sumer is icumen in @sumer-is-icumen-in - Tumblr Blog

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hello and welcome to my silly little sideblog mostly for study inspo and rambling about history and language and other nerdy stuff

i’m an animation major/business minor who’s mostly hyper fixated on ancient greece/rome, medieval era, art nouveau, and mythology in general at the mo’

i’ve also been learning french so i’m gonna try and practice that, there might be a bit of latin and ancient greek sprinkled in too

#intro post

fluentisonus

I've said this is in an essay already but if they ever make an aeneid adaption I think that latium at the end should use the same set as troy did at the beginning

fluentisonus

I think it'd also be cool to have the footage of the battle at the end fit seamlessly into the footage of the battle at the beginning so it could be watched as a loop

betterbooktitles

alpaca-clouds

We Did Not Rediscover Ancient Mythology

I am going to be Odyssey posting for the entire week, am I not?

Oh well.

So, something I have seen creep up in the discussion on Nolan not only removing Nobody from his Odyssey, but also the Greek Gods, with whatever references to religion being there being more tinged with Christian symbolism is: "Modern audiences would not understand Greek Gods, it has been too long ago."

And, of course, the first very obvious thing here is: pop culture is going to put up an argument. Because... Greek mythology is once more ubiquitous in current popculture. Greek gods show up in Marvel and DC. Percy Jackson is big. We have the Hades games. We have Hadestown and Epic. You cannot get away from Greek mythology in current pop culture if you wanted too. Without getting into a discussion of the faults and merrits of Thor: Love and Thunder... The Zeus jokes in that movie are made already under the assumption that the audience knows who Zeus is. Because it is a normal assumption to have.

But...! I actually want to talk about something else at this point. Because a part of this discussion also does something else: it assumes that the Greek/Roman gods were at a large part of the last 2000 years absent from the general cultural consciousness. Which they weren't.

Which...

We Gotta Talk About The Renaissance, Babes!

So, this entire issue goes back to the Renaissance. And with that... Oh boy, we do not talk enough about the issues with the Renaissance. Because both the antiquity and medieval period, as we imagine them, are largely colored by both Renaissance and Victorian propaganda.

And the framing that we "rediscovered" the ancient mythology in the Renaissance is part of this.

We never lost it. There was no time during the last 2000 years, in which people were not at least vaguely aware with the idea of Jupiter/Zeus not being able to keep it in his pants, or the idea of Aphrodite/Venus being the personification of love and sexual desire, or that Hermes/Mercury was a sort of silvertongued messenger and trickster.

Now, generally speaking throughout the medieval time the Roman names and characterizations were more commonly used and more popular in central Europe, aka the places we usually exclusively talk about when we talk about "medieval Europe". That is England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire, aka Germany. And of course they were very common, despite Christianity, in the actual Roman Empire (that is Byzantium).

Don't get me wrong: people, at large, did not believe in those gods. (Though if you are doing anthropology, you will also be aware that we are generally fairly certain that even in Ancient Greece and then Ancient Rome people at large also did not literally believe in the gods. It is more complicated than that and it is a topic for another day.) But they knew about them.

Obviously our record for peasant "pop culture" so to speak during the Middle Ages is spotty at best. But we know of some peasant theater and songs that were popular in some places, and we know that those do at times invoke the names of the gods. Even more evidence we have from nobility during the Middle Ages, who in poetry will very often reference those gods.

Usually the gods get invoked either as narrative archetypes, or just personifications of their domain. Which is largely why we have especially a lot of invocations of Venus, because people were horny and in love throughout the medieval period - and who to blame, if not Venus?

If you trace back the history of some of the fairytales that were in the early modern period then written down by the Brothers Grimm (who, again, were the GOATs!) you will find that several of them in their medieval versions actually involve Roman gods. Sleeping Beauty, for example, has both Venus and Mercury show up in several medieval versions. Which is as good of a moment as any to note that we know that a good chunk of those fairytales are in fact ancient, if not pre-historical stories that in oral versions have been around for thousands of years, being changed and adapted with time. For example, we know fairly certainly, that the story we know as Rapunzel originates with very early Assyrian or Persian mythology. Rapunzel once was the dawn goddess, who over time got adapted into what she is today.

Among the educated, of course, there was also just... Ovid. Ovid was taught and learned by those people who could afford education pretty much since those stories had been written. Especially in the Byzantine Empire Ovid was considered very basic education for anyone who could read or write.

