yknow, people really don't appreciate how layered the literary references in Devil May Cry are. remember Homer, the dude who (supposedly) wrote The Odyssey and The Illiad?
well, sometime after that when the Romans showed up they really and i mean really liked Greek culture. one of them was a poet named Vergil, who wrote an Odyssey-inspired Roman sequel to The Illiad, called The Aeneid. in very very short terms, it boils down to "the Romans are actually the descendants of the Trojans who lost the Trojan war" and it follows Aeneas, who with his crew journeys to Italy and basically this becomes the foundation for founding Rome. among other things, Aeneas also gets a guided tour of the Underworld. it's an incredibly elaborate piece of propaganda really.
(bonus fact: while describing Tartarus, one of it's prisoners stands out. because among the worst monsters of Greek mythology is one normal dude who's in for impersonating Zeus - by loudly driving his chariot around the city, flashing torch light and making loud noises. so basically all BMW drivers are going to Tartarus for impersonating Zeus. this brings me great joy.)
but then roughly 1300 years later, a dude named Dante Alighieri reads The Aeneid, goes "omg kin" and writes his world famous self insert fic where Vergil-senpai takes him on a personal, guided tour of Christian Hell - and yes he totally ripped it off from Vergil's work. right down to separating his Underworld into sections lmao.
it gets even better tho, as about 300 years after that, John Milton, inspired by both Dante's Inferno and The Aeneid, writes Paradise Lost, which is basically The Bible fanfic where Satan's a misunderstood antihero.
and THEN, AFTER ALL THAT, A GUY COMES ALONG - William Blake, who, inspired by both Inferno and Paradise Lost, writes a tome of poetry called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (if you want a rec from that - check out his Proverbs of Hell. they're cool. watch out tho Blake certainly had A Style).
and it is only then, after ALL THAT, that we finally get to DMC where the main characters are named after Vergil and Dante, and Vergil keeps quoting Blake's poems.
ALL OF THAT. HAD TO STACK UP. TO CREATE THE REFERENCES FOR DEVIL MAY CRY.
IN CONCLUSION, THANKS HOMER FOR WRITING ACHILLES X PATROCLUS SAD YAOI BECAUSE IT EVENTUALLY GAVE US DMC DANTE AND HIS MASSIVE TITS.
THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK
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