#cornelia metella

[sforzesco]

something something Cornelia Metella should be allowed to kill Caesar, etc. also Cassius’ potential Pompeian leaning. maybe a third secret thing about how everything is a little bit in the shadow of Pompey, except for when it’s his widow, and then you’re in the shadow of something else entirely.

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara

[catilinas]

iliad 22 trans. wilson. i am correct in thinking lucan had andromache mourning hector in mind when writing cornelia mourning pompey in pharsalia 8+9. ESPECIALLY this bit of book 9

and pompey as hector post-aeneid is like. a lot. although severed head-wise he is priam and also his whole alexander the great imitation thing (which lucan Avoids. or at least doesn’t hype up because he doesn’t like alexander the great lol) makes him (and caesar) also achilles adjacent via alexander’s achilles imitation. yay

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Pompey & Cornelia, Pharsalia book 5.

[venicepearl]

Portrait of Adrienne Lecouvreur as Cornelia Metella - Charles-Antoine Coypel

[pleasingnight]

"You are beautiful"

"I have a ghost husband"

"You deserve two ghost husbands"

- fate @ Cornelia Metella, probably

[catilinas]

pharsalia 9.174-9 trans. wilson joyce

noooooo cornelia don’t burn pompey’s relics you could do fucked up ghost shit with those. you could display them in a tent to represent his spirit and claim he’s guiding you from beyond the grave and that you are his legitimate political heir :(((

[garland-on-thy-brow]

In Cleopatra e Cesare, Cornelia's insistence on a parallel between herself and Caesar ("if you were in my shoes, you would feel the same" and then "since you took this opportunity of vengeance from me, Pompey's shadow expects YOU to do it now") reads to me like "You were Pompey's wife TOO, don't you think you owe his restless ghost something?"

Which is not unprecedented - cf. Caesar's "Ombra del caro sposo errante non andrà, né intorno girerà invendicata" in Piccinni's Giulio Cesare in Egitto.

And even Emilia in Catone in Utica: "Surely you are waiting for your wife in the underworld; so I am sending Caesar there".

[garland-on-thy-brow]

[Pharsalia book V trans. Jane Wilson Joyce / Shakespeare's Julius Caesar]

Porcia's repeated appeals to the bond of marriage ("By all your vows of love and that great vow / Which did incorporate and make us one") seem to me to be drawn much more from Cornelia's speech in Pharsalia V than from Plut. Brut. 13 which is Shakespeare's source for the episode itself.