Which once more brings us to: Byzantium existed. Byzantium was the Roman Empire until the Ottomans took over. I cannot stress this enough. Rome did not fall. Rome broke. The western Roman Empire fell. The Eastern Roman Empire survived. They obviously still adapted Christianity (because the entire Constantine thing happened in Byzantium!), but they were still for all intents and purposes the Roman Empire.

The Renaissance did not rediscover any of this. They lied up it. Kinda.

So, Why Did the Renaissance Lie?

Which then brings us to the big question: why were you likely taught that the Renaissance was indeed this big reconstruction and rediscovering of culture?

Well, largely because of racism and the self-glamorization of the early Empires as colonialism started to get going.

A lot of this comes down to a bunch of cultural reasons that made the people during the Renaissance and then later during the Victorian and Edwardian era very invested in this idea of the "Dark Ages", as this millennium long stretch in which there was just no culture anywhere, and people lived in the dirt.

Again, I am harping on the entire "there was not a whole lot of difference in terms of the general populus between the middle ages, the Renaissance, or the early modern period" for a long while now. And this is very tied to it.

But if you have just a very normal western "historical" education - so not taking any history or anthropology adjacent classes in uni - your idea of this is likely very different. Because a lot of people are just so invested in making you believe that after the fall of Rome (which, again, did not happen, Byzantium was just there and was overall doing very well) culture in Europe just seized to exist.

The erasure of Byzantium is also a part of this. Which is again, also tied to this idea in which the South Eastern European block - including Greece - is in a constant state of being both white and non-white at the same time.

This entire idea of "Rome was so great, but then Rome collapsed, and then there was some princesses and princes and some knights, but all in all not much, until we rediscovered our ancient roots as an actual culture" then came up in the Renaissance, and was then upheld again and again to justify European, and later White Supremacy.

But Rome was never gone. The ideas of Greece were never really gone. All those things persisted in the general consciousness. Not in a literal way of "oh yes, everyone worshipped the heathen gods". Because no, that was not what happened. But the general form of those stories and of the gods and the idea that those gods were something some people at some point had prayed to did persist. The gods and several stories kept being invoked again and again. The reason you believe this was lost and rediscovered it partially racism, and partially the erasure of the actual medieval culture.

And also, yes, Christopher, people do understand what the fucking Greek gods are. You are supposed to be the intelligent man's director, making supposedly intelligent movies for intelligent people. Yet, you have so little trust in your audience, that you do not even expect them to know the stuff that Rick Riordan, who writes books for a much younger, and presumably less educated audience, assumes his audience knows. Right. Great.

guccifloralsuits

If THE modern translator of the OG Odyssey text wrote this about my film adaptation I’d kill myself

Emily Wilson you’re goated

screampotato

Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).

When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".

When the boat is still being built, your say "it".

When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".

When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".

When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.

If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").

If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")

If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").

If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.

If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.

I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.

glitched-out-mess

theramblingvoid

Hit "view post" and lost it

teaboot

Too bad the prophet Cassandra never met Odysseus

teaboot

They say if she made a prophecy Nobody would believe her

edgar-allan-possum

I’ve gotta say, that is exactly the kind of stupid thing that probably would circumvent a curse.

elidyce

Cassandra: YOU ARE ALL GOING TO REGRET THIS SO MUCH YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in.

*A couple of months later*

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit.

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure.

Cassandra: *in tears* I love you, new family.

cipheramnesia

Cassandra: Penelope, I’ve had another vision.

Penelope, sighs: Go tell your father.

val-the-bun

HOW DARE YOU HIDE THIS IN THE TAGS, @a-dauntless-daffodil!

vitoriabas

Some wacky illustrations for a short dissertation I wrote for my Masters, exploring the relationship between medieval illuminations, marginalia, and online ads.

Markers on cartridge paper.

astronomalyy

@atleasttheyvegotstars

#oh my god this is so cool aaaahhhhh

soundtestmenu

to upload a file, dragon drop it into the window

to-spirkly-go

They killed Julius Caesar AGAIN today.

every march 15 in rome they restage the assassination at torre argentina. you know. the literal ruins of the curia of pompey. the exact place where it actually happened in 44 BCE.

and then they put his body on a litter and do a whole funeral procession through the city. with professional mourners and everything. they literally blocked traffic for this.

like imagine missing your bus because rome decided to re-kill julius caesar today.

note: i tried to show in the video how huge the crowd was because there were SO many people. also the last part of the video shows the roman forum, where caesar is actually buried. people still leave flowers there.

#ides of march #julius caesar

slettlune

you may have seen achilles in his miserable blanket burrito but have you seen odysseus Sitting Like That while appealing to achilles in his miserable blanket burrito

achilles looking very "make him stop make him stop make him stop"