innergladiatorstudent

[innergladiatorstudent]

[innergladiatorstudent]

I want to read the Cicero/Catilina fic now! I NEED A LINK AAAAA

Wait! If the Dead Romans know when someone writes/thinks about them, does this mean that Cicero knows about that dreadful Cicero/Catilina fic?? (I'm sorry to be a bother but this occured to me just now and I had to ask...)

Sadly, yes.

[innergladiatorstudent]

is he…you know [makes motion of sucking a dick] greek?

[innergladiatorstudent]

In his tent, Achilles grieved with his whole being and the gods saw he was a man already dead, a victim of the part that loved, the part that was mortal.

Louise Glück, excerpt of The Triumph of Achilles (via antigonick)

[innergladiatorstudent]

Me, an historian: Peleus and Patroclus were respectively Achilles's dad and daddy

#Achilles #Patroclus #PATROCHILLES #Patrille #Iliad #the Iliad #bad history tag #classical meme #meme #Homer #Greek #ancient Greek #gay #LGBTQI #tagamemnon #achilles and patroclus

[innergladiatorstudent]

This is an extremely helpful graph for when you don’t know how to describe how a character feels. Thank you to the submitter!!!

[innergladiatorstudent]

roman authors as professors

catullus: the Fun Professor™ whose classes everyone rushes to get into. teaches literature and cries at the end of everything he reads with his classes. his students know everything about his love life and have probably catfished his tinder.

lucretius: seems really boring at first, but is actually the bill nye of his department and tries to make everything fun so that more people will want to learn. has a youtube account full of songs he wrote about atoms.

cicero: easily gotten off track. makes a lot of puns but is really tough. frequently goes over time. sends 20 emails a day to his students because he forgot/didn’t have time to say something he wanted to say in class. teaches the class from a book he wrote.

caesar: dry lecturer. has a chili pepper but not much else going for him. everyone is pretty sure he’s killed a man at some point.

vergil: soft-spoken professor that everybody loves. would do anything for his students even if he’s very shy about talking to them. wears a bee-themed tie every day to class.

horace: that one professor who’s super young and straight out of his phd program and everyone thinks it’s great. known for being the professor who will show up if you invite him to your party. puts memes into his slides and occasionally goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with the original subject.

propertius: teaches a creative writing course and unironically loves cheap romance novels. knows his material very well but can easily be goaded into telling unfortunate stories about his love life instead of teaching. is sometimes hard to follow because he jumps around subjects frequently.

ovid: a fun professor, but also incredibly smug. primarily teaches classes on satire and parody, but also teaches his students how to catfish catullus’s tinder. references his own books in his articles.

tibullus: not one of the most popular lecturers in his department, but well-liked by the students who do take his classes. seems like a pretty standard professor in class until inevitably the students find out that he’s into hardcore bdsm.

livy: covers a ton of material and doesn’t tell anyone what’s actually going to be on the test. has a lot of fun anecdotes and can easily be gotten off track talking about them. assigns way too much reading for every class.

seneca the younger: seems like any other old philosophy professor at first but is actually extremely edgy. frequently drones on and moralizes, but occasionally startles his students with references to violent tv shows and movies.

petronius: the chill professor. usually late; sometimes forgets to show up at all. if you go to his office hours he pours you some wine and spends two hours complaining about politics until you forget what you wanted from him in the first place. doesn’t assign much, mostly because he doesn’t want to grade it.

suetonius: alternative facts: the history class. nobody knows if half of the stuff he teaches is actually true, but they love it anyway because it’s all gossip about historical figures. has published several pop-history books.

martial: a funny professor, but teaches the bare minimum of classes thanks to a number of complaints about how inappropriate he is. has been known to lambast university leadership, or anyone within twenty feet of him, when drunk.

juvenal: loved by a lot of his male students but detested by everyone else. has actually used the phrase ‘you mad bro’ out loud in an argument with a student. 

marcus aurelius: a difficult professor, but students still love him. everyone is convinced that he shows up to class high at least 75% of the time. has a chili pepper.

[innergladiatorstudent]

[innergladiatorstudent]

After screaming, [Cassandra] calls out the name of Apollo sixth times, then again a seventh time, but the seventh time, by shifting the inflexion of the name slightly, she shows its etymology. Apollo’s name is cognate with the Greek verb apollesthai, “to destroy utterly, kill, slay, demolish, lay waste.” By crying out “Apollon emos”, Cassandra can designate the god as “my Apollo” and “my destroyer” at the same time in the same words.

