One tragic aspect of the Odyssey that I've never really seen handled by any adaptation is the link between Odysseus' marriage and the Trojan War itself.
When Helen was of age to be married, all the Lords of Greece came to seek her hand. This was an issue for her stepfather the King of Sparta who could only pick one husband and then would have to deal with the far greater number of angry rejected suitors.
One suitor was Odysseus, then a younger man. He quickly ascertained that he had no chance of marrying Helen. Ithaca was too poor for him to even bring any proper gifts, let alone a dowry. But he did catch the eye of the King's niece, one Penelope.
Now Penelope was still a bit out of Odysseus' league, but not so much as Helen was. So he makes a deal with the King of Sparta. Support my bid to marry Penelope, and I'll give you a solution to this suitors problem. The King agrees, so Odysseus suggests all the suitors swear an oath to defend Helen's marriage from anyone who might strike against it. They all, including Odysseus, so swear, and Helen is married to Menelaus. The King proves as good as his word, and Penelope is wed to Odysseus.
Of course this means that Odysseus has now bound himself to fight for Helen and Menelaus. After an attempt to feign madness he is forced to fulfill his duty.
So his own plan, to marry Penelope and stop a hoard of ravenous suitors, ends with him forced to defend his own marriage from a hoard of ravenous suitors.
Okay. For my money, the entire thesis of Chris Nolan’s 2026 film The Odyssey is that society chokes and sputters and dies when we abuse, ignore, or violate social norms like the laws of hospitality. That is not really what The Odyssey (the book/poem) is about, but I can clearly see why in the horror that is the 2020s, someone could read The Odyssey and go oh my god that’s a lot of bad dropping in. That’s a lot of bad visits. That’s a clear vision of how the loss of social norms and cohesion fucks you up and how war, literal, brutal war, is a terrible wound that destroys your humanity and your understanding of what civilization and society is. I don’t know that the iteration of Greek society that ultimately birthed the poem would agree with Nolan’s take, but I think this movie is quite ideologically coherent, that Nolan knew exactly what he was trying to say with each and every adaptational change, and I think he wasn’t nuts for using one of the most famous classical western civilization works as a way to make that argument.
"Hevoslinja" (Trans-Horse) is a European art project started in 2014 by Finnish artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri - according to his own words 'skilless in riding and afraid of animals' at the start.
The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.
Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.
Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.
For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.
By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.
The Mongolian landrace horse is a very distant relative of the breeds above, but much lighter and smaller than the agriculturally focused modern Finnhorse - typicaly standing at 142 cm / 14 hh at most. (This would've also been common for Finnhorses before the 19th century.) What really differentiates them from Western breeds, however, is the way they're trained and raised in semi-feral herds, and it's said that while the rider may decide where the pair is headed, the horse is the one to decide how to get there.
also it's not quite google maps, but there is a lovely site called Viabundus!
the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:
and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):
"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische HandelsstraĂźen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."
it's quite neat and also free! i hope someone else finds it as fascinating and cool as i did :)
A Simple Favor (2018) - Old Acquaintance (1943) - Squid Game (TV 2021–2025) -Morocco (1930) - Now and Then (1995) - Victor/Victoria (1982) - She's the Man (2006) - Killing Eve (TV 2018–2022) - School of Rock (2003) - Sylvia Scarlett (1935) - Lullaby of Broadway (1951) - Flashdance (1983) - Annie Hall (1977) - The Hot Chick (2002) - Yentl (1983) - Notting Hill (1999)
Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.
glossary:
eek also
and even
tho at the time
prys great value
wonder a cause for astonishment
nyce stupid
spedde succeeded
You know the form of language, too, can change.
Within a thousand years, even the words
that were most precious then, seem strange
and foolish to us; yet they spoke them so
and did no worse in love than we now do.
“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch
"Did you know Voltaire was the first to suggest that the universe was created by a gigantic explosion? And then Goethe was the first to suggest that spiral nebulae were swirling masses of stars. We now call them galaxies. It's kind of funny how often new concepts of science find their first tentative forms of expression in the arts." - John Oldman, The Man From Earth (2007)
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is often credited with the idea of communication satellites in 1945.
Jules Verne's novel Green ray (1882) popularized this rare phenomenon, and it seems that it has not been scientifically studied before. After Jules Verne novel, the green ray has been photographed and explained.
