#palinurus

[aeneiddaily]

preemptively So Sorry about the amount of words i'm about to send but i am genuinely sick in the mind over palinurus.

Book 5 establishes the themes of sacrifice via Anchises's sacrifice of. well. his life. Virgil also spends the ENTIRE book establishing the camaraderie of the crews, because up to this point aeneas hadnt. been paying much attention to their interpersonal relationships

Palinurus is established over several books as a very serious coxswain who cares deeply for his crew, through similar snippets of personal life virgil gives to other crew members like ilioneus or achaetes

apollo tells aeneas he's going to have to lose someone- "Unum pro multis dabitur caput." (one life that will be given for the many). Aeneas accepted this- despite not knowing who- and had them raise their sails.

then, instead of having a more obvious choice of god like hermes or thanatos (psychopomps), the gods sent somnus to initiate the sacrifice. and it's fucking cruel, he's tempting him with rest-- something the crew hasn't truly gotten in a long time-- then sending him headlong in the ocean, not to die, but to starve and dehydrate and sunburn until he washes up on Avernus.

aeneas, not having seen that exchange but hearing the fall, accuses palinurus (who is currently drunk off the fucking LETHE thanks somnus) of complacency as he drowns. probably out of frustration but come the fuck on aeneas he was the Only man awake

and, a note on palinurus's death at avernus. coxswains were not.. particularly high up the food chain in terms of command structures on a bireme ship? like. yes, they're the commanders of the rowers, and palinurus was pulling double time by also being the navigator, but he would not be the guy carrying much of any treasure, & to float for that long he'd have to take off any armor he was wearing, AND he was given a burial by an unknown person in avernus later (enough time for one to determine, say, palinurus wasn't carrying an infectious disease), so personally, i don't believe they actually killed him "for treasure" as palinurus claims, i think palinurus just said that to make aeneas feel bad<3

palinurus and aeneas's exchange in the underworld is in no way a friendly one.

aeneas asks if apollo lied to him about him reaching avernus alive, and palinurus goes on to illustrate aeneas's own complacency in his crewman's death. palinurus makes it a point to point out the wedge aeneas has driven between himself and his crew- "I worried less for myself than I did for your ship" not for aeneas, for the ship and the other people on it. he points out directly to aeneas's face how much aeneas bends to the gods' will.

it's the shit Achaetes would never say to aeneas, but we can see his and aeneas's relationship deteriorating rapidly because of just how little aeneas thinks of them in specifics or by name as the books go on.

"Give this wretch your hand and take me with you through the waves / that at least I might rest in some quiet place in death" DIRECT fucking parallel to the imagery dido uses of aeneas carrying her ghost. aeneas will never be free of all these spirits.

id also like to point out the choice to have palinurus physically in the acheron rather than at the shore with the other unburied. implies palinurus blocked aeneas's path to chew him out.

all that to say i will never be regular about palinurus ever at all <3

[lastwave]

for all my talk about aeneas the character that fucks me up the most is palinurus.

here's what happens to the guy that does it right. here's what happens to the man that reminds aeneas his father needs a funeral, here's what happens to the man that keeps the ship on course. they don't have a navigator after palinurus dies. they sail blind.

here's what becomes of the man who what little we learn of him is that he sacrificed hours of sleep and sanity for the people he loves: he is disgraced in death by his own captain, accused of negligence, the subject of some loophole by divine powers, just another lonely, vengeful spirit on the acheron. asking just to be taken with his family to a quiet place. knowing aeneas won't without divine push. using his last words with aeneas to defend the fact he only ever served his people. that one translation on project gutenberg... "by your dead father and your still living son"....

[fieriframes]

[Palinurus refuses, and Sleep casts him into the sea.]

[lesbiaeneas]

in the larger context of the aeneid, palinurus makes me crazy. this is what happens to dutiful pious men

[heartnosekid]

the emerald swallowtail (papilio palinurus) | diana_murguta on ig

[throughthemeadowflowers]

Chicago Botanic Garden “Butterflies & Blooms”

Emerald Swallowtail, papilio palinurus

[dailylepidopterans]

[photo cred. keithp2012 @ project noah and Stephen Bowden]

todays lepidopteran of the day is the emerald swallowtail (Papilio palinurus)!

this beautiful butterfly, which comes from southeast asia, seems to shift color in the light due to special microstructures in its wings.

[dailybutterfly]

happy new year! thanks for all the pretty butterflies, i've got to know so many of them <3

may i request the emerald swallowtail butterfly?

Butterfly #20: Emerald Swallowtail (Papilio palinurus)

Image credits: 1, 2, 3

Found in Southeast Asia, this butterfly gets its striking green colour from its scales which are arranged to reflect light in a certain way. This causes it to appear blue in certain lighting.

[angelkarafilli]

Papilio palinurus

Papilio palinurus, the emerald swallowtail, emerald peacock, or green-banded peacock, is a butterfly of the genus Papilio of the family Papilionidae. It is native to Southeast Asia, but is regularly kept in butterfly houses around the world.