Anne Carson, excerpt of Cassandra Float Can, from Float (via mythaelogy)

#apollon #cassandra #the iliad #homer

[innergladiatorstudent]

Bust of the emperor Hadrian’s lover Antinous (d. 130 CE), depicted as Dionysus.  Now in the Hermitage.

#hadrian #antinous #rome #ancient rome #urbe #tagamemnon

[innergladiatorstudent]

Greek mythology and terrorism

A few years ago the Italian actress Lucilla Gianoni presented her show Vergine Madre (Virgin Mother), inspired by six books of Dante's Inferno. I have to admit, it was a weird show but I loved it. At a certain point, while introducing the audience to the book in which Odysseus appears, she said that the hero could be considered as the first terrorist.

Now, I was a little sceptic and I still am, but here are Gianoni's reasons to why we should consider Odysseus the first terrorist: he slaughtered Penelope's suitors and pretended to be someone else in order to get into systems (she didn't quite explain what she meant to say here, ndr). Well, that's how Greek heroes acted, isn't it? But maybe Gianoni has a point. “Odysseus was the Man with the capitol letter, he was the one that achieved progress. Progress is an interesting word; it comes from the Latin pro-gredire, to go forward, and nowadays progress is seen as a good thing, because it led us to medicines, arts... but also to the atomic bomb. His curiosity, his thirst for knowledge was the (only) engine for all of his researches and activities and journeys. Odysseus is an amazing actor. In ancient Greek the word for actor was hypocrites, he who can fool others. Odyssesus, the most known and loved hero, is in the depths of Hell, according to Dante, and he ends up there because of all of his deceits. He has the ability to disguise himself, get into the system and destroy the system from the inside. Of course Odysseus needed to protect himself from this wild world, but he also enjoyed the process a lot. After Odyssesus, there's the apocalypse. Odysseus is a man that wants to recreate the world according to what he likes and dislikes and no religion, no deities and no morals could ever stop him. He subverts the world.”.

Subverting the world... well, that's something terrorism is trying to do, isn't it?

Sure, many other characters in Greek mythology tried to change the world, but Odysseus did it on a larger scale and was the only one man who tried the enterprise, all the others were gods. He wanted the best for the world, but what he thought was the best. Who was he to judge? I think that's the whole point and what Gianoni is trying to say. Nobody (no pun intended) should ever feel entitled to change the whole world by themselves. That's why dictatorships are wrong and often lead to some sort of crisis and why the majority of the countries in the world have a form of government that involves a lot of people with different (political) views. And that's also why we condemn terrorism and all the other form of extremism.

A couple of years ago I was on a beach in Nizza (France) enjoying the sight of fireworks and then exactly one year later there was that terrorist attack we all know about. When I came to know about it, I felt so... strange. Yet I simply acknowledged the fact: it is a possibility, nowadays, to find ourselves in that sort of situations, and there's no way of knowing if, when and how we would act, because it is inhuman.

Gianoni's work was for me food for thought. I think that Greek mythology and its meaning and lessons are universal and timeless. So, while Odysseus was the pseudo-terrorist, I think that there are good examples for the modern Western society: first of all, we have Heracles. We all know his story, don't we? Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmene, both hero and god, the strongest of them all. Driven mad by Hera, Zeus' jealous wife, Heracles brutally killed his own children: to expiate the crime he had to carry out The Twelve Labours, id absolutely impossible tasks. But he made it. The question is, how?

Suffering, of course. Those task were impossible for anyone else in the world and made Heracles struggle a lot in order to achieve them. They were physically demanding but also on the psychological side, they weren't so easy.

In Jeanette Winterson's book “Weight”, there's a sentence that pretty much sums it all up. “Heracles knew that it would be this poison or the one after”. Not that he was a coward nor afraid, but he simply knew his fate. Or, at least that's what he thought: contrary to everybody's expectations, he achieved those tasks and remained alive in the process. Now, how can this relate to terrorism and Westerns? Well, there's a part of the society, that think just like Heracles was used to; they think that their fate is already written, that modern times are nothing but violent and cruel, but, as I said before, Heracles was wrong about it. Maybe so they are.

