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DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

Telemachus, a child: I’m only eight years old.

Odysseus x2 for @wolfythewitch .

Aeneid Daily: because to my knowledge no one’s done it yet, and if I can get even one more person to read the Aeneid, I’ll die happy!

In the fashion of Ovid Daily and e-pistulae, Aeneid Daily emails you Vergil’s greatest work in daily chunks of roughly 100 lines each. Each post will include the selected lines in English, as translated by A.S. Kline, as well as in Latin, as accessed from thelatinlibrary.com. I’ve also included some links to helpful resources for first-time readers, as I think knowledge of the poem’s historical and literary context really helps it come alive.

The newsletter is scheduled to start on June 1st, 2023, and run until the second week of September. Subscribe for boats, battles, bleeding bushes, journeys to the Underworld, women warriors, unspecified dirty activities in a cave, arms, men, and, of course, pietas.

When my classics teacher said that Achilles could’ve been blond OR ginger and the entire class was horrified

What if the gods had never sent Hermes to Priam to accompany him to the Achaean camp? What if he never went there in the end?

What if it was Andromache, who, alone, sneaked out of Troy and into the Myrdmidon camp to find a way to bring her husband's body home?

my favorite war criminals