his main drives, especially seen in book 5 of the Odyssey. He loved his family as a loving parent—something you don’t get to see in most of the non-Homeric writings—for most of the time they followed a different tradition indeed, in which Odysseus wasn’t half as nice as in the Odyssey.

TL;DR: in case you haven’t noticed, the characterization of the Homeric Odysseus was quite different from a non-Homeric version of Odysseus. It’s not that Homer didn’t know of the existence of other versions—he knew them too well, which is why in his version of the story, you don’t get to see any mention of them.

[spineless-lobster]

Most people imagine homeric heroes to be hyper masculine and the women as passive characters or whatever, but when you actually read the source material you realize that that’s very very wrong

Reading the odyssey and seeing menelaus cry over his fallen comrades in the war, odysseus sobbing when the bard singing about troy brings back painful memories, yet again he is constantly crying on calypso’s island. Laertes cries, I’m pretty sure the pig herders cry too? There’s just a lot of men crying in that story it’s so interesting to see men being so openly vulnerable

And of course we have a shit ton of incredibly complex and compelling women who all have their own strengths, sorrows, motivations, etc. Helen, clytemnestra, elektra, penelope, cassandra, andromache, circe and so many more are so incredibly diverse and interesting and powerful in their own ways. Whether it be through magic, cunning, physical strength, resilience, their voices, their devotion, etc. Every single one of them are written so well even though people mainly focus on the men in their stories

I’m just using instances from the epic cycle as examples but if we expand it to all of greek mythology there is an infinite amount of examples one could pull from, and I think that’s pretty rad

[sonoftydeusthemusical]

Do you ever look up at the sky and think to yourself "Damn, that's the same moon that the ancient greeks looked up to when they burned down Troy and the same sunrise that Homer spoke of when he sang of rosy-fingered dawn"

[hermesmoly]

SUMMARY:

“Don’t sell yourself short. The next time a man kidnaps me, foreigner, I’ll be counting on you to fight for me.”

“I’ll gather up the troupes then. I’ll be on the front lines.”

Or; In a chance encounter, the newly exiled Menelaus and Princess Helen meet for the first time.

(My first work for the Homeric / Epic Cycle. A big thank you again to @katerinaaqu for beta reading! Go follow them for quality content!)

[into-the-very-fires-of-mordor]

Do you think Thetis burned her son to escape her husband?

Did she do it to save him from an eventual death?

Did she do it because she hated his mortal side, it disgusted her to think that something could come of her and Peleus's union?

Did she do it to prove to Peleus that her offspring was going to fulfill the prophecy, the one where he was greater than his own father?

Did she burn her son to protect him? To harm him? To help herself?

I don't know.

All I know is that she burned him. And Peleus cast her out. And Achilles died. And there was nothing she could do.

[ismaeldrawsthings]

When mfs bring up the Trojan war and Epic cycle and now shawty knows you a nerd

[miyetko]

“Patroklos…I loved him, and I killed him.” -Book 18 of The Iliad

[katerinaaqu]

Odysseus and Menelaus parallels are scary!

Soooo isn't anyone gonna talk, after all my posts, on how the two very good friends during the Homeric Poems, Odysseus and Menelaus have similarly meaning names? No? Okay then I suppose I have to, then and I will!

Odysseus: => ὀδύσσομαι (odyssomai)= to be angry at, to be bitter against, to hate

Menelaus: => μένος (menos)=anger, fury, vigor + λαός (laos)= people, army

So we have basically:

Odysseus: Anger Bringer, Angry/Furious, Hated

Menelaus: Fury of the People, Anger of the People, Vigor of the Army

So just for your information the two heroes that share so much in common;

their love for their home

the love for their wife (a very beautiful and very intelligent wife!)

agruably both married a princess that was out of their league at that time (Menelaus married Helen who was a princess of a powerful kingdom, arguably a demigoddess while he was an exiled prince once and a second son and Odysseus...yeah come on! The Prince/King from a small kingdom arrived in Sparta without even adequate wedding gifts or no gifts at all and left with a Spartan princess! Way you go champion!)

the love for their only child they left behind (the possibility of both of them having children outside of marriage in post-homeric sources for different reasons to he back of our heads)

their connection to Sparta by marriage

their adventure with being shipwrecked

consequently having to beg for the help of another ruler

coming home several years after the end of the war

the two characters that went to Troy to negotiate

one of them would absolutely be capable of starting a war for the woman he loved, the other one did it

two emotional men who share their sadness and happiness gladly with people they trust and love

both suffered trials and tirbulations (Menelaus was exiled from his own home as a young man, Odysseus wandere all over Mediterannean at his later age)

So the two dudes that share ALL this they also share a similar sounding name that also dictates their position in the war and the importance but also how they also suffer and how much anger they invoked but also felt deep inside!