Then we have Atlas. He was one of the Titans, deities which came before the Olympic gods, against whom the Titans led a war, a losing war. Zeus, now king of the Olympus and its gods, wanted to punish him, so he sent Atlas to bear the Sky upon his shoulders. An unbearable weight, but Atlas was a Titan and so he persisted. One day, Atlas refuses Perseus hospitality, so the demi-god hero petrifies him using Medusa's head. Though Titans were immortal, Atlas turn into a mountain that still bears his name. And this is just one of many examples of god and deities being killed (or however who stop living as we mean it).

There are two interpretations for this episode (or at least that's what I could come up with).

Some people think they are immortal. While it's a lucky thing we are not, they tend to ignore the facts that surround us all. They think “Oh, it's never going to happen to me”. Well, it's a possibility. The Greeks believed in Fate, which they called Tuche. It comes from the Latin verb fari, therefore fatum, the neuter past participle that means “what has been said”. It is useless trying to defeat Fate (think to Achilles and Patroclus, for instance), it's too strong and it does not competes to men to change it. Fate is unpredictable, even now.

On the other hand, some people nowadays are scared of the world, for many reasons really, in which terrorism can be found; so they tend to petrify. I understand them, I really do. It's so tempting, never leaving the place we feel safe in. But then what? Can we call that a life worth living?

Who's right and who's wrong, there's no way of knowing.

We should simply acknowledge the fact that terrorism exists, absorb it yet not letting it ruin our lives. We could also do something to fight it, in our small way. The first thing that comes to my mind is education, because as long as there's someone out there who knows what (for example) Palmyra was, or what were all the other assets destroyed by terrorism, and as long as said someone is willing to share that knowledge, then we know that terrorism did not achieve its goal (subvert the world) and that there's still a possibility to end it.

#greek mythology #greek #ancient greek #greek pro #latin pro #latin and greek #greek and latin #heracles #atlas #odysseus #achilles #patroclus #gianoni #liceo classico #the odyssey #discussion #let's think #let's discuss #ancient history #my writing #new blog #writing #to write #write #mythology #opinion #study #studying #studyblr #study blog

[innergladiatorstudent]

Why we should stop straight-washing Euryalus and Nisus

Hello everyone! For my first post on this blog I am going to write about a matter that I hold dear: Euryalus and Nisus, the two Trojan warriors whose undertaking can be found in the ninth book of Virgil's Aeneid. I was looking forward to studying this episode in class, but then my teacher came up with a sentence that I really didn't like: «Please do not consider Euryalus and Nisus as a couple, they are just very good friends». If there is one thing I cannot stand, it's when teachers do not tell the class how things really are just because they dislike something about it. By doing so, they are spreading misinformation, and I think that's something that shouldn't happen in schools. Anyway, I don't want to argue about teachers' job (or lack of it), but I want to show you why we really need to stop straight-washing Euryalus and Nisus.

So, first of all, a bit of background

-Trojans and Latins are now alleys. The king Latinus, who had previously promised his daughter to Turnus, prince of Ardea and of the Rutulians, changed his mind and offered Lavinia, such was the girl's name, to Aeneas in marriage. -At this sight, Juno, who happens to be the goddess of marriage and queen of the gods, sends down her agent Alecto, one of the three Furies, the one that never rests, to prevent the Trojans from having their way with king Latinus by marriage and cause their downfall through war. -For doing so, Alecto takes over the body of the queen Amata, whom she persuades to oppose Aeneas' marriage and whips Turnus to go on war against the Trojans. She then causes a skirmish between the local people of  Latium and a Trojan hunting party led by Ascanius, who kills a white deer. [Casus belli, the event that provokes or is used to justify a war] -War has begun. In the ninth book, Aeneas is in Pallanteum, where lives and reign Evander, an old king now Aeneas' alley. Taking advantage of Aeneas' absence, Turnus attacks the Trojan camp. In accordance to Aeneas' strict instructions, the Trojans close the gates and decline battle. [This is topic structure in epic poetry: the situation always gets worse when the hero is far from the battle field. For example, in the Iliad this happens with both Achilles and Odysseus.] -Euryalus and Nisus are two Trojans warriors who are at the gates. Nisus starts thinking about a night foray...

