QUICKSILVER

Friends… is that what we are?

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Happy Holidays to Andy!! (@andiavang) This is for the Captive Prince Secret Santa 2016 ! (@captiveprince–ss​)

Needed to draw Damen on a chunky horse as well, after all the ones I've done for Laurent.

Memorial day at Marlas

the amount of time i've put into these is indecent

and the companion illustrations

Cloister of the Cathedral of Elna, Northern Catalonia. The Cathedral was built between the 11th and 12th centuries, with some additions in the 14th century.

alternatively WAR AND DEATH

it’s time for Alcibiades, baby (bonus round, the corpse he’s caressing is Chalcideus)

the fall of the athenian empire, donald kagan

florence under siege: surviving plague in an early modern city, john henderson

hunter h. gardner pestilence and the body politic in latin literature

alcibiades’ entry on the political stage at athens II, edmund f. bloedow

daniel r. blickman

CHECKMATE

something something about the battle of notium killing alkibiades’ political trajectory and sparking lysander’s (not that it ended well for lysander either, in the end)

AMPHIARAUS ENTERS THE UNDERWORLD

adapted from the opening scene of chapter VIII of Statius' Thebaid

man its like. kind of horrifying (fun) how Apollo begs a favor from Ares to grant Amphiaraus glory on the battlefield because he's incapable of sparing Amphiaraus from death, but in doing so Amphiaraus stops behaving like Amphiaraus, you are given a "gift" at the expense of yourself, and he's aware of what Apollo is doing! "How much longer are we going to drag this out?" he says

before asking for a favor himself, before the earth splits open and he falls into the underworld, because Apollo can't spare him death, but he does spare him the act of dying, and maybe it's a mercy because there's a moratorium on burials! maybe it's just one more horrifying thing that's done to him because he's Wrong in the underworld, and his presence there brings the cosmic itself into this war. Everyone is brought into this awful theater of family curses!!!!! There Is No Place Spared From The Stain And Gore Of This Crime!!!!

Statius' Thebaid Ch. VIII, trans. Jane Wilson Joyce

Statius and Virgil: The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid, Randall T. Ganiban

Regalia