We Lay Here For Years Or For Hours Your Hand In My Hand, So Still And Discreet So Long, We'd Become The

🌿🏺 Classicstober '23 Week 2: Icarus, Achilles, Asclepius, Pandora, Theseus, Arachne, Helen.

hey remember that absolutely gut wrenching part in the iliad when hector is running for his life from achilles, totally out of sorts, completely outmatched, thinking he’s been abandoned by Troy and everyone he loves, until he sees his brother, deiphobos—his dearest brother, the only person who showed up to fight by his side—and feels so much relief because he doesn’t have to face achilles alone—and thanks him for being the only one in Troy stand beside him? and so hector goes to achilles with new courage, hurls a spear at him, misses, is so discouraged, but nonetheless turns to his brother to ask for a new one because so long as deiphobos is there, there’s hope. but he’s gone. and hector, as he stands facing the death that has been destined for him since before he was born, has this moment of realization that no one ever came to help him. no one is standing beside him, and deiphobos is still behind the Trojan wall watching hector die alone like everyone else. what he saw was just Athena’s cruel trick to get him killed.

yeah, so, that makes me cry.

Max Klinger, 1857-1920

Penelope, 1895, etching and aquatint, printed in colors (Singer 276, iv/VI), 7 7/16x11 13/16 in

Source: Conrad R. Graeber Fine Art

i WISH more people knew about age of bronze, it's literally the 'historically accurate' comprehensive and GAY adaptation of the trojan war all the accuracy warriors are clamoring for

it's a comic series written and drawn entirely by Eric Shanower, started in 1998 with those exact parameters

historically situated in the Mycenaean/Hittite cultures

drawing from nearly every text on the war from Homer to Shakespeare

explicit about the possibility that achilles+patroclus may have been meant as lovers. Shanower is gay himself, and found it important to depict them as such all the way back in 1998.

it can be read here in part or here completely (🏴‍☠️), but i also highly recommend supporting the artist, since this is a multi-decade passion project.

Pelops and his ivory shoulder

From The Odyssey Of Homer Engraved From The Compositions Of John Flaxman.

When I saw this picture, I knew I had to draw it with Hektor and Andromache, it's perfect for them~

This Etruscan mirror of Athena and Ajax is amazing because it’s a uniquely Etruscan conception of the myth where Athena literally urges Ajax to commit suicide rather than simply driving him mad. Today I got to see it in person at the Boston Museum Of Fine Art!

man of progress

Electra ‼️‼️

ref : courage anxiety and despair: watching the battle (James Sant 1850)