Platypus of Truth

  I just finished a back-to-back of Tolkien's Battle of Maldon and Beowulf. After realizing I could plot the entirety of Sellic Spell as a D&D one shot and buy all the props in five minutes on Amazon, Etsy, or Ebay, I thought of Frank Frazetta. Frazzeta has a few pictures, especially Night Stalker, that are particularly Beowulf-ish. Frazzeta's Italian relish for voluptuous bodies of both genders is mostly at odds with Beowulf's Northern sensibility, but the two illustrations I've attempted to reproduce here (and bowdlerized a bit) do the trick.

 Has anyone else noticed that the one time Odysseus tells the truth, that Odysseus will return in a month, that he isn't believed? He even uses Achilles' phase: I hate as the gates of Hades that man who says one thing and hides another in his heart. Always something new to notice. 

 

  Tell me why are we so blind to see that the ones we hurt are you and me.  Listening to Gangsta's Paradise and thinking about the Iliad. You're watching a civilization fall apart. Judging from graves, a 23 year old Mycenaean warlord couldn't be sure he'd see 24. The number of wounds found on the bones and their violence are remarkable. They lived their lives for glory and to have their deeds retold in freestyle song. Later Greeks were convinced that their thug life brought complete destruction on their world. The songs of these heroes eere remembered by their descendants living in the ruins.

  Cassandra. Re-imagining of concept art for a 2002 production.

 Today I finished reading the Agamemnon in Greek, 23 years after first reading it in Fagles' stirring translation. "Sing the song of woe, but may the good prevail."

I finished reading the Iliad  today in the original Greek. It's taken about year to do with a year of prep work beforehand. What advantage was there in reading a book that I've already read in several English translations? First, there's the sound of the Greek and it's original meter. Second, the slow pace forces you to consider each section and even each sentence with greater care. Third, you begin to notice repeated words and phrases that don't carry over well in translation. Fourth, you begin to understand more fully what scholars and other readers of the language are talking about when they discuss the Iliad  or Ancient Greek writings more generally. Finally, I just scratched one thing off my bucket list. Hip, Hip, Huzzah!

Well, all my grad apps are in. This time around, it's Brown, Princeton, and the University of Chicago. Wish me luck! I'll probably have news in February or early March. Best of luck to those of you out there applying to grad school this year!

Hi all! In an effort to declutter, I am now posting my thoughts on topics related to the Ancient World over at Old and Forgotten Ways . Currently, I am reposting my series on Shields and Ancient Witches from Eidos at Patheos but, in the future, I will have a new series posting there on the Greek invention of the "Barbarian". This doesn't mean that I'll be abandoning Platypus of Truth. All my thoughts on books, film, art, travel, and life will still be posting right here.

At first I thought, all despairing: "This must crush my spirit now," But I bear it and am bearing, only do not ask me how. -George MacDonald, Translations From the German I'm at it again. All the recommenders are sorted, the letters of intent drafted, and I've opened applications to three schools: Brown, University of Chicago, and Princeton. The great graduate entry push has begun. I'm Irish enough to be cynical and Irish enough not to quit.

My discussion of ancient witches over at Eidos has reached its 10th post. Here is the link . The post contains the links to all of my prior posts on the subject and my series on shields and world-pictures. Even though I've only gotten one interaction (on the Shield of Achilles) because of the blog's no comment policy, it's still been fun to put my thoughts out their in a non-academic setting.

I quit teaching after 12 years spent in 3 private schools across 2 states. This article comes as close as any I've found to saying why . I'll add that my therapist also told me that it was quite literally killing me even though I was a rock star teacher and loved the kids. American education, K-Phd., public, private and homeschool, is thoroughly corrupt, predatory, and extremely damaging to most students and most teachers.

I was reading Catullus XVII and reminded of the words of Utnapishtim, that wisest of men: As Utnapishtim stood at the crossroads, a man came by driving an ass. Now it chanced that, because of the rains, the ass became stuck in the mud. The man drew out a stick and began beating the ass and it cried after the manner of an ass: "yeah! yeah!" As it was beaten, the ass struggled forward, nor would the man for an instant let the animal back up or himself lead it back, and so it sank deeper and deeper into the mud. Even as the mud rose above its shoulders and filled its nostrils the man continued to beat it and the ass continued his cry of "yeah! yeah!" The sun traveled across the sky, and at last the ass was overcome with exhaustion and died. Utnapishtim spoke to the man and said: "Surely, if you had led the animal back or around or had given it its own head it would have lived!" At these words, the man grew incensed and struck Utnapishtim with his stick sayi...

My series of posts on Ancient Witches continues over at Eidos with parts 2 and 3 . I've worked my way from the Sons of Asclepius to Helen of Troy and now on to Circe. Euripides Medea is coming up, followed by Apollonius of Rhodes reboot. After that, it's on to Vergil and Ovid. I plan on applying to grad schools again in September, so hopefully this popular-level writing will still be a help in upping my academic game. Meantime, it is summer and that should mean some summer reading. I just finished volume 9 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman  as well as Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall  (a book that's way ahead of its time in discussing Fundamentalism, Alcoholism, Home-Schooling, and Gender. There's a popular biography of Catullus on the list, and we'll see where things go from there.

My series on shields as symbols in Greco-Roman literature concludes with these two posts on Quintus of Smyrna 1 and 2 . This week begins a new series on ancient witches .

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.