Edgar Allan Poe is the primary "artist" who famously inspired scientists regarding Olbers' Paradox (Why is the sky dark if it's full of stars?). In his 1848 prose poem Eureka, Poe deduced that the night sky is dark because the universe is finite in age and expanding, meaning light from distant stars hasn't had time to reach us.
for some strange reason I feel the need to apologize for Taylor's decision to mash these two up, as if I had any say in her doing this, so to all the Ivy and WCS stans I give you my condolences
Did you ever write a meta about the First Wizarding War?
I am just so curious about it, although we know almost nothing of it. I know in fanfictions, people tend to make the war something very open, very active, with the Order fighting the Death Eaters in the streets but it feels... off to me?
Like, first of all, how would they know when the DE attack? By the time they would learn about the attack, it's most likely the DE would already have left. And overall, when you read about the 2nd Wizarding War, they never attack place like Diallon Alley or Hogsmeade, but rather kidnap people like Ollivander and Fortescue. Which make me wonder how Voldemort was able to ask teens James and Lily to join him (like said in JK's interview).
When you read what Arthur said about this war:
"You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed. The terror it inspired… you have no idea, you're too young. Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside… Everyone's worst fear… the very worst."
Well, it sounds more like they would attack people at their home, so the DE are more likely to target people when they attack, while they would cause havrock in the Muggle world. Something that made sense since they don't want to destroy the Wizarding World and the wizards.
Although to be fair, it's not like they have much place to attack in the Wizarding world: the only place we know are Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and the Ministry.
I just have a hard time imagining how the war would be like, considering the Ministry was not taken by Voldemort. It's like this world is too small for a war of that kind.
Also, it makes me wonder what was really the role of the Order? Like what did they do? What kind of mission would they do? How would they know when to intervene? I know Remus had missions with werewolf during the 2nd war, but we don't know if he had the same during the 1st. Sirius was away busy with a mission during Harry's first birthday, but I wonder what he was doing. Was it a last minute battle?
"No, but believe me, they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the Wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having purebloods in charge. They weren’t alone either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colors, who thought he had the right idea about things… They got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for joining up at first.”
It's implied people actually thought Voldemort had the right ideas, which makes me wonder if back then, the muggleborns were less accepted. What was the climate that made it happen? Was it that a bit like with jews, which is how Hitler got to powers?
Also the line in bold always interested me because it didn't feel like the Blacks knew about the Horcruxes, so I wonder what else would give them cold feet.
Sorry for the long text, I just never found someone to talk about it. Nobody seems to get me when I try to think too much about how it was like lol
Hello đź‘‹
Honestly, this is really interesting and I have written about the first war as part of my Voldemort analysis here and here and also here and here. And I'm honestly really curious about the timeline of the first war and what exactly the Order and the DE actually did.
I would say you're right about it not being a war. I mean, for a war, you need armies and countries, and there wasn't a single army involved in this war.
The DE are somewhere between a cult and a terrorist organization. In the first war (and in the second one while Voldemort manages them, tbh) their operations are limited to more targeted killings and in general spreading fear and chaos while keeping a not-super-high death tool (in the first war) and avoiding hurting muggles when possible. Like, up until 1979, basically no one died. We have less than 10 unnamed and named characters that might've died before that and the rest died afterwards. Like, almost all deaths happened in the final 3 years of the war.
Then you have the ministry, which doesn't have an army, it has law enforcement. The aurors and DMLE are not an army and don't really function as one. They are trained to catch criminals, not to fight large-scale battles (not that there were any battles in the first war).
The Order, which if we're generous we can call a paramilitary group (but realistically it's a vigilante armed civilian group).
So, it's hardly a war when it's small-scale attacks and skirmishes fought between a cult/terrorist organization, the police, and an armed civilian group. Its timeline and death tool and how it operates as a whole really doesn't fit a war. Well, it's a terror guerilla sort of war, but not your traditional kind of war. The second Voldemort war was more of a real war than the first one, and even that wasn't a traditional war in any sense and I would hardly call it one. But at least it had battles. Like 2.5 of them.
I outlined more of the timeline here with the evidence for it, but in general:
1967ish - Voldemort returns to the UK and has his interview with Dumbledore. At this point, he already has somewhat of a following. Unclear if these were his "friends" from school or their children, but they are likely the older "friends" from school:
“Then if I were to go to the Hog’s Head tonight, I would not find a group of them — Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, Dolohov — awaiting your return? Devoted friends indeed, to travel this far with you on a snowy night, merely to wish you luck as you attempted to secure a teaching post.”
(HBP)
1970 - the war starts.
“You can’t blame them,” said Dumbledore gently. “We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.”
