The Past is Full of Stars @lastromanticist - Tumblr Blog

I think King Arthur would have benefited from modern journalism and/or clickbait.

#i will do this with the matter of france and the fianna

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Sir Palamedes meets Palamedes

A heroic dialogue poem

I stumbled upon an empty wood and there upon a statue stood

Lone amd tall beneath the trees, silent nay for a breeze

The questing beast I did seek , for it was my colchian fleece

A vow I swore to catch it still , my chivalry compels my will

The statue read in ancient tongue , of a warrior who died quite young

Lone atop a trojan hill , beaten till he did Lie still

Palamedes was his name , chess invention was his fame

I rested my shield upon the ground , and listened to the silent sound

My sword and satchel jostled not , and I heard the ancients plot.

He spoke to me beyond the pale , questioning if my life was stale

Like week old bread on counter top, left alone to rot

I thought back each lonely, questing for that beast to slay

The wise man's words echoed still , harder to swallow than a bitter pill

The wraith upon me asked my name , and I obliged it all the same

Palamedes , knight of Arthur's court , met Palamedes sentenced in archaic sport.

He whispered more of his plight , how he did never lose his sight

Even when stones stopped him still , ever questing for knowledge still

Palamedes your so brave, he said to me beyond the grave

Lose not will for what you seek , for a knight should never seem so meek.

Wisdom was my beast to hunt, and I died in a great wise stunt

So do not die a failed muse , pursue the beast because you choose

Oh, Palamedes, my namesake son , come back to your ancestor once ye have won

Your pagan heart and yearnsome soul deserve better than fleeting gold ,

Press on dear knight of noble fame , carry on our ancient name

Palamedes.

#medieval #folklore #arthurian legend #classical mythology #roman mythology #greek mythology #poetry

iphigenesis-deactivated20251113

thank you palamedes for inventing letters and numbers and weights and coins and chess and breakfast and lunch and dinner

lastromanticist

And seige towers , astronomy, gambling and hygiene, and the concept of free time , last but not least, military coups.

#Palamedes #The wisest to ever live #classical mythology #mythology #also the trojan horse (he actually just bribed a seer for the prophecy but its his now)

Hi! I've seen you write poems so I was wondering if you could help me out, here's what I've got so far:

Sing oh muse of the great warrior Tydides,

He who obtained godhood for all his struggles,

He who fought against Thebes and Ilium,

He who stained the earth with the golden ichor of war and beauty,

Sing of the companion to the cunning Ulixes,

Of the student to Pallas of wisdom and war,

Of the child to the legendary Tydeus of Aetolia,

Of the best of the Epigoni; the children of the seven against Thebes,

And utter of the words of the life of the great Diomedes of Argos

This is the first thing I've written, so I just kind of want some pointers

Dear Anonymous.

Thanks for your question. It's a great flattery to be asked for advice.

Stylistically, your poem is great already, fantastic use of poetic allusion. I even wrote a scholia of all the fabulae/historiae you mention to help me analyse it. It definitely feels learned

I can't judge the genre from such a small snippet, but I think you are going for epic in a homeric style which case I'd say either keep it obfuscate which muse you are invoking with Muse, Goddess or a epithet but maybe tell is more about what aspects of diomedes life we are learning of rather than simply his parentage , especially since we are informed of his Parentage just a few lines later.

or if you want to provide the reader some genre indication, name the muse, your invoking similar to "aid me calliope" that Vergil uses. Then, proceed as above.

Then I'd just suggest trying our different meters. Since I assume your writing epic, I'd suggest trying out alliterative meter or one of the various English approximations of Dactyllic Hexameter. I'd assume the latter is what you're going for since your poem kinda read aloud to me as Dactylic Tetramere in its opening line.

I personally prefer alliterative meters for epics, but it doesn't have that classical feel and can often read as Tolkieneqsue to modern readers. The meter you choose and sticking to it and breaking when appropriate can be really powerful for this kind of poetry.

Otherwise , just keep writing . A lot of this is based on feeling , i only get better with my poetry from writing and performances of lots of it. Even if most people don't particularly care for my Odes to heroes, they are unfamiliar with.

Finally, if you are comfortable anonymous, reveal yourself to me so I may read your verses as they grow!.

#lastromanticistisnotanenglishmajor #askromanticist

wordsmithic

Hi, sorry if this comes out as a ramble, but your Troy ask made me rewatch the movie (for the umpteenth time, lol), and it brought a lot of old feelings back, both good and bad. The good is how much I adored the Iliad as a child and that's something that still thrives today—since I was a kid, I loved Greek mythology in general, partly because I'm Palestinian/a fellow Eastern Mediterranean, so there is a lot of overlap in our histories, cultures, customs and myths, but the Iliad has always been a favorite. Hektor is my favorite character (and I love him and Andromache), but I also have an immense soft spot for Briseis... and now to get to the bad, rewatching Troy reminded me how a lot of people erase her and her role—and her romance—to Achilles in modern retellings. Now, I'm not going to argue which Achilles ship is the best (especially because that man is a hoe, if we're being honest), I don't care. My problem is the modern erasure of Briseis and the other women in Achilles's life that are romantically entangled with him being reduced to, "He's gay, actually." It reads biphobic if you believe him queer (Patroclus too, who had many named women concubines/slaves), first off, misogynist second. He has a son with his foster "sister," Deidamia, and in some versions even married. In the Iliad especially, Patroclus tells Briseis Achilles will marry her and Achilles himself refers to her as his wife/bride, stopping a whole war when she's taken, and she's even allowed to aid in Patroclus's funeral rights. In some versions, Achilles falls for Polyxena, and tries to make peace with Troy so he can marry her. In the afterlife, Achilles chooses Helen as his wife for some reason. Just... all these women, with complex situations and feelings, are all reduced or erased in modern tellings (and usually for a man/Patroclus), and it makes me want to scream. People use the excuse of, "We don't like the romantic situation they're in," but then claim to "better" it by... erasing or reducing these women and their complex roles and feelings from the story overall? Brieseis, for example, mutually loved Achilles and saw him as a husband... he also killed her first husband and brothers, and you can argue part of her love is out of the need for survival. Yet, she greatly mourned him when he was killed, too. And if exploring this complexity is still not your yum, what about Polyxena? Wouldn't she fit the girlboss archetype of using Achilles' affections to gain his trust, before stabbing him in the back (literally)? Or Deidamia, who's young and left at home, bereft of her husband and son? Heck, try and fill in the gaps how Achilles x Hellen happened, if you must. All these women have an important role in the story, and to Achilles, that could be explored—but people don't because they dismiss what's already there or don't know anything about The Iliad outside modern retellings (mainly The Song of Achilles). So, we get people claiming things that are untrue ("Achilles and Patroclus are exclusively gay!"... in some myths, they're actually relatives/distant cousins, fