#theogony

[gaius-sempronius-grackle]

New Greek Myth EP!

My friend from grad school just released her first EP, based on Greek and Roman mythography! She's been working on this for a long time and I'm so excited for people to be able to hear the finished product!

[ahotpeaceofshit]

Different versions of Calypso in ancient sources, I only added ones that had conflicting information.

[divinationdrawings]

"Fair wreathed Kytherea"

-Hesiod's Theogony, Gany translation

Aphrodite of the golden crown

The lustrous hand mirror

Seafoam from the cosmos rains down

The mist grows clearer

Kytherea blew in

From warm Cyprus winds

Enchanting the Seamen and Seafarers

I hope you enjoyed today's tale of legend and lore, come back next week and there will be even more

[brainrotroulette]

Now, you could call this one a real "cliff hanger"

Been a lifelong Greek myths nerd, just started taking up drawing, and JUST got into EPIC.

I know that it's based on the Homeric telling of Odysseus' life and that Hesoid's Thoegony was basically fanfic. HOWEVER, it doesn't stop the thoughts swirling about if Hesoid's idea of Odysseus' lineage existed within the context of this musical; a man who occasionally snaps back into reality, and names sons whose existence he can barely stomach after the two things he wants most in the world, a quick ship and navigation proficiency so he can return home to Penelope and Telemachus and not the woman who is about to strip him of his memories and make him play house with a song.

[depressed-linguist]

‘three fair-cheeked Kharites…from whose eyes as they glanced flowed love that unnerves the limbs’

- hesiod, theogony

The Three Graces - detail from La Primavera, Sandro Botticelli (Uffizi Gallery, Firenze)

[whencyclopedia]

This infographic illustrates the 12 Olympian Gods (Greek: Δωδεκάθεον, Dodekatheon), the principal deities of the Greek pantheon who reside on Mount Olympus, ruling over aspects of the natural world, human life, and cosmic order. Traditionally, they include Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Dionysus, with Hades (brother of Zeus and Poseidon...

[templeofelysium]

some mentions of Hades in historical works

HESIOD'S THEOGONY:

" In front of that stand the echoing halls Of mighty Hades and dread Persephone, Underworld gods, and a frightful, pitiless Hound stands guard, and he has a mean trick: When someone comes in, he fawns upon him, Wagging his tail and dropping his ears, But he will not allow anyone to leave— He runs down and eats anyone he catches Leaving Persephone’s and Hades’ gates. "

THE ORPHIC HYMNS

" You dwell below the earth, O' strong-spirited one, a meadow in Tartarus, thick-shaded and dark. Sceptered Chthonic Zeus, please accept this sacrifice, O' Plouton, holder of the keys to the whole earth. To mankind you give the wealth of the year’s fruits, yours is the third portion, earth, queen of all, seat of the gods, mighty lap of mortals. Your throne rests on a dark realm, the realm of distant, of untiring, of windless, and of impassive Hades; it does rest on gloomy Acheron, the river who girds the roots of the earth. All-receiver, master of death, master of mortals, host of many, Euboulos, you once took as your bride pure Demeter’s daughter: you tore her away from the meadow, and through the sea you carried her to an Attic cave upon your steeds— it was the district of Eleusis, where the gates to Hades are. You alone were born to judge deeds obscure and conspicuous. Holiest and illustrious ruler of all, frenzied god, you delight in the respect and in the reverence of your worshippers. I summon you, come with favor, come with joy to the initiates. "

THE HOMERIC HYMNS

PLATO'S GORGIAS

[clare-with-no-i]

theogony part 1 behind the scenes

**SPOILERS ahead for theogony and mild spoilers for Outlander!**

this is just going to be a long infodump of all of the things I pondered while writing theog (specifically part 1, part 2 will come later) but never talked about! I'll try to go chapter by chapter, and maybe I'll end up adding more later on, but for now I just think it'd be fun to chitchat and reminisce on some of my favorite tidbits. this story is really my baby idk :")

Prologue - Alalá

one thing that I wanted to establish in the prologue, other than the obvious James-Sirius dynamic, is the presence of otherworldly or spiritual premonitions in this universe. it was always important to me that the first person who actually made any sort of prophetic declaration was James.

so much of the story relies on Lily's status as an oracle, but this little tidbit here helped build the world for me so much; we can't be sure if James's various dreams and premonitions are wishful thinking, or really the Gods speaking to him, or something else entirely. of course, this story deals with time travel, so there's an inherent supernatural element. but Lily and James's conflicting – and sometimes competing – conceptions of God felt like such a necessary tension for me to explore. it was such an incredible shorthand for the tension between modern and ancient sensibilities. and we never get a definitive answer to those looming questions, which I knew I wanted to do from the outset. did the Gods bring Lily back to the past? did James? did she do it herself? does God/the Gods even exist?

also: there are probably moments where I failed to do this, but I tried to capitalize Gods in all of the James chapters but not in Lily's, unless she was referring to the Abrahamic Capital G God. that is, until the last chapter, which I'll elaborate upon later :)

also: i wrote the prologue first, then the epilogue, and then i posted the prologue pretty immediately after. I had the entire story roughly outlined but I absolutely jumped the gun when it came to posting the prologue LMAO I didn't even really announce the story, I just joked about writing it and then posted the prologue, which you can see from the beginning note. i remember Suze was about to go to sleep and she started messaging me like wtf Clare what do you MEAN?

and the rest was history (pun completely intended)!

Chapter One: Ouroboros

the narrative brushes past the other statues in this section pretty quickly, but I always imagined that the first bust is Philoctetes, James's father. I think the consensus on this one tends to oscillate between Philoctetes and Aristides, which is another great interpretation.

The reason I wrote it this way and imagined it to be Philoctetes is because I thought it would have been nice to let Lily 'meet' James's father (in a sense), even before she 'meets' him. when I read this chapter back after I first finished the story, I had a very soft moment where I close-read my own fic (lol) and thought that maybe it was Philoctetes who sent Lily back to the past. maybe he sensed something about her and knew she'd be right for James and for antiquity.

sooo many people forgot about this! which i was hoping for!!!!! I was hoping everyone would forget about James's statue holding something until the Big Reveal. fun fact is I wrote the reveal right after this. I liked the idea that, no, he was never going to actually be holding anything. he'd be reaching for Lily. the choice to accept his hand was always going to be hers.

a fun fact about this chapter is that I had to pull from a bit more Outlander lore than I originally thought. and no I don't mean the 'Jesus H Roosevelt Christ' part lol. It was always hilarious to me how Outlander set up Claire to be the objectively perfect person to go back in time. she was a combat nurse who happened to develop an interest in medicinal botany and Scottish-English history. she also happened to spend her formative years with her adventurous archaeologist uncle after her only living relatives died. like girl. lol.

so I had to really toss up which traits I thought it would be appropriate for Lily to have as she traveled back in time. the biggest one, obviously, is her field of study, which was necessary given the language barrier and the completely foreign nature of social norms in Classical Athens. I toyed around with the idea of making her mum a nurse so as to give her some base medical knowledge, but that felt a) unnecessary given the circumstances of the story, and b) far-fetched that she would have gleaned enough transferable skills to apply in 479 BCE.

it was also fun to give her more reason to go back to the future; she has a sister who, while they aren't in contact, is a significant emotional attachment; she has academic goals; she has a best friend (however toxic we know him to be). it added a layer of conflict that I enjoyed playing up, even if I definitely could have explored her modern life more fully.

