#its about how many ways i can create situations where i have crassus call pompey a brat

[brother-emperors]

TRY AGAIN LATER

it's like. well. its several things.

(Plutarch's Crassus, trans. Warner)

and also this

(ibid.)

that compliment sounds like an insult, baby.

anyway, there's a fun kind of eroticism in being given everything, in taking things that aren't yours without any real consequence, in climbing towards becoming a Roman Alexander, only for one man to deny you, over and over and over again, at every turn. Sulla tried, Crassus did it better. who would put a butcher in their place? who else knows you well enough to do it? who else can match you step for step like this? doesn't it feel like a kind of intimacy, a kind of—

it's also about the 'even sulla kissed my sword/so you want me on my knees too?' innuendo was too good to pass up. that was actually the first line I wrote, I figured out the rest of this to justify making a comic with it

and finally! the sword line is referencing/playing off of Lucan's Pharsalia a little bit because it fucks hard

(Lucan's Pharsalia, trans. Jane Wilson Joyce)

EDIT: oh, and that's a public domain anatomical illustration of a heart. you know how it is with love and hate.

#marcus licinius crassus #gnaeus pompeius magnus #tris homines #komiks tag #roman republic tag #drawing tag #its about how many ways i can create situations where i have crassus call pompey a brat #the subtext going on here is that pompey and sulla are in the middle of their political falling out #and pompey is like. okay motherfucker. and crassus is something that sulla had under his hand #but uhhhhhh. its not going that well for pompey. because sulla got there first #and left his mark #dont worry tho pompey you'll get him in the end. your descendants are going to marry each other #and name two of their sons directly after both of you!! fucking wild. LOVE it #can't get much closer than that! altho pompey did try something when he married publius crassus' widow #crassus himself however holds true to his statement of 'no one is ever going to touch me ever again.' #he's like. not alive right either so it'd be hard to pin him down anyway #too haunted. your ghosts your dead your ancestors have escaped your family house buddy