Platypus of Truth

More classics for the masses as I examine  Ovid's take on Achilles' shield in 500 words. Quintus of Smyrna should be next.

Continuing my work to bring Classical learning to the masses in 500 words are these two pieces on The Shield of Aeneas: 1 2 Up next should be Ovid and Quintus of Smyrna. We'll see where I go from there.

Thus I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a little glass jar, and the boys asked her: "Sybil, what will you?". She responded "I want to die". -Petronius* "April is the cruelest month." -T.S. Eliot Eliot opens his modernist masterpiece, The Wasteland , with a quote from the Roman satirist Petronius. The Sybil was granted one wish by the gods. She asked for eternal life, a gift not meant for mortals. The gods gave her her wish -but without eternal youth or strength. As Pertonius imagines her, she has withered away to point where she can be kept in a small (glass?) jar as a curio. Her response to the boys, in proper Greek, is to wish that her wish be taken back. Like a mortal possessor of one of Tolkien's Great Rings, mere existence cannot confer happiness. It means "merely to go on until every moment is weariness". *a rather free translation by the author of this post and the quote with which Eliot opens The Wasteland

I've been reaching out around the internet over the last few weeks trying to aid the cause of classical learning in 500 words: First , at Kathleen Vail's Reconstructing the Shield of Achilles Blog Second , at John-Mark Reynolds' Eidos I've got further articles planned, so we'll see how it goes.