Chapter Two: Kinesis

soooo much exposition and worldbuilding in this chapter. oml. it was so much fun to play around with the reasons why James would be in Tatoi in the first place; I can't remember quite how I landed on the Persian auxiliary soldier thing, it might have been from my initial (admittedly extensive) research on the months leading up to Plataea; it may have just been the fact that I KID YOU NOT this story used to take up all of my fucking brainspace. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd be doing work for my research fellowship and just daydream about theogony. the initial idea came to me AS A JOKE!!!!! when i was idly pondering before going to sleep (as one does), and then it just wouldn't leave me alone. i kept imagining what it might look like. I thought about how the time travel might work. I thought about James's Greek equivalent. I ranted to my sister and her dog (he did not care) about what the statue might look like and mean (sorry bestie love u).

one narrative decision that has given me a bit of strife was the Dimitrios-James name change. I've had a number of people ask me if I'd ever try to pubilsh theog – and this is one of the (many) reasons why that would be pretty categorically impossible. using James's English name in his internal narration, instead of the name I give him as a Greek man, is something that only translates to fic. it makes pretty much no sense at all if you consider these original characters lol.

honestly putting the word 'practicum' in here caused me SO much pain. in James's chapters I tried really hard to use words which had Greek roots and not Latin roots, even if they're in modern English today. in most of his chapters, I'd try and find synonyms for big/complex words so I could use ones that came from Greek. it just helped me stick to his narrative voice a bit more.

I forgot how much STUFF went on in this chapter. oh my god SO much happens?? we get the lack of the Parthenon as the time marker (felt very clever doing that), Lily processing the fact that she's time traveled (lazy writing on my part to not have this happen in a Lily POV chapter but I'll take that on the chin), the Plataea reveal. OML. tired just thinking about it. lily sweetie i am so sorry

guys, the amount of time I spent wondering if I should Greek-ify Sirius's name is insane. For so long I thought about making him Seirios, which is the original Greek version of Sirius. But I felt like I had already messed with their names too much, and so I left it. but honestly I'm still torn. looking back, maybe it would have been the right move to make him Seirios and have Lily give him the name Sirius, but I guess we'll never know!

one of my favorite Sirius moments, and something that, essentially, sets up the rest of the story. but I wanted there to be a little ambiguity throughout the story about how much of this Sirius actually believes.

we know that James has just confessed to Sirius and Pétros that he was hoping they'd desert the Athenian army. we know that he thinks he's going to die, and he's adopted this sort of fatalist view of his future. and then here you have Sirius, who could never abide such a thing, pretty much leaning into the idea that Lily can tell the future – which would allow him to challenge James's prediction. I always wanted to leave it up to interpretation, and I know it comes up in later chapters (at the komos especially), Sirius's skepticism about Lily's origins. but it's such a fun question to ask: does he really believe that she's the Oracle that James prayed for, or does he just need that to be true so he can try and influence the future himself?

Chapter Three: Peribolos

omg. lol. the chapter three opening academic argument scene. this is a favorite of mine, and something I had so much fun writing. it's actually based on an argument/"spirited discussion" I had with my dad a few years ago about moral absolutism versus moral relativism which forced me to interrogate and expand my knowledge on the subject. I thought it was such a fun way to get into Lily's politics and her character without doing crazy exposition in the ancient world.

it also touches upon one of the touchstone themes of the story: that to study something is, in a way, to detach yourself from it. academia is routintely completely disconnected from its subject matter, and it creates this weird disdain for lived experience versus book knowledge. Lily has spent upwards of ten years studying (in some capacity) the ancient world, but she is so utterly out of her depth when she experiences it herself. as such, she espouses these very revolutionary politics when examining historical conflicts, but she has a blindness to what the real-world realities may have been for the people living in those conditions at the time.

alsooooo, The Return of Martin Guerre is one of my favorite books I read in college, and the easter egg here is that it's about a person of dubious origin entering a community and the politics of how the community might accept or reject them. ha ha!

