This love will undo us all @dilutedh2so4 - Tumblr Blog

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"Some men say an army [...] is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love. [...] For she who overcame everyone in beauty left her husband behind and went sailing to Troy." Sappho 16

My blog for Greek, Irish, Arthurian, and biblical mythologies

"While the Danaans conquered, while savage Hector held them, [Paris] fought a nobler war in [Helen's] lap." Propertius' Elegies

Favourite characters: Helen, Paris, Menelaus, Hecuba, Medb, David, Ruth, basically all the Trojans

"[Paris] came with his garments flowered in gold and his dress blazoned with gems. He loved Helen and was loved by her." Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis

Other blogs: @thyateira for faith and @undilutedundiluted for fandom

"You do not hate the face of the Spartan daughter of Tyndareus, nor is Paris to blame: the ruthlessness of the gods toppled Troy from its heights." Vergil's Aeneid

Original posts // Asks // Fundraisers

Trans Helen/Paris propaganda Helen/Aphrodite propaganda High Flying, Adored - Paris Helen and Paris parallels, part 1 Helen and Paris parallels, part 2

+daily clicks!!

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#intro post #paris haters dni #/j. but it *is* tiring lol

Hecuba and Andromache are both sapphic in this retelling from 2005 ??

#dont ask me anything else ive only briefly scanned thru the book to see if its worth my time #lord of the silver bow #trojan war novels #mop

Eris at Peleus and Thetis' wedding, illustrated by Peter Dennis for David Clement-Davies' Trojan Horse.

#eris #zeus #hera #athena #aphrodite #greek mythology #tagamemnon #greek gods #cait is seeing #mop

sapphicenstein

the fact that athena threw a flute away because she didn’t like how puffy her face looked while blowing it is actually both hilarious and oddly adorable, to me.

echo-loves-flowerboy

I want to add my favourite reasoning for her throwing the flute away from Artistotle's Politcs onto this!!

The tale goes that Athena found a flute and threw it away. Now it is not a bad point in the story that the goddess did this out of annoyance because of the ugly distortion of her features; but as a matter of fact it is more likely that it was because education in flute-playing has no effect on the intelligence, whereas we attribute science and art to Athena.

Athena didn't want to play the flute because playing music doesn't futher her inteligence statmaxxing speedrun which not only implies that all her other hobbies DO do that but also that she thinks Apollo is a fucking moron and i love that for her

#athena

ithacantrickster

homesick Odysseus hours

#odysseus

tagged by: @littlesparklight

currently reading: death and return of superman (we all cheer for john henry irons)

last series: the vampire lestat. burn down that writers room

last film: the blues brothers (1980)

last song: cloudbusting by kate bush. i can make any song i listen to about paris and/or helen btw

sweet or salty: sweet!

coffee or tea: i could not survive without a cup of tea

working on: helena/renee fic... for my eyes only….

tagging: anyone who sees this!

#mop #tag game

History had its own Homeric retelling craze

What today we call centos are poems, typically, though not exclusively, Christian in content, which are composed with a technique that flourished from the third to the seventeenth century that evoked stitching, weaving, and needlework. Their authors draw lines chiefly from Virgil (in the Latin-speaking world) or from Homer (in the Greek-speaking world) to compose new poems, both secular and Christian. Homeric Centos are poems made up entirely of verses lifted verbatim, with, occasionally, only slight modification, from the Iliad and Odyssey.

In terms of ancient readership, the Christian exegetes’ strong condemnation of the cento practice suggests that the laity was quite fond of this kind of poetry, which demanded that the audience play an active role in decoding its meaning.

The Homeric Centos: Homer and the Bible Interwoven, Anna Lefteratou (2023)

#trojan war / bible crossover is literally literally real. what #homer #virgil #tagamemnon #cait is reading #mop

fullyconsumedbywhatlovesme

Innocence- Arthur Hacker

Iphigenia & Polyxena

#iphigenia #polyxena

Well the Trojans have white-ish angular armour against the Greeks' black so I'm guessing Nolan was trying to go for a chess vibe, I can see now his Trojan horse looking a bit like a chess knight

#im just nosy how the fall of troy + helen will be portrayed dont ask me anything else #mop

mustaarddd

Attack on AmyT77Zaki's design of Hector of Troy on Artfight!