(PS)
Since Dumbledore says this on November 1981, it means the DE started operating in late 1970. Arthur tells us Death Eaters outnumbered the Order 20 to 1, but I think the Order only started operating later in the decade.
I believe that in the early 70s, they weren't too violent yet. There were some attacks, some chaos similar to what we see in the World Cup perhaps:
I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn’t resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them,” he finished disgustedly.
(GoF)
Attacks that strawn fear and unrest and stretched the ministry and the DMLE thin with how many obliviations had to be done — but no one died, not yet. At least, no one important. We know all of the Order members that died were only killed after the infamous photo was taken much later, so it seems in these early days of the war, they didn't really kill anyone perhaps a few muggles here and there (but not as many as the fandom sometimes like to think!) but no wizards died, at least not at first.
I assume this period is mostly marked by small-ish riots and growing normalization of anti-muggle and anti-muggleborn propaganda.
This is the point where Voldemort amassed his followers and purebloods like Walburga and Orion Black thought he had the right idea. Even during the time in the books, muggles are seen as beneath wizards, and muggleborns like Hermione are quietly pressured into not talking about their muggle families because no one cares. Muggleborns like Hermione and Ted Tonks clearly leave their muggle families behind and don't look back and that's accepted as the norm in the wizarding world.
Even in the 90s we see Slughorn is surprised Hermione, the muggleborn, is so talented. Bigotry is still very much present and as I calculated here, muggleborns are only around 5% of the population, with the majority being purebloods (or wizard-raised half-bloods). The blood purity agenda was always there, Voldemort didn't even believe in it himself, he just used it because it was an easily accessible platform that was just there. It was an easy way to gain followers and create unrest, so he took it. It was opportunistic.
So, in that way, yes, it is similar to Nazi Germany. Antisemitism was already there and prevalent in the culture for centuries, Hitler made use of the ideology already present and normalized it, and even made it righteous to believe in his horrid and bigoted ideology. He pushed the culture to more extremes, but the ideas and philosophies were already there, he didn't invent antisemitism in Germany. It was opportunistic. It didn't come out of nowhere and it wasn't just recent either. Antisemitism has a long history in Europe which I'm not going to go into in this post.
1975 - the war gets more violent and wizards are actually killed. We know from Pottermore that:
Eugenia Jenkins
1968 - 1975
Jenkins dealt competently with pure-blood riots during Squib Rights marches in the late sixties, but was soon confronted with the first rise of Lord Voldemort. Jenkins was soon ousted from office as inadequate to the challenge.
(From Pottermore)
It's said Jenkins was ousted from office "soon" after the rise of Voldemort, which again, suggests the more violent attacks only started mid-70s, around 1974 and 1975. From the list of deaths in the post I already linked throughout this post I posed the deaths that ousted her from office were Mr. and Mrs. Bones who we don't have a death date for and were likely important enough in the magical community to send the shockwaves of war that would get the minister kicked out of office. After all, you need something big to rock the wizarding community, a few muggle deaths aren't going to cut it.
(Also the mention of pure-blood riots earlier in the 60s show blood purity was nothing new, just something Voldemort took advantage of that was already there)
This is the point where Walburga and Orion probably got the cold feet Sirius mentioned. Because it's not just muggles and muggleborns anymore. Two pureblood wizards were killed — and that scared the shit out of purebloods who were a little smarter. The realization Voldemort would kill them too if he thought it necessary. It's not that they grew to care about muggleborns or blood traitors, it was self-interest. They realized that Voldemort didn't have any limits and that they weren't safe just because their blood was pure. That's at least, my take on it.
1976 - The Order of the Pheonix is founded
The Order of the Phoenix was likely founded around 1976-1977 after Voldemort and the DE got more violent and a few people actually died and it became clear to Dumbledore the ministry couldn't handle it on their own.
I believe the Order was kinda late to the party (considering how late Dumbledore was when dealing with Grindlewald). I think he advised the ministry on what to do and really hoped the ministry and the DMLE could resolve it at first. When it appeared they couldn't, that's when he founded the Order.
Now, you're right, the first war doesn't seem to have had any actual battles, my guess is that is was as I mentioned above — targeted attacks and skirmishes.
During the first war, Voldemort holds a pretty tight leash on his Death Eaters and who they kill. That's why they kill at homes and kill only specific ministry personnel and Order members for the most part. It's very targeted and specific. They aren't rounding up muggleborns as Lupin says these laws were new in the second war:
“People won’t let this happen,” said Ron.