^^based on something I said in an argument with a Poli Sci major in college and I have to say one of my better moments. was an absolute haymaker. this was very 'author gives main character a zinger' of me and I will not be ashamed of it

this! ladies and gentlemen! this was basically a declaration of love!!!! to be loved is to be remembered!!!

in a very romantic way, the study of history can be such an act of love to those who lived before us. i just adore the idea that, even before Lily developed real romantic feelings for James, she had this itching sort of feeling; AKA, when someone has made such an impression on you, and you know (or in her case, you think) that you'll be leaving them at some point, and you just want to be interesting enough, be impressive enough, that they remember you, that they think of you randomly as time goes on. that is such a giddy hallmark feeling of having a crush, in my book. I liken it to making eye contact with someone or having a brief conversation on a night out, maybe at 3am on your way back from a bar when things are sleepy and dizzy, and you just have this sense that you're being seen in that moment as anyone you want to be. i love this moment so much I feel like I could give it its own meta LMAO

Chapter Four: Hamartia

this chapter really put the pedal to to the metal lol. at the time of writing the story, I generally didn't (and still don't) love fake dating that much as a trope; I don't typically love plotlines predicated on (even harmless) deceptions, it's just a sensitivity of mine that I don't expect anyone to relate to or share. but when I was considering how to structure theog, it just made so much sense for James and Lily's arcs to have them get 'married.' there was no way that Lily was going to be able to navigate Classical Athens as an unsupervised woman alone, and even with the Oracle title offering her some protection, there was nothing really tying her to James. much like Outlander, it really did feel like the last possible resort, which softened me to the idea of using the trope.

fun fact, i got a snarky comment a few months ago complaining that i was trying to pass the story off as historically accurate (lol to the fifteen disclaimers I embedded throughout which addressed that) and one thing they took issue with was that lily wouldn't have been able to own property and the only thing that would have kept her from being a slave would have been marriage.

which! yknow! none of which contradict the story! but anyway I digress.

I was initially nervous about how early on the fake marriage happens; we don't really know the characters that well yet, we're not sure who James is as a potential partner to Lily, or how Lily's feelings for him are starting to bump up against her very rightful and justified desire to get the hell out of dodge. but – we only really see James in canon as a husband and as the father to the main character, so it felt pretty true to the source material to throw him into being a husband pretty early.

I loved writing this scene with Aristides. I've always been partial to his appearances throughout the story, and this one is just so special to me. I think of him as a driving force in humanizing the ancient world in theog, sometimes even more so than the main cast of characters. to elaborate a bit on that: with the Marauders and Lily and the other transplanted HP characters, I think there's this inherent sense that they are already fleshed out people (to some degree) even before they hit the page of the story, because they appear in canon and across Marauder fic verses. no matter how much I make James into Dimitrios and Peter into Pétros and Fleamont into Philoctetes, people know them and love them outside of theogony verse. but not Aristides. he doesn't have a one-to-one HP character. there is some version of him that really existed in 479 BCE (my complex and largely negative feelings on RPF are setting off alarms at this but we proceed) and that's it.

it would have been easy to just give him this very gruff and surly character, to make him a military general who didn't care about anything other than the war. I think that's how we conceptualize historical people sometimes, often without meaning to. but he was a person, and he had likes and dislikes, he probably had a family and maybe he'd fallen in love, and it was such an honor to give him such dimension. not to say that I'm putting that personality upon the actual historical person; but just to really take my time with a character outside of the Marauder canon. in this scene he has this human moment where he reminds James that, yes, love is a worthy pursuit, even to those in positions of incredible power. even when the discussion isn't about romantic love but about James's love for his closest friends. it's this permission that James didn't even know he was seeking but ultimately that changes the course of his and Lily's lives. Aristides is who James might become, in many ways. in the actual Plataea chapter this becomes more and more prevalent. (more on this later!)

overall, I am forever hoping that people come out of reading this story with an appreciation for the humanity of those that came before us. I did a poor job with other characters in this story, and I own that, but I'm proud of how I wrote Aristides.

oh my godddddd I fucking love this part. i am so fucking proud of it. LMAO. achieving wordplay in an ancient language that i have never studied should be on my fucking CV I swear. like this was just perfect I'm sorry I am BUZZING that I pulled this off.

also, a cute way to introduce a phrase to the narrative which will become very important: se filo!