#paris the musical

thhouseofblack

an angel loses its wings every time mycenaean sparta is mixed up with or is mistaken for militaristic sparta

en-theos

#Wait. Wait a second. I want to hear more about Mycenaean Sparta @ihavefoundthevaguestvoid

afaik there's not much to tell! (though i'm paging OP, @allbeendonebefore and @dapurinthos)

at least, archaeologically speaking. militaristic Sparta has never been much to write home about, since it didn't really have much monumental building like athens or prestige housing for the rich (because of said militaristic society), but the second reason is that sparta was moreso a collection of villages in a trenchcoat calling itself a polis. so even before sparta became militaristic, AFAIK, it wasn't the stronghold citadel or labyrinthine palace that mycenae, thebes, pylos and knossos were.

so why are people confusing the two? i think that's because sparta does have a role in the mythology of ancient greece, especially the trojan myth cycle and in homer, who for many aspects of his stories recalls mycenaean society and culture. history perhaps not so much though. so when ancient poets speak of helen of troy (or sparta?), with menelaos winning her hand, with clytaemnestra and penelope and the dioscuri, whose stories all cluster around sparta, the prestige of the late archaic/classical militaristic polis is used to superimpose a mycenaean origin/history onto the mythological royal family. the myths themselves do not necessarily project the militaristic culture backwards though, because the greeks had their own legend about its foundation with Lycurgus around 800-700BC. it makes no historical sense making any homeric character follow Spartan culture (looking at you , epic fans).

a quirk of this problem of shifting power in the peloponnese is also visible in classical greek tragedy, since authors can't quite make up their mind whether agamenon rules mycenae (as in homer, a village living in a ruin by then) or argos (only half an hour's drive away, the current superpower in the Argolid valley). likewise, Heracles is posed as the founding king of the lines of sparta and tiryns (the latter a port city for mycenae, also defunct by the classical period) (and thebes and aetolia and macedon and and and).

sparta found itself between the mycenaean power houses of mycena (there's a reason why the era is named after em) in the east of the peloponnese and pylos on the west coast, not in their direct line of sight (different valleys) but almost certainly under their control. even though the mythology suggest that it had power and prestige of its own, it didn't become the powerhouse we know it as until the late dark ages/early archaic period (700ish bc), and a lot of later mythological nuggets project this prestige backwards in time.

i hope that answers your question somewhat (albeit in the negative rip)

dapurinthos

my sparta-area knowledge tops out at the 1977 survey of the valley and even that is very shaky because it's mostly late helladic iii and i dislike touching anything after the end of late minoan ib, which ends around 1470bce. i'll go lmii if necessary, but lmiii exists solely for mycenaean records, to me.

it's therapnes that you want for mycenaean occupation of the area. richard catling did an excavation of the building known as the menelaion, itself dating back to around the late 8th or early 7th century bce, BUT something was there around the 13th/12th centuries bce. afaik, there's been nothing found that pre-dates these (although there seems to be some belief that the buildings could be from the 15th century bce at earliest, but again, that's a bit too modern for me.

sparta. well. it's all heinrich schliemann's fault for going 'I DISCOVERED THE TROY!' (was not the troy. was a troy. was a troy SEVERAL CENTURIES OFF. he decided troy ii was the troy. troy ii is a robust lady who lasted from c. 2550bce - 2300bce, and has the first wheel-made pottery at the site. troy ii? definitely a site worth discovering. troy vii-a, the most likely candidate based on dating and its destruction layer, was a city that was shrinking in on itself, its foreign trade diminishing). so now we all have to deal with the back-casting effect and people with the desire to somehow find a 'real' menelaos, a 'real' helen.

also: the closest mention in the linear b texts is ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo, on some tablets from thebes, presumably the later lakedaimonia. herodotus, when referring to the area, uses lakedaimonios to refer to therapne as opposed to the then-location of sparta, so that, along with the evidence at therapne and not at sparta leads me to believe that the main settlement was the therapne one, probably known as ra-ke-da-no or something similar, with the direct sparta area not settled until after the previous settlement was long gone.

#mycenaean

antflights

Hypnos 💤

i did it, finally

#hypnos

littlesparklight

My terrible self-indulgence, a snippet:

"Give it life, daughter of Leda. Let it know what your touch feel like, how your breath tastes, your sweat and your pleasure. It will learn to know you, learn to know how to be you by the desires that would've led you astray." Hera turned away, fading slowly as she walked towards the closed door. "Hermes will come fetch you after you're done."

#>:)