did you get enough love, my little dove?

my little Versailles; my star in the sky Greek mythology/Percy Jackson/Ancient history/Religious history 24F | can/usa

[thevulturesquadron]

text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]

[rudjedet]

And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.

They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?

I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.

AI companies are heavily invested in making themselves relevant. They want people to believe they can't do the things they have done unaided before and to make them become reliant on the AI models, so the AI models' existence is artificially justified.

[aziscribs]

Forgive me mother. Guide my prayer. May Aphrodite bless me. Would you come see me just once? They say to behold you is to behold all the beauty that ever has been and ever will be. Hold your hands over my eyes when you come see me, mama. I just want you to hold me.

🥀🥀🥀

[hera-hell]

🦁🐦🐄🦚

[lasmishen]

Olympus best dad and mum some say….

[annaversechase]

I’m not done actually. It’s so important in the books that Thalia wants power and wants to be a daughter of Zeus and harbors some resentment towards percy because he is also powerful and she doesn’t like giving up control or sharing that power

And over the course of TTC she works out that this is the reason she can’t be the child of the prophecy and removes herself from the equation

that, most notably, she wouldn’t have given Luke the dagger in the end- she kicked him off the cliff. It’s so important that she goes through this

[rotzaprachim]

I’m not entirely sure you can write a “feminist retelling” of the odyssey from the perspective of a single female character because where the position of women becomes so interesting in the context of the epic is as a collective and how simply inescapable the presence of women is as the major scaffolding of the entire story. it is not imho the physical journey home that is the major backbone of the odyssey nor Odysseus on his boat with his men, but the consistent metaphor of weaving which reflects womanhood as an identity that is actively constructed and physically tangible in the cloth and clothes he is constantly having to receive from the xenia of other people, and this forms the connecting sinews between a lot of parts of that are slightly smaller but that ultimately do end up forming the physical bulk of the narrative - Athene, penelope, eurycleia, melantho, Helen, calypso, ino, nausicaa, arete, Circe, Persephone. The story starts with Athena’s actions and it ends with her too. Odysseus is undoubtedly gendered as male but he moves through a world in which the individual actions of diverse women stitch into an inescapable web. Even when Odysseus goes to the land of the dead its Persephone’s land. He meets the blind seer but he also meets his mother

[rotzaprachim]

I guess I’m not against the specific point of view limitation and I have fiddled with it myself and find it interesting, so much as the current publishing need to do this at the same time I don’t think I’ve seen a single modern adaptation/retelling that really includes what a major presence women as a whole are in the odyssey. I think I’m haunted now I’m actually reading it by how the retelling tends to restructure the story specifically in a way that limits their centrality in the narrative (to focus on Odysseus’s quests before Ithaka! Which is fine! Not a bad thing! But has lead to a social construction of the odyssey in which women collectively hold less space in the text than in the original odyssey, and it’s from this perspective of semi-erasure the new retellings are working from. You can’t put a voice back into the story in the space of the erasure of the voices already there

[sarafangirlart]

guys! Guys! GUYS! Did you know that everything you dislike about Greek mythology is actually propaganda invented by big bad patriarchal Rome?! What’s that? The thing you dislike is actually depicted in several Ancient Greek writing, theater and art? WELL NONE OF THAT IS REAL ITS ALL ROME ROME ROME!!!

[queeranarchism]

One of my pet peeves is when people describe cave-dwelling homo sapiens or even late hunter-gatherers with only names like 'grug' and 'ogg'. They're homo sapiens! They have the same brains and mouth and vocal cords that we do.

The earliest name we know from oral history is an Egyptian king named Iry-Hor, the earliest name we have written down is a Sumerian accountant called Kushim. The earliest known author is a Sumerian priestess named Enheduanna. Another name we have from that period is Enmebaragesi. I probably forgot some other beautiful names in this directly-from-wikipedia list. We can't look further back, but there is nothing to suggest that we were less capable of giving each other beautiful complex names.

Why does this matter? Because the idea that we as a species are constantly becoming superior is bullshit and is tied up closely with a lot of very harmful ideologies (capitalism, eugenics and fascism, to name a few). We're not becoming a superior species. We're passing on information and inventing more stuff and figuring out how to live longer, but those are social processes, they come from humans taking care of each other and valuing the preservation and free exchange of knowledge. They don't come from being fundamentally better than our ancestors, we're not.

[headspace-hotel]

This is true and you should say it.

[sophie-frm-mars]

I would like to add to this that there are people alive now called Greg

[theodysseyofhomer]

when epic the musical started out, i was like, well at least this guy seems to be interested in penelope. the bare minimum to hold my attention. but with the benefit of hindsight i don't think epic the musical is that interested in penelope. there's very little attention paid either to her as a character or, frankly, to her relationship with odysseus (god forbid i should mention telemachus, athena, antinous, eurymachus, melantho...). it is interested in odysseus Having A Wife To Come Home To. what kind of wife she may be is irrelevant until the final saga. at least her two songs do mention the iconic penelope tricks, i guess, but the emphasis is still on her Waiting. and anna lea didn't even get to re-record that one high note. old blogger shakes fist at sky

reducing penelope's role to Waiting is an easy and common mistake to make, so. whatever. but i find the ever-increasing ubiquity of fanon!penelope, an action girl with demigoddess abilities and big spartan muscles (lol), to be a very interesting case study in reactionary fanon... So You Want Penelope To Be An Agent In The Story. but the only way you can think to do that is to put her in a masculine role. (mind you, she won't actually be gender non-conforming in a way that affects her presentation or status; nor are we going to attend to the female characters of the trojan war who are masculine, such as penthesilea or even clytemnestra.) not only a masculine role, but she has to be put in odysseus' role specifically. what are we doing here? retreading the ground of his part of the story. again.

when i want to read about odysseus' nostos i simply read those books of the odyssey. and when i want to read about penelope, i read the parts that are set on ithaca. i'm not going to pretend the poem is at all even-handed, but isn't uninterested in her. it introduces her before odysseus; we learn that she's been deceiving the suitors for years before odysseus breathes a word of his journey. meanwhile, a few thousand years later, here is the fandom and its failure of imagination, neither interested in her life as it is nor as it might be.

fandom has the most fascinating way of reproducing misogyny while trying to combat it. i mean, i don't like it, but it is fascinating.

[mylittleversaille]

"fandom has the most fascinating way of reproducing misogyny while trying to combat it. i mean, i don't like it, but it is fascinating."

I want this framed.

Modern adaptations and discourse do a phenomenal job of highlighting the bias and prejudice of our own society. We see this time and time again with the inability to allow strength, value, or agency to traditionally feminine figures. I find it fascinating that they are almost always portrayed as weak and cowardly or as villainous. If you cannot separate strength, moral "goodness", or even just narrative importance from masculinity, then I fear you still have a deeply sexist gender framework, whether you realize it or not.

[xollii]

Trying to define "the West" by ancient Greek influence on historical philosophy, you WILL include a huge swathe of exploited majority Muslim countries and I don't think that's what you're going for.

[mylittleversaille]

"the West" is a racist, anachronistic concept imagined into existence by Enlightenment era Europeans to utilize ancient Greek philosophy as a means for legitimizing their nascent atheistic and democratic movements. To distance themselves from their almost 1500 years of Christian identity, they attached to, in their eyes, the only "worthy" heritage that preceded Christianity: Greek democracy and philosophy and Roman republicanism and law.

Of course, this is still a part of a long history of Western Europeans wanting to style themselves as the sole heirs of these ancient societies, ignoring the fact that the Greeks and Romans had just as much, if not more, influence on North Africa and the Middle East.

Islamic theology, philosophy, and science does not exist without it's Greek foundations. And Greek/Christian people continued to exist in Muslim lands for a very, very long time-- in some places like the Ottoman empire, until as late as the post-WWI emergence of the sovereign state of Turkey.

Of course, "the West" is absolutely a sociopolitical entity that exists in the modern world. But, we must be aware that it's roots go back to 1700s Western Europe, not Ancient Greece.

[247reader]

Day 27: Shaykhah Shuhdah, Fakhr-un-Nissa!

Fakhr-un-Nissa Shuhdah was the daughter of Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn al-Faraj al-Dinawari, a Kurdish scholar in the Persian city of Dinawar, in modern-day Iran. He ensured that his daughter received an excellent education, and she studied with some of the most significant Islamic scholars of her day, becoming an expert in Hadith, the records of Muhammad’s actions outside of the Quran, as well as a noted calligrapher. Settling in Baghdad with her husband, she became a teacher herself - in fact, students travelled from across the Abbasid Caliphate to hear her speak on theology, literature, and history, and she earned the title, among others, of Shuhdah al-Baghdadiyyah, the “Writer of Baghdad,” for her literary and calligraphic accomplishments.

After the death of her husband, Fakhr-un-Nissa, now middle-aged, devoted her time even further to her academic pursuits. With the assistance of a land donation for the Caliph, she opened a school, with free tuition for scholars. By the time of her death in 1112, the ninety-year-old teacher was famous and beloved, and her funeral was attended by thousands, from impoverished students to state officials.

[whencyclopedia]

Abd al-Rahman I

Abd al-Rahman was the founder of the Emirate of Cordoba and ruled as Abd al-Rahman I from 756-788 CE. As one of the lone survivors of the Umayyad Dynasty after the Abbasids defeated the Umayyad Caliphate, Abd al-Rahman bridged the Umayyad Caliphate and the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba in Spain. Although he did not start Muslim rule in Spain, Abd al-Rahman established it as a vibrant, independent, and long-lasting political and cultural power.

The Rise & Fall of the Umayyad Caliphate

The Umayyad Dynasty had established itself as the leader of Islam in 661 CE under Muawiya, the governor of Islamic Syria. Syria and Syrian Arabs became the power base for the Umayyads during their nearly century-long rule of the Islamic world. From their capital at Damascus, the Umayyads expanded their empire to reach the borders of China in the east and into Europe in the west. They launched assaults on the Byzantine capital at Constantinople twice and skirmished with the Tang Empire of China and the Franks.

In short, the Umayyads established the most powerful and wealthy empire of their day. Born into this glittering and powerful Umayyad court was Abd al-Rahman, the grandson of Caliph Hisham (r. 724-743 CE). But the opulent court where Abd al-Rahman was raised, and likely planned to live the rest of his life, was snatched from him in the fires of revolution when he was still a teenager. The Umayyads had focused on Syria and the Arabs almost to the exclusion of other peoples inside the empire, and this now came back to haunt them. In the border province of Khurasan, the local leader Abu Muslim declared a revolt against Umayyad authority in 747 CE. This revolution advanced on the core of the empire and defeated the last Umayyad caliph in the Battle of the Zab in 750 CE. The Abbasid Caliphate was now in control.

Continue reading…

[alicent-florent]

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026—)

[caesarsaladinn]

“the mind of a medieval person was foreign and incomprehensible” factoid is false. the average medieval person was pretty normal. the chivalric death cult, whose members were known to literally die if prevented from riding to war, was an outlier and should not have been counted

[caesarsaladinn]

On hearing of Anjou’s death, a tailor of Orleans named Guillaume le Jupponnier, when “overcome with wine,” burst into a tirade in which can be heard the rarely recorded voice of his class. “What did he go there for, this Duke of Anjou, down there where he went? He has pillaged and robbed and carried off money to Italy in order to conquer another land. He is dead and damned, and the King St. Louis too, like the others. Filth, filth of a King and a King! We have no King but God. Do you think they got honestly what they have? They tax me and re-tax me and it hurts them that they can’t have everything we own. Why should they take from me what I earn with my needle? I would rather the King and all kings were dead than that my son should be hurt in his little finger.”

[worse-than-konstantin-levin]

'Dead and damned': medieval commoners' wonderful hatred of royalty | David Forbes

Get more from David Forbes on Patreon

I went looking for more information on Guillarme le Jupponier, and found this article, which points to a slew of similar speeches in European and US history-- and, crucially, the fact that Guillarme le Jupponier was released after that speech, not tortured or executed, because it was acknowledged that his sentiments were extremely common.

[caesarsaladinn]

Studying nearly 1,100 rebellions in France, the Low Countries and Italy stretching back to 1200 the historian Samuel Cohn discovered that instead of hat-in-hand deference, “genuine, heartfelt hatred for a king or queen is easy to find.”

can we pause on that? 1100 rebellions?!?

[theodysseyofhomer]

"did odysseus cheat on penelope?" -> this question becomes more meaningless to me the more immersed i am in homer. "cheating" describes liaisons outside of exclusive relationships that are secretive and illicit because they are not socially sanctioned. odysseus, on the other hand, would have no cultural expectation of marital fidelity. in fact, he would be expected to sleep with other women. this opens up a whole new world of problematizing sexual norms in the homeric epics, so if you mean "did odysseus have extramarital sex?" that's what you should say.

"okay then, did odysseus have extramarital sex?" -> oh yeah. for sure.

"so by modern standards, odysseus cheated?" -> i don't feel that that's the most interesting way to approach the odyssey, when there's so much—

"but such a big deal is made of penelope's faithfulness! isn't it important to point out the double standard?" -> yes, i do think it is, but i also think the poem's actual portrayal of odysseus and penelope's marriage, of penelope's solitude, and of odysseus' encounters with goddesses have unusual features to them. they all show complexity within and beyond the double standard. penelope is more than a faithful woman passively waiting for her philandering husband. she schemes. she questions everything. she has things of her own to protect. likewise, in context, odysseus' (grand total of two) affairs with goddesses are less straightforward than a man sleeping his way through a lineup of temptresses. on both sides! in fact, given the way power dynamics shift in the poem, i'm wary of being too definitive about consent—

"oh, so odysseus never had consensual sex outside of marriage" -> that's not quite what i was getting at. i do read odysseus as a rape victim at the point in the odyssey that we meet him, but as i've said, his situation is unusual and not straightforward. to say he never had consensual extramarital sex is not only ahistorical (not to mention ignorant of the sexual violence conquering armies perpetrate during warfare), but also reading against the text significantly.

"if you imply odysseus ever could have slept with calypso willingly you're a rape apologist" -> this is an epic the musical fan.

[deathlessathanasia]

*Forces the heteronormative agenda™ on the gay fandom (?) by acknowledging that [insert Greek mythology figure here] is into both women and men.* Oops, my bad.

[ohevoyev]