But let's talk about who Euryalus and Nisus are before we actually get to the story. We can get a first glimpse of them in the fifth book, during the funeral games of Anchises, where Virgil refers to their love as amour pius, a love that shows the pietas which is Aeneas' main trait, but the events that involve them are in the ninth book. -Nisus is the son of Hyrtacus -therefore of noble origins- and is described as a formidable warrior, especially with spear and bow and arrow. He had been sent by Ida, the hunters' mountains, to be comrade of Aeneas, given his amazing skills. When going to the Trojan army, Nisus brought his own comrade, Euryalus, whom he holds really dear. -Euryalus is so young he hasn't had his first beard yet. He is described as the most beautiful man in Aeneas' army. He does not have any experience about war but is determined to fight because he wants to achieve the so-called pulchram mortem, which literally means good, beautiful death and refers to a death that occurs while fighting, one that brings honour upon the dead warrior himself.

They are both very loyal towards each other, but for different reasons, plus they show it in different ways. Nisus cares about Euryalus because the younger boy needs to be protected and guided on his path to adulthood; he shows it when he tries to convince Euryalus not to follow him on the night foray to the enemy camp. On the other hand, Euryalus holds Nisus dear because he sees the man as a life model, someone to look up to; he follows him when he's called to be part of Aeneas' men. 

His amour unus est. They were one in love. That's the very first thing that we learn of Euryalus and Nisus as a couple. Virgil here portraits the Greek model of love between two men, with the typical structure of the erastes (literally “the one that loves”, active, in this case Nisus) and the eromenos (passive, in this case Euryalus). In Roman military, homosexual behaviour among fellow soldiers was strictly prohibited because there was a lot of cultural baggage about it. The Romans had peculiars views upon what makes a free citizen free, and in these views political freedom was tightly linked to physical one, and of course a free citizen wasn't object to sexual use, because taking part passively to a sexual encounter would mean lose freedom. A Roman man was, however, free to engage in  same sex relationships with a passive partner (slaves, prostitutes, etc) excluded form the protections of citizenship. In this case, however, Euryalus and Nisus are on the same level. Neither of them is a slave nor a prostitute. They appear exactly as a pair of Greek lovers would've. Among the Greek there was indeed a ancient tradition of idealized homosexuality in military setting -The sacred band of Thebes, Achilles and Patroclus... Virgil, by describing their love as pius, makes it honourable and in line with Roman values. Because they are soldiers, their love can be seen especially when they charge together into battle (and that's the second thing Virgil tells us about them).

Now we are ready to get back to the story. Euryalus and Nisus are sharing their guard duty on the gate, when Nisus starts talking about a night foray to the Rutulians' camp; he says that he cannot be quiet any more, but wants to rush into battle or into some great enterprise, so he starts to make up a plan. Euryalus, just like him, is enthusiastic but when he understands that Nisus does not intend to bring him on the mission, he immediately says that he does not intend to abandon him. “I have here a hearth that despises the light, that would gladly spend life to buy the honour you are striving for”. Nisus replies that he wants Euryalus to live because, if he won't come back from the foray, the young man can give him a proper burial and avenge him. Plus, he doesn't want Euryalus' mother (whose love towards her son was so great that she was the only woman among the Trojans who did not stop in Sicily) to suffer. But Euryalus clears that he's determined to follow the other, so Nisus allows him to take the crucial decision. Before they leave, Euryalus wakes sentries to keep guard when they go to the Council to expose their plan. The Council is a gathering of chosen Trojan warriors. The original plan, Nisus' one, was to take a message to Aeneas, but now the two propose to set an ambush, kill as many enemies as they can and then come back before dawn. Aletes, a very old man “mature in judgement” approves it, and so does Ascanius (Aeneas' son), who promises every kind of rewards, Turnus' horse included. They set out, enter the Rutulian camp and slaughter the soldiers while they sleep. Nisus eventually realizes that day is due to come, so he looks for Euryalus, who puts on armour he had stolen form the dead (medallions, a gold-studded belt and a helmet with gorgeous plumes). This will be their downfall: 300 soldiers, led by Volcens, spot them because the helmet Euryalus is wearing reflects into the moonlight. They immediately start running, trying to escape through a dense forest nearby. Euryalus is slower than Nisus because he's carrying all the loot, which slows him down; so Nisus actually gets further. For a moment, only for a moment, he forgets about Euryalus. For Nisus what matters the most is not the mission but the boy himself, so he heads back. He can hear the enemy, and he has a vision: Euryalus surrounded by the Rutulians with no defence. He asks himself what he can do to help him, so he attacks the enemies. Nisus, indeed, is still in the wood, so when he starts to throw spears upon the Rutulians, they can't understand from where those spears come from. Volcens gets angry and decides to punish Euryalus, whom is his captive. Nisus now, and only now, is described as distraught; the only thing he cares about is saving Euryalus, so he steps out and declare himself as the man who killed all those Rutulians. But Volcens puts Euryalus to the sword. Nisus now starts going mad, the pain is too much and he cannot handle it. All he wants now is to avenge his comrade, so he tries to kill Volcens, but he ends up surrounded by enemies and gets killed shortly after Euryalus dies. The following day, the Rutulians have Euryalus and Nisus' heads on two spikes, showing no mercy and no pietas. The Trojans watch afflicted this lugubrious procession. Euryalus' mother gets to know about her son's death and starts mourning him in the typical way: she pulls her own hair, she hits herself and cries and weeps loudly.

