haha surely my hubris won't kill my cousin haha (don't worry it's not your hubris. it's your entire factio being abandoned by gods)
musings & source references below the cut
the driving force behind this was the bit from orosius where marius jr kills himself only after seeing the head of his unfortunate cousin marius gratidianus
Oros. V. 21. 8.
it made me think about their relationship, especially in the context of the election for the year 82. the comic is titled inter fratres, because a cousin is a frater too :-)
there's a Lot going on with marius(i)-iuppiter-scipio(nes) parallel that is brought up multiple times throughout the comic. how i see it, marius sr takes up a divine space in the factio, especially after the capitol burned down. on marius being divine-ish:
Plut. Mar. 27. 5.
on marius being linked with jupiter specifically:
since this coin is assumed (by crawford) to be minted in the year 86, it only makes sense that the triumphant jupiter is supposed to be a marius reference, because who else would be considered a triumphator hurling lighting bolts in the year of cinna and marius?
and there's also the whole thing about the marian eagle. don't forget the marian eagle.
as for a scipio being a frame of reference for a marius as in the conversation, elder marius seemingly used younger scipio's precedent while depriving metellus of his command. some scholars (like kathryn l. seidl steed my beloved) even say that marius sr largely modeled his career on that of scipio aemilianus :-)
another big theme is the capitolium fire of the year 83. in here, it serves as a rebuke to marius jr drawing a parallel between scipio africanus and himself. teenager scipio sitting in the capitol temple of jupiter optimus maximus and conversing with his supposed divine father jupiter is a well-known story, after all.
Gell. VI. 1. 6.
but none of this is relevant in the case of marius jr, because the capitolium quite literally burned down on the eve of his election. speak of being abandoned by gods and such...
to highlight this feeling of impending doom, i put the interlocutors in a portico-like space. the orange-yellow lighting can be treated as setting sun or something of the sort, but it's also the echo of said fire. also, the colonnade invokes a cage, a trap of sorts. praeneste, anyone? :-)
that's most of it! hope you'll have fun untangling the rest of parallels and references! <3
a million (several) years ago I said that in my ideal world, spartacus would have gotten the chance to gut crassus like a fish and read the fate of rome in his entrails. I also said something about spartacus' sacrifice at crixus' funeral games is like a foundational sacrifice/curse on rome. continuing that thought, there's something about how there's a narrative echo of crassus' fate in the fate that falls on spartacus (bodies unburied) and how crassus' death was a sort of death knell for that iteration of rome which was already something of a bloated corpse.
it's good to be back and thinking about spartacus, I took a brief detour a year and a half ago to get through an absolute brick of a book on sparta/lakonia and then picked up the broad topic of athens to pin down some thoughts on thrace, especially around how greece/rome perceived thracians and it's been. well. hm. so! speaking of thracians, pentheus!
The Allure and Repulsion of Thracians, Despoina Tsaifakis
which of course can bring us back to crassus
Dionysiac Tragedy in Plutarch, Crassus, David Braund
anyway, spartacus pouring blood in place of gold all over crassus (Dio 40.27)! let's do some fucked up funeral rites baby, we're cursing rome!
"Crassus' grandfather of the same name, Marcus Licinius Crassus[13] (praetor c. 126 BC), was facetiously given the Greek nickname Agelastus (the unlaughing or grim) by his contemporary Gaius Lucilius, the inventor of Roman satire, who asserted that he smiled once in his whole life."
This happened in The Name of The Rose.
This and Crassus' Peripatetic affiliation.
We need to do something about Crassus and Aristotle's Poetics.
hi beautiful rpf world. i've finally started to post my curio/antony fic here. shoutout to the romans for inventing daddy issues and the prototype of catholic guilt
people who do fancasts of historical figures i respect you but i do not get it. my ideal late republic show cast is made up of completely unknown actors that were grabbed off the street or something
otherwise level-headed historians forced to briefly touch on sextus in their augustus book: pompey's brat son, a seafaring, horse-murdering nuisance who refused to die and leave the narrative until 35bc,
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