#post about boats tumblr user tautline-hitch. ok maybe later

[tautline-hitch]

trying to avoid swamping the tag this week but i've been thinking about:

sed illos / magna premit strages, peraguntque cadavera partem / caedis: viva graves elidunt corpora trunci (duff: "the survivors were weighed down by the heaps of corpses; for the dead took their share in dealing death, and the living were crushed by the weight of the slain.") oh, a theme?

something going on with the catalogue of rivers leaving italy -> pompeians fleeing caesar (around II.465). not sure how this fits with the wet caesar / dry pompey themes. loss of vitality maybe? domitius betrayed by a lack of water, idk. blooded/bloodless?

speaking of, iam tetigit sanguis pollutas Caesaris enses (II.536). caesar’s swords, like pompey’s youthful throat, defiled with blood….this isn't a particularly startling image but contextually i am examining it

again not super deep here but thinking about the end of pompey's speech as a reflection of his third triumph—the procession of enemies (Appian Mith. 17.116: "many nations were represented in the procession from Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, all the peoples of Syria, besides Albanians, Heniochi, Achæans, Scythians, and Eastern Iberians") (idk i get that this is Every triumph but i don't think that lessens my feelings on how the speech fits) ++ "the entire earth...is filled with my trophies" (Dio HR 37.20: "He celebrated the triumph in honour of all his wars at once, including in it many trophies...; and after them all came one huge one...bearing an inscription stating that it was a trophy of the inhabited world"). (recognizing that these are post-lucan sources and there's potentially influence, dont @ me) e: oh and Plutarch of course: "he seemed in a way to have included the whole world in his three triumphs."

after which nothing. i feel that dead silence is especially vicious if you think of it these speeches as essentially declamatory? well, vicious regardless, but. You Are Losing the Verbal Gladiatorial Combat Which Is The Reenactment Of The War You’re About to Fight. i thought the sententia was okay!!

pompey is a recalcitrant bull now. contextually this seems fine

immediately after this a kind of monstrous mixed metaphor: the land which is legs and tongues and horns. unsettling

the echo at 713 (blood from pompey's ships) from 219 (blood spilled in the Tiber by sulla). blue / red. but also the slight irony of um "here Nereus first reddened with the blood of civil war", well, on several technicalities, but. feels like a cycle to me!!