“It is happening, Ron,’; said Lupin. “Muggle-borns are being rounded up as we speak.”
(DH)
This is only in the second war. In the first one, there was no muggleborn registry or compulsive attendance at Hogwarts. The first war was all targeted terror attacks. The DE didn't have the ministry the way they did in the second one. Yes, they had quite a few members in the ministry who probably tried to pass various laws, but it wasn't the complete control they had in 1997-1998.
I assume, what the Order did in these years, was try to gain intelligence about where and when these attacks would happen so they could wait for the Death Eaters there. Again, sort of skirmish warfare and not quite open battles. Very few combatants were probably present for each of these fights.
Most of the Order missions would've been along the lines of:
Protecting expected DE targets
Recon missions and gaining intelligence through various means
Blocking DE in the ministry from getting the intel they are after or passing their laws.
Stuff that is more targeted and doesn't require a full-scale army.
1980 - The Prophecy and Potters going into hiding
(Edit: More notes regarding the timing of the photo and corrections to this section here. James and Lily went into hiding in the winter of 1980, but the Order's photo was taken while James and Lily were in hiding in July 1981, meaning all the Order members died in the 4 months between Harry's birthday and the end of the war)
The prophecy was made about two months before Harry was born:
He stepped forward. Not as tall as Ron, he had to crane his neck to read the yellowish label affixed to the shelf right beneath the dusty glass ball. In spidery writing was written a date of some sixteen years previously, and below that:
S. P. T. to A. P. W. B. D.
Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter
(OotP)
We also know from Harry's birthdate that Lily would've gotten pregnant with him around late October 1979. Due to how the Fidelius Charm works I believe the Potters went into hiding before Harry was born, right after the Prophecy was made, so around May 1980. All this means the photo Moody shows Harry was taken at some point in 1979 or early 1980 before Lily's stomach was showing with the pregnancy, but I'm leaning towards late 1979.
This means that almost all deaths in the war (and all the deaths of the Order) happened after 1979. This was probably caused by two things:
Voldemort escalating for some reason (after 1980 the prophecy might've had a hand in the escalation of violence for various reasons I discussed in the linked posts)
Wormtail started spying mid-1980:
“DON’T LIE!” bellowed Black. “YOU’D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!”
(PoA)
So it's possible Wormtail revealed exactly where and when the Order was waiting for the DE and the DE could get the jump on them with more wizards than the Order thought there would be.
These two combined factors practically wiped out most of the first Order.
But we're still talking about skirmishes, just larger ones with a higher death tool, but still no large-scale battles like the Battle of Hogwarts. Enlisting the giants wasn't really because Voldemort used them in the war, there were no battles to use them in. They were a threat, kinda like nukes. It was something you have so your enemies won't attack you. Werewolves were similar, although they were probably employed in some of the skirmishes.
This time period since 1979 is probably when this quote from Sirius becomes the case:
“Imagine that Voldemort’s powerful now. You don’t know who his supporters are, you don’t know who’s working for him and who isn’t; you know he can control people so that they do terrible things without being able to stop themselves. You’re scared for yourself, and your family, and your friends. Every week, news comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing . . . the Ministry of Magic’s in disarray, they don’t know what to do, they’re trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, Muggles are dying too. Terror everywhere . . . panic . . . confusion . . . that’s how it used to be.
(GoF)
More wizards are now being killed/targeted. Most of them probably get tortured/imprisoned rather than killed. Like Neville says about the Carrows:
“Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to spill too much pure blood, so they’ll torture us a bit if we’re mouthy but they won’t actually kill us.”
(DH)
These are terror attacks meant to create compliance. So most are tortured, kidnapped as ransom and assurance of loyalty, or imperious rather than killed. Those that are killed would only be those that really have no hope to turn them onside — like the Order, hence why Voldemort allowed them to be killed.
1980 - The added deaths and skirmishes caused another minister to be kicked out of office:
Harold Minchum
1975 - 1980
Seen as a hard-liner, he placed even more Dementors around Azkaban, but was unable to contain what looked like Voldemort’s unstoppable rise to power.
(From Pottermore)
As I mentioned, in the final years of the war, shit got way worse with more deaths happening in the span of these 3 years than all the 8 years of "war" before combined. So another minister who doesn't know how to crack down on the terror organization is kicked out.
October 1981 - Voldemort goes after the Potters and the war ends.
And we know what happens from here.
These are my thoughts about the timeline of the first war and how it went. We don't know as much about it as I would've liked to know, but this is my impression of how it went down more or less.
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