And these two share such a strong friendship!!!! Suffer with me now!

[pelideswhore]

timeline

@a-chaotic-dumbass @nysus-temple here it is!! also tagging @godsofhumanity because you said something about calydonian boar hunt which i mention ever so briefly. the links will take you to fics i have written about the aforementioned occurrence since i will shamelessly take any chance to plug my writing.

Telamon (22) kills his younger half-brother, so both he and Peleus (19) are exiled by their father. Peleus is taken in by his uncle and marries his cousin. He eventually joins the Calydonian Boar Hunt, and accidentally kills his uncle/father-in-law, resulting in his fleeing for a second time. In this second exile he is accused of attempted infidelity by the King’s wife, whom he shunned. The news reaches his own wife, who kills herself, leaving the throne of Pthia to him. The King chases Peleus for revenge, organizing an attack on him by centaurs on Mount Pelion. Chiron aids Peleus and saves his life. This whole fiasco takes 9 years to unfold.

Peleus’ (28) success during the Boar Hunt results in his marriage to Thetis. A year after the wedding, he joins Jason on the Argo. Thetis gives birth to 6 boys before Achilles is born but they all die in infancy.

Priam (27) and Hecuba (25) introduce Paris (0) into the world and almost immediately abandon him into the wild. So far they’ve had Hector (8), his sister (7), Deiphobus (5) and the twins Cassandra and Helenus (4)

4 years later, Achilles (0) is born and dunked in the Styx; Thetis then leaves Peleus (34).

Phoenix (35) gets exiled and comes Phthia because Peleus (35) is his friend, Achilles (1) is living with his dad, he and childless Phoenix bond.

Patroclus (8) kills his playmate over losing a game of petteia; his father sends him away, Peleus (40) empathizes and takes him in, Patroclus and Achilles (5) meet for the first time (ROUGH SEAS)

Menelaus (16) and Agamemnon (21) seek asylum in Sparta, Clytemnestra (14) is immediately infatuated by Agamemnon, Helen (14) not so much. Castor and Pollux (14) are interested in the stories they have to tell.

Agamemnon (22) leaves Sparta to overthrow Aegisthus (20) in Mycenae; he (23) returns to ask for Clytemnestra’s (16) hand in marriage but she’s already married. He kills Tantalus and son (<1) and gets engaged to her (BLOOD-RED HANDS).

Helen (16) gets kidnapped by Theseus about a month later, the Dioscuri (16) bring her back; Clytemnestra (16) and Agamemnon’s (23) wedding gets pulled forward despite the mourning period out of fear for Clytemnestra’s wellbeing and because she is displaying symptoms of pregnancy. Peleus (43) leaves Achilles (9) and Patroclus (12) to go on a military expedition to Troy with Hercules and Telamon (46). When he returns it’s all he talks about and Achilles becomes obsessed with the idea of Troy. Podarkes/Priam (40) earns his epithet when his father (65) gets killed, Hector (21) has his first experiences with war. Telamon takes Priam’s sister as a concubine and she births Teucer, Ajax is 14 at the time.

Helen (18) gets wed off to Menelaus (20). Odysseus (22) marries Penelope (20), Agamemnon (25) and Clytemnestra (18) already have Iphigenia (1) and she’s heavily pregnant (OLIVE TREE)

Achilles (11) gets sent to Charon as a method of education, by now he and Patroclus (14) are inseparable.

Achilles (13) comes back home from Charon and teaches Patroclus everything he learned.

Helen (25) leaves Sparta with Paris (22) (WATCH THE STARS COLLAPSE), Hector (30) freaks out (GATES OF TROY); Achilles (18) impregnates Deidamia (17); Odysseus (29), Agamemnon (32), and Menelaus (27) come and get him for war (SKYROS); Penelope (27) is left alone with Telemachus (1) (CRAZY FOR YOU) and Orestes (10) and Pylades (12) are sent to Sparta to stay with Hermione (6) for her protection.

Achilles (18) goes to Phthia, his father (52) gives him gifts and weapons, Achilles takes Patroclus (21) and Phoenix (52) with him (SAY YOU REMEMBER ME). At Aulis, Iphigenia (11) is brought in as a supposed bride for Achilles, but she is sacrificed (WEDDING ALTARS AND SACRIFICIAL SHRINES). Electra (10) and Chrysothemis (4) are now alone with their mother.

Achilles (25) kills Andromache’s (35) family and she flees to Troy, where she remeets Hector (37) whom she knows from 29 years prior. They get married and a year later Andromache gives birth to Scamandrius/Astyanax.