an open book

Aaron Warner, shatter me.

Darkling (Aleksander Morozova), shadow and bone.

Sturmhond (Nikolai Lantsov), shadow and bone.

Captain Charles Vane, black sails.

Captain Harlock, space pirate.

Coda, the begginer’s guide.

Aiden, beyond two souls.

Eric Northman, true blood.

Altaïr Ibn-La’ahad, assassin’s creed.

Killgrave, Jessica Jones.

Victor Vale, vicious.

Rhysand, a court of throns and roses.

AIDAN, the illuminae files.

“what do you mean people landed on the moon?? how did they get there? when did this happen?”  this is the most important scene in the whole book 

richard: “did you guys have an orgy” henry: “…….. we don’t need to talk about that right now”

bunny steals pie from someone on financial aid

“And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore”

charles gets high as hell at the funeral and kills a bee

"this man was not voltaire we killed.  but still.  it’s a shame. i feel bad about it.”

“um we can’t confess to murder and go on trial. think how it’ll look!  they’ll think we’re a bunch of rich assholes high on drugs who just broke onto someone’s property and killed them.”  THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE

richard repeatedly trying to convince himself that he’s straight while deeply fascinated in an obviously sexual way by all members of the murder clique

richard comparing himself to gatsby in the great gatsby when he is transparently a nick figure

“We’re all a lot better off.” "Some of us are, you mean.” Henry smiled acidly. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Πελλαιου βους μεγας ειν Αιδη.” This was something to the effect that, in the Underworld, a great ox costs only a penny, but I knew what he meant and in spite of myself I laughed. There was a tradition among the ancients that things were very cheap in Hell.

This morning I googled this line to find the context, and found a number of Secret History readers who were puzzled by it.  Someone correctly placed it in Callimachus, but couldn’t account for the fact that it doesn’t mention pennies.  Here’s a non-literal translation:

“If there’s pleasure in death, and sure I speak true, Pellaeus’ fat ox will be happy as you.”

[Alternately, Πελλαιου might not be a proper name but rather an adjective meaning “darkly-coloured”, in which case it would be “A big black ox will be happy as you.”] 

Well, this is indeed a line in Greek about an ox in Hades, with some appropriate pessimism and dark humour, but it’s the wrong one.  The complete epigram doesn’t mention the expense of the ox; it’s just saying that there’s no real afterlife and both humans and oxen go to the same place in the end and have about the same experience.

The correct line is found in Callimachus, Iamb 1 fr. 191, in which a long-dead poet announces:

“…οὐ γὰρ ἀλλ᾿ ἥχω ἐχ τῶν ὅχου βοῦν χολλύβου πιπρήσχουσιν.”

“…for I have come from the place where an ox costs a penny.”

I don’t think this is a mistake on the part of Tartt or her editors; I think it’s Richard being an unreliable narrator, even about a thing of minor importance. In the context of the book, Henry might be making a dark comment about who is “better off” in Hades which Richard (with his inferior Greek skills and obsession with money) interprets the wrong way.  Richard makes a lot of hasty conclusions and does a lot of sloppy Greek homework, but Henry simply wouldn’t get that reference wrong.

Anyway, since I had to go chasing that reference this morning for unrelated reasons I thought I’d toss it in the Secret History fandom tag.