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!
I don't care if I've shared this painting five million times already, I am doing it again.
I'm smiling kicking my feet twirling my hair at this painting, alright. Pheidias is me when I give a presentation in art school. okay I will now go lie down and think about this depiction of Socrates and Alcibiades for 25 minutes because they make me insane.
Do you have any article related to the odyssey you'd reccommend as complementary to the source?
sorry i've been sitting on your ask for so long! i am not and never have been a classics student; i came across most of these articles incidentally or here on tumblr:
"the odysseys within the odyssey" by italo calvino
"a note on memory and reciprocity in homer's odyssey" by anita nikkanen
"penelope and the poetics of remembering" by melissa mueller
"a glossary of haunting" by eve tuck and c. ree (this is mostly about horror fiction and settler-colonialism but it has a gloss on the cyclops that i think everyone, certainly everyone american, should read)
silence in the land of logos by silvia montiglio chapter 8: "silence, ruse, and endurance: odysseus and beyond"
"the name of odysseus" by g.e. dimock, jr.
also ok it's very much not "good" but there's an article by w.b. stanford called "personal relationships" that just lists all his hot takes about the relationships in the odyssey for 25 pages. it reads just like scrolling the blog of a mutual twice removed. they let men publish ANYTHING in the 60s. i love this essay. i would read this essay out loud over discord right now if someone asked me.
my uni staged philoctetes and one of the best choices was to have odysseus walk in with a cigarette through the entrance directly beneath the "no smoking" sign
When I saw this picture, I knew I had to draw it with Hektor and Andromache, it's perfect for them~
So how 'bout those trailers. OMG.
Pelops and his ivory shoulder
There's been some amount of academic discussion about Paris' two names - usually in terms of which is earlier and where they come from and what epithets are used with which name. (Most of his epithets "belong" only to Alexander, if you're curious.) But, a small branch of it is "who uses what name, in-story, in the Iliad" ; Ann Suter (this woman, uhh her ideas are pretty crazy so approach with awareness of that), I.F. de Jong and, commenting on especially the latter's article, Michael Lloyd.
I lean more towards Lloyd's assessment that de Jong's premise (that "Paris" is between the Trojans and "Alexander" for the Achaeans as a sort of 'international' name) can't really be supported. But! That doesn't mean you still can't have fun with the split in names and get something in terms of character and worldbuilding out of that!
So, first of all, in the Iliad, "Alexander" is used far more than "Paris". Only Hektor ever uses "Paris" in direct speech, about or to him (we'll get back to Hektor).
Everyone else, Achaean or Trojan, uses Alexander.
Both Suter and de Jong would, in various ways, either ignore this or explain it away as a "this only happens when the Trojans are talking to Achaeans" (Hektor, before the duel), or "what is said is going to be said to Achaeans" (Priam, telling Idaeus what to report to the Achaean commanders). Honestly, that seems overly complicated and not very reasonable to me. Especially in the case of Priam, if Paris was the name he's most used to using, there is no reason for him not to use Paris and then Idaeus simply switches when reporting the speech to the Achaeans. Yes, reported speech/instructions are usually relayed verbatim, but switching a name wouldn't be changing what's actually been said.
And, anyway, coming back to Hektor, who is the one to most consistently use Paris? Also uses Alexander, when thinking to himself, in his own head. (He also uses Paris to Achilles.)
Myth-wise, in various later sources you get the very logical conclusion of "one name was given by his foster father, the other by his royal parents". (Though there's not necessarily any consistency, even with one writer, which name was given by whom.)
Given the way the Iliad prioritises Alexander, I'd go with that Alexander is the name Priam and Hecuba gave their son, even if he was going to be exposed, before giving him away. Given how Alexander is used by basically everyone to address him, this would make good sense, I think. The Achaeans would only know of Alexander, prince of Troy, and that is certainly the name most/all Trojans would use. Paris is then the name given him by his foster father. Hektor using it can be turned into a look into their relationship, because what you see is Hektor using the name of the "outsider" (by a bare technically "not" his brother), to insult his brother, when he's angry. A verbal distance to add to the emotional one, if not one that's complete and sometimes blurs.
(This doesn't take into account post-Iliad sources, where 'Paris' vastly outnumber the uses of 'Alexander'.)
just. john the apostle. john the beloved. john the youngest. john who rests his head on jesus' shoulders while he speaks. john who stayed with the women during the passion & wasnt ashamed of sharing their pain. john who got to the empty tomb before anyone else. john the patron saint of love & friendship & loyalty & writers & poets. my good friend john