#epic cycleposting

[slettlune]

oh my gosh i read the battle of frogs and mice (the batrachomyomachia) last night, it's an ancient greek (possibly early roman) parody of war epics and ahhh it's delightful! to me there's now the iliad, the odyssey, and the batrachomyomachia

it follows the story of the king of frogs, puffjaw, cowardly causing the death of the mouse prince crumbsnatcher, noble son of breadnibbler, and the war that follows. ares sides with the mice and zeus with the frogs (athena peaces out because both mice and frogs have inconvenienced her in the past). it's short (a "miniature epic", aww!) but there are stratagems and gloried fighting and tragic deaths on the battlefield

i adore it because the comedy lies in the subject matter and not the form; the way it's narrated is SO sincere and all the characters (including the gods) take it just as seriously as the trojan war.

the whole poem (except, sadly, fragments lost to time) can be read at the gutenberg project

[prompted-wordsmith]

hi, sorry, I have a question. what does the tag "tagamemnon" means? I see a lot of people using it, in posts that have seemingly nothing to do with Agamemnon. is it like a general tag for ECEU (Epic Circle Extended Universe)?

To my understanding - and what I, personally, use it for - is indeed epic cycle related posts.

Fun fact, I didn't use it much until now (generally I write fic, so I tag with characters, the specific homeric epic i.e. "iliad", and relationship) because I, myself, wasn't aware of its uses.

In other words take my answer with a grain of salt and anyone with stronger opinions feel free to chime in lmao

[slettlune]

if that imaginary studio wouldn't let me do the huge trojan war movie adaptation i fantasize about, my next pitch would be a comedy drama about diomedes. specifically a heist movie about the theft of the trojan palladium as a point of entry into how insane diomedes' role in the war is

like, the guy's here to save menelaus' wife helen who turned down diomedes' proposal years ago. he's THE most accomplished warrior there, the king of argos, the one guy who has nothing to prove, but everyone walks all over him (literally kicks him awake like "time to work, shithead") and he lets them. HE'S the poor schmuck who has to sub in and do double shifts when achilles sulks in his tent. he is so SO proud of his father's accomplishments but don't you FUCKING mention the cannibalism thing we do NOT talk about the cannibalism thing. odysseus is his bestest friend in the whole world and they pull off literally the heist of the century together (the palladium) only for odysseus at the last minute to go "you know what would make this win even more impressive? if i told everyone you died tragically and i pulled it off on my own. KNIFE SURPRISE!" and then diomedes forgives him

diomedes is the guy who always gets written out of adaptations when he's the sexiest most pathetic heroic little meowmeow there. let me do my funny diomedes movie it'll be a huge crowdpleaser (me i'm the crowd)

[slettlune]

i'm really trying my best to follow the tide of battle here but i'm a little distracted by hector of troy getting dicked down front and center in the audio mix

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[slettlune]

i think the most joyless scholars in the world have gotta be the ones arguing that all mentions of the divine or supernatural in the iliad are meant ONLY as metaphors or aspects of the human psyche (ie achilles' horses do not talk to him and tell him he's about to die, they represent his inner voice or him talking to himself; aphrodite does not snatch up paris and put him in his bedroom with helen, that's his lust making him flee the battlefield, etc etc)

it makes a lot of the plot just not make sense, but also saying "the gods do not actually exist in the iliad" is how we wound up with the fucking troy movie

[slettlune]

rad greek word from the iliad of the day is θεομάχος (theomachos), adjective, literally "god-battling". it describes diomedes when he wounds aphrodite and ares and sends them running back to olympus. damn what a cool word

[slettlune]

my latest thing is looking up scholarly debates about ambiguous/controversial parts of the iliad and collecting fully confident but utterly disparate interpretations like trading cards

right now i'm hip deep in the issue of glaucus and diomedes switching armor in book 6 and it's a doozy

omggg dio and glaucus stopppp you're embarrassing the commentatorssss!!

[slettlune]

wikipedia's table list of greek heroes of the calydonian boar hunt listed by which sources mention them is a really elegant way of summarizing information, but it also makes my brain go "oh this hero takes part in the hunt in many retellings, they were DEFINITELY there" and conversely "this hero only features in one version, so for all i know ovid lied about them being there"

i feel like i'm comparing snapchat reels mapping out who were ACTUALLY at the big cool party and who just pretended to. except it's not a party it's a completely fictional event from ancient mythology