Virgil here wants to offer his audience an occasion to think about war, love and death. He acknowledges the fact that many deaths occurred while Rome was becoming the powerful city it was when he was writing, but he still wants underline the fact that there is no joy when a war is raging on, not even for the winners: Volcens will die as well.

So, although Euryalus and Nisus are kind of a negative example – they neglect the disciplines and show no respect to the gods-, Virgil wants the audience to focus on the fact that their love was the thing they most valued. Virgil indeed was a follower of the Epicurean philosophy, that celebrates close relationships privately, exalting the feeling itself, one that is based on fides, affection and respect.

“No day shall erase you from the memory of time”.

#the aeneid #virgil #vergil #study #studyblr #studypro #euryalus and nisus #nisus and euryalus #patrilles #patrochilles #greek #greeks #classics #classicism #latin #latinpro #greekpro #the secret history #gay history #gay #stop straigh washing #cry #can i please cry #achilles #patroclus #aeneas #ascanius #volcens #augustus #pax augustea

[innergladiatorstudent]

some classics valentine’s day poems

Achilles

roses are red

wine-dark is the sea

my boyfriend is dead

time for a killing spree

Oedipus

roses are red

a hue like no other

you know, valentine,

you’re just like my mother?

Catullus

my girl’s eyes are swollen

her sparrow is dead

but is that just a metaphor

for my dick instead?

Cato

roses are red

space is black like a void

who cares about love

Carthage must be destroyed

[innergladiatorstudent]

shit i’ve heard people in my classics courses say

zeus is kind of a man-whore

why do the greeks love dicks so much? why are there so many dicks??

i kinda want to punch ovid in the crotch, not gonna lie

achilles is such a manchild. *mocking voice* wah wah wah agamemnon took my girlfriend im gonna go cry in my tent

the romans had a god of dicks?? what the fuck????

so if all these people zeus had sex with did it when he was an animal does that make him a furry

maybe if odysseus weren’t such a slut he’d have made it home in faster than 10 years. just sayin

when you think about it, catullus is basically roman taylor swift

you know those persians, with their pants and their perfumed hair. absolutely barbaric

pompeii? like the song?

why did any of the other greeks ever listen to athens they’re just a bunch of assholes

maybe the reason the greeks always made the penises so small on their statues was so that they would feel better about themselves

why the hell did i decide to take greek

no seriously i hate this why am i in this class

this language makes no sense im gonna cry

vergil just called this character ‘flaming’ like 5 times i can’t deal

i mean, the greeks were right. you know us ladies. we just wanna be filled on both ends

this shit is so gay

[innergladiatorstudent]

In Ancient Greek we don’t say “I love you” we say “εἰ δὲ θανόντων περ καταλήθοντ’ εἰν Ἀΐδαο αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ κεῖθι φίλου μεμνήσομ' ἑταίρου.” which translates into “And though the dead forget the dead in the house of Hades, even there I shall still remember my beloved companion.” and I think that is beautiful.

#homer #achilles #patroclus #patrochilles #patrilles #ancinet greek #the iliad #iliad #troy

[innergladiatorstudent]

honestly how ironic is it that i were to start a blog about the classic societies on the Ides of March

#idesofmarch #romans #julius caesar #ides of march #rome