By Jennifer on Flickr

[finelythreadedsky]

the more i look into this jonah-palinurus thing the weirder it gets.

tris notus hibernas immensa per aequora noctes/vexit me violentus aqua "for three stormy nights the strong south wind pushed me over the vast depths on the water" (5.355-6)

וַיְהִ֤י יוֹנָה֙ בִּמְעֵ֣י הַדָּ֔ג שְׁלֹשָׁ֥ה יָמִ֖ים וּשְׁלֹשָׁ֥ה לֵילֽוֹת "and jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights" (2:1)

[butchdykekondraki]

also. kondraki is a deaths head moth

[lastwave]

PALINURUS, KILL THIS FUCKER.

aeneas will never be free of palinurus. he will have to carry his ghost forever. palinurus and his crew wanted nothing more than a place to rest, something they had in carthage until aeneas dragged them away from it. his makes the distinction of worrying for the ship, not aeneas himself, because aeneas had long since soured to him. he doesn't blame the god that killed him, he blames aeneas, who willed it to happen. he mocks aeneas's poor excuse that palinurus "fell overboard".

and aeneas doesn't even have the balls to respond for himself.

[fieriframes]

[There are posers, and then there's the real thing, and the Trojans proceed on their voyage, Palinurus leading. The aroma will just pull people in right off the sidewalk.]

[melodyartist-blog]

I get you on my for you page sometimes, and I just got so thrown off because I also have a greek myth oc named Demetrios (put him on Odysseus's ship as a target of antics- originally just as information filler for an au where they find Palinurus from the Aeneid but then I got attached- so he's generally sort of nervous and silly) and for a second I was like ?? DOES HE JUST EXIST AND I FORGOT?

Ah ah ah what are the odds of that! If I had a cent for every time a character named Demetrios had a connection with Odysseus some how I would have 2 cents, which is not much, but it's surprising it happened twice. (Well I never expected something like this lol)

To my knowledge there is no such character in the traditional greek mythos that fits that role though, I guessed since the name was more common in the byzantine era, so we are free to go.(For example there is this saint named Demetrios whose super power is to make perfumes and smell good, really fun stuff)

Mine is kind of serious and of the meditative type, not as rowdy as his brother in arms but still comes across as inexperienced compared to others, he is not super strong like Diomedes or Achilles or super smart like Odysseus, but he has his qualities.

His story gravitates more towards the iliad and what happened before that, rather than the Odyssey( Demetrios' already has his problem if he followed Ody through his... Whimsical adventure he would have so much more trouble, like dying for instance and that's a no no😭)

But now I'm so curious to know more about this silly and nervous fella

[cssnder]

The Books I Read or Re-Read During The Writing of My Novel

Whenever I work on a project, I tend to read the books that influenced me most in my own writing or books that are thematically relevant to what I am working on. Thus, I present to you the books I have read or re-read that have influenced and shaped Thus Saith The Lord. Please note that, since it'll take a few years before the completion of my novel, I will keep updating this list.

The Holy Bible

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The Trouble With Being Born, Emil Cioran.

On The Heights of Despair, Emil Cioran.

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt.

Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert.

The Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh.

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.

The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus, Cyril Connolly.

Stoner, John Williams.

My Mother, George Bataille.

[rustedhills]

Merobiba's Etymology: A Classical Discussion

The most likely place you've seen the word 'Merobiba' is Drawfee on Youtube - which has coined it as the name for a goofy little puppet-Merida from the hit film 'Bwave'.

Fig. 1: A screenshot from the original Drawfee video, posted Feb 2, 2023.

They pulled the word (among others) from the twitter account Weird Medieval, which posted this (Fig. 2) on Dec 6, 2022.

Fig. 2, the original 'merobiba' tweet, accessed via proxy

Weird Medieval sources the word (and others in the thread) to The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght, written 1490? - 1546, according to the University of Michigan Library [via the Early English Books Text Creation Partnership].

But where did syr Eliot acquire the word?

Fig. 3: the cover of Plautus' Curculio: Revised Edition, With Introduction and Notes by John Wright, which is what I'm currently using for class.

It was likely in a contemporary transcription of Plautus' Curculio, a Roman comedic play published around 200BCE. - Specifically act 1, line 77 (though different versions have slightly different numbering):

Transcribed from Plautus' Curculio: Revised Edition, With Introduction and Notes by John Wright:

77 - PH. nomen Leanaest, multibiba atque merobiba.

78 - PA. Quasi tu lagoenam dicas, ubi unium Chium

79 - solet esse. PH. quid opust uerbis? uinosissuma est;

The two characters - Phaedromus (PH), a young man madly in love, and Palinurus (PA), his sassy, unimpressed slave, are discussing an enslaved woman in the supporting cast (ancilla). Merobiba references her ability to drink very strong wines, and multibiba references the amount. As T. H. M. Gellar-Goad translates it in Plautus: Curculio: "she's a super-drinker and stupor-drinker" (pg. 10) [multibiba atque merobiba]. Phaedromus goes on to state uinosissuma est, which Gellar-Goad translates to "She's winetastic" (pg. 10). Phaedromus may not have game, but he has... a way with words...?

Gellar-Goad goes on to state that "Plautus has coined [multibiba and merobiba] by smashing together smaller, familiar words. ... Plautus' plays are chock-full of this sort of inventive, fast-and-loose wordplay, and it's a challenge for translators to keep up" (pg. 11).

Given Plautus' propensity for creating weird, cognate words for the sole purpose of sounding silly, it's highly likely that this is the truly first use of the word 'Merobiba'.

So, next time you hear "I'm merobiba!" and chuckle sensibly, remember:

You are keeping a 2200 year-old word alive. Thank you.

Note: If you've read to this point and think you've got an even earlier version--probably also in the colloquial/comedic Latin literature tradition--please rb with your findings!! And if I forgot a source pls lmk.