I remember that I wrote this passage, which many people commented on and which I loved writing, in a coffee shop on a sunny day when my cousin was visiting me to introduce me to his girlfriend. there wasn't any wifi in the coffee shop so I was blessedly devoid of distractions and could only focus on the doc, and i was LOCKED IN let me tell you.

when my cousin and his girlfriend arrived I told them I was sending an important email and edited the last sentence of that paragraph about four different times while they sat in silence and waited for me to finish LMAOOO

Chapter Five: Ascesis

a profoundly insane moment in my personal history was reading excerpts from Eudemian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Memorabilia just to passively mention them in a flashback in a fic. relied heavily on Foucault for this, I will be so honest. why did i do that tho. like girl take a breath...

but in all seriousness this was just a joy to write. i miss being a history student and having these discussions – law school is great, but history classes will forever hold my heart ngl! also, this passage is in some ways an homage to my grandfather, who is one of my favorite people ever. he taught himself Classical Greek and Latin when he was in his 20s, before he went to medical school (and get his pilot's license for fun, he's seriously the most interesting guy alive). he gifted me his leatherbound Great Books printings of Aristotle's works and of the Iliad and the Odyssey shortly after I started theogony, and I cherish them so much. he spurred my interest in ancient greece when i was young. so this is for him :)

one of the hardest things for me to articulate (and maybe something I could have done better) was the war and the balance between James's inherent goodness and his growing feelings for Lily. i wanted her to have plausible reason to think that he doesn't at all feel romantically towards her, even as she's growing to admire him more and more. I hoped, as I wrote the story, that these little interactions where the reader clues into his feelings (this protective 'peninsula' moment being one of them) still walked that line. as in, i wanted lily to reasonably believe that he's just that good of a guy that he would take issue with anyone being taken advantage of, not just her. she's so destabilized in this moment as well, I think that worked to my advantage. or I hoped it did LOL.

from what I remember of writing this chapter, it just came really quickly and naturally. much more than the later ones. this early period of writing was just an outpouring of the ABSOLUTE BRAINROT I was going through after conjuring up the idea for the story. it just flew. the ending scene where they have their little almost-moment was probably about an hour's worth of writing. it's like I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. not sure i've experienced that since!

also, the now, here, alive line reappears in the last chapter, which is one of my favorite callbacks:

:) :) :)

Chapter Six: Kleos

one thing I used to worry about CONSTANTLY is that I was losing the classic (and necessary!) Marauder goofiness to the more somber setting. so it was a jaunt and a boon to write scenes like the opening one here, where it honestly could be copy-pasted into the Gryffindor Common Room and it'd look a lot like my canon stories.

he's just a dude being hungover and embarrassed about the previous night with his bros!

the first time we get a hint of Pétros disappearing to dubious locations!

this chapter was one of the most research-heavy. it was a new setting, filled with new characters, and predicated entirely upon planning the Greek front at Plataea. so if I couldn't nail that down (at least to some degree), I was going to have trouble. of course I took liberties, but I spent a lot longer combing through sources for this chapter than some other ones, I'll tell you that for free. it took ages to find any treatises on ancient athenian sword combat, sigh.

yeah I mean i remember thinking that the subtitle for this chapter could have been 'I am going to create an environment that is so toxically masculine' because that's pretty much the whole vibe. James is not immune to that, either, and that was intentional. he feeds off of the violence and the anger of the men surrounding him, and he exhibits some behaviors in this chapter (rushing off to kill Anaxagoras after he grabs Lily's arm, for instance) which are not ideal! but I do think that there's meaningful conversation to be had about Lily's cultural assimilation into an ancient, misogynistic society, and how there was absolutely no way I was going to get out of this story without giving James some sort of period-typical attitude. now again, I took the liberties I deem necessary, because I have no desire to make my main romantic lead into an asshole. that's not my James Potter. not that that's news [gets taken out by a sniper]

i got CLOWNEDDD for referring to this dude as Dion son of Dion but idk what to tell you!! that's how the old documents referred to him!!! i didn't make that shit up I swear to god!!!!

also - that's the actual text of the Oath of Plataea, except (as Lily points out) it should read Athena Areia. is it likey that she'd remember this off the dome? no. is it possible that she just recognized the missing descriptor from context clues? yes. did i care enough to explain this either way? no, no i did not.

the Big Ticket Item of this chapter, though, is the oh.

and it wasn't just an oh, it was an oh followed by this innocuous conclusion that isn't even about Lily. i made myself laugh so hard with that. he's just like 'oh god my friend is going to wave this over my head FOREVER' and you know what? he's right!

as for the previous paragraph in that passage, I pulled a bit of a bait and switch, but not as badly as you might think! it was a risk to even bring up the idea that James could leave Athens, because I know it spurred some people into thinking that he'd go to the future with Lily (sorry babies that was not on the table). but what I intended for this passage (however successful it may or may not have been) was to just…allow him a moment of real, visceral empathy for the sensation of displacement that Lily's experiencing, and as well, introduce the idea that he might leave the life he's cultivated in Athens. his entire upbringing has been himself, the consummate Athenian man, surrounding himself with people from outside of Athens and drawing from their experiences, but never venturing outside of his little realm. in so many ways, the story questions what Lily's relationship with 'home' is (especially later on), but it always felt necessary to me to reckon with how 'home' may change for James as well.

finally:

yeah honestly i just remember the exact moment i thought of this passage. i had been reading the secret history (shoutout Donna Tartt i idolize and fear you) and i was lying down in my local park in the summer. I just thought about the Greek myths I knew, and the kind of cosmic horror that it is to really admit you're falling in love with someone, that they have this power over you that you didn't anticipate. and that closing line of the scene really struck me out of nowhere – I wrote it down in my notebook and just stared at it for a good few minutes. it's still one of my favs of the story :)

ok! if you made it this far, you are just amazing. this has to be a few thousand words at least. TYSM!!!!

see you all later for the part 2 BTS ❤️

[sarafangirlart]

I’m kinda tired of Medusa fans defending how Ovid depicts her and saying it’s just as valid as Ancient Greek sources that say she was born a monster, it’s one thing to say that you like an idea or story beat from a Roman or even medieval source and even use it in your interpretation (I do that with Kronos and Hera), it’s another thing entirely to say it’s equally valid as Ancient Greek sources, when all these stories come from different cultures and time periods. I’d probably be more forgiving of this kind of thing if “Medusa was pretty then turned into a monster” was at least implied in ancient sources but it’s not.

[ditoob]

Okay so back to the Hesiod and Homer topic, the Theogony mentions Odysseus having two children with Circe (interstingly not mentioning Telgonus) and two with Calypso

You think Homer ever threw hands with Hesiod to defend Odypen?

[brimo5]

Kronos: (look at young Zeus) Gaia was right. Just look at this adorable child! What's all the fuss about? I wish I had more children. Zeus: (delivers a sudden punch to his father's stomach) Kronos: (vomiting up a stone and his children) UUUUURRRGGHHHH!

[ahotpeaceofshit]

Ody making some toys for his sons... while looking out towards ithaca

[lyculuscaelus]

In general, the mythological picture Homer and other ancient writers were trying to provide us in their poems is quite different from each other in many aspects. One of which is the lore about Odysseus. For example, in a Homeric world, Odysseus’s family is a line of single sons, as Telemachus has pointed out in the Odyssey, book 16, line 117–120:

ὧδε γὰρ ἡμετέρην γενεὴν μούνωσε Κρονίων: μοῦνον Λαέρτην Ἀρκείσιος υἱὸν ἔτικτε, μοῦνον δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα πατὴρ τέκεν: αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς μοῦνον ἔμ᾽ ἐν μεγάροισι τεκὼν λίπεν οὐδ᾽ ἀπόνητο. 120 The son of Cronus makes our family a line of single sons: Only one son—Laërtes, did Arceisius beget; Only one son—Odysseus, did his father (Laërtes) beget; then Odysseus, begetting Only one son—me, left me in his halls, and had no joy of me.

Also, it’s not just Telemachus using dramatic here and I stand by my point. Might rant about it at some point but for now, let’s just say the word μούνωσε (its 1st person present indicative form being μονόω) is extremely interesting here, and another thing to keep in mind is the use of Dios boulē in the Odyssey, which also deserves some ranting of its own.

Now, back to the topic. The choice of words here is presumably deliberate, as Homer is trying to establish his own version of the story and suppressing some other epichoric traditions. (Creative liberties is certainly not just a modern concept fellas but anyways) Therefore we have our so-called Homeric tradition, which is the result of the omission of a number of local traditions, plus his unique portrayal of characters as a treat. Keep in mind that this is not the only version of the story (but certainly the most intriguing and influential one), so you would notice something off almost immediately (say, Dictys Cretensis and the Telegony). Now, there is only one point I’d like to bring up:

Don’t pretend that those non-Homeric stories could still work well within the Homeric tradition; and don’t expect certain Homeric rules to apply to other non-Homeric lore.

Again, back to our example. The one-son-per-generation rule is most certainly Homeric and can only stay in a Homeric setting. You do not apply this to Theogony and certainly not the infamous Telegony. On the other hand, the Telegony is NOT a sequel to the Odyssey, but rather tells a different story which is set after the time of the Odyssey. That Odysseus seen in Proclus’s summary of this poem is certainly not the Odysseus we know of, and chances are that he was exile by his people while this is invalidated by the ending of book 24 of the Odyssey, and the oar quest might not even have happened in the Telegony.

Yes, I know that some may find the angst potential of Nausinous and Nausithous (this includes me) or the painful death of Odysseus (you lost me here) irresistible, but keep in mind that they’re in a different setting now, and the portrait of characters is likely different. But that doesn’t mean you can’t explore the story itself. In fact, it’s even more intriguing to see how our beloved Homeric characters would behave in these non-Homeric settings. Giving Odysseus a chance to be the father he never was is angsty as hell; putting Odysseus in Thesprotia after him facing family issues also brings the story itself to a new level (glances at Smitty 👀); etc. After all, one could even say they’re fanfic ideas set in different AUs, waiting to be explored by future writers…

So…yeah.

[zebedeezing]

Doing a project on archaic Medusa (pre-ovid Hesiod double wings scary Medusa) and can’t get over Poseidon and Medusa having sex in a meadow. I know it doesn’t say exactly what Medusa was getting up to in the Theogony, but I like to think she was running around petrifying people, making a dragons keep of statues bodies, eating raw cattle, scaring the kids etc etc -

And Poseidon bruhhh Poseidon you know he dgaf about non of that miscellaneous loss of life, bad bitch detected, he really pulled out all the stops with his charm magic - ‘a soft meadow amid spring flowers’ uknow

There’s no art of this by the way. None!!

[lionofchaeronea]

For even now, when someone of mortals living on earth Seeks favor, duly performing comely sacrifices, He calls on Hecate; and great honor follows him Quite easily—him, that is, whose prayers the goddess readily Receives; and she grants him wealth, since this power is hers. καὶ γὰρ νῦν, ὅτε πού τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων ἔρδων ἱερὰ καλὰ κατὰ νόμον ἱλάσκηται, κικλῄσκει Ἑκάτην. πολλή τέ οἱ ἕσπετο τιμὴ ῥεῖα μάλ᾽, ᾧ πρόφρων γε θεὰ ὑποδέξεται εὐχάς, καί τέ οἱ ὄλβον ὀπάζει, ἐπεὶ δύναμίς γε πάρεστιν.

-Hesiod, Theogony 416-420

[whencyclopedia]

Prometheus

In Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus had a reputation as being something of a clever trickster and he famously gave the human race the gift of fire and the skill of metalwork, an action for which he was punished by Zeus, who ensured everyday that an eagle ate the liver of the Titan as he was helplessly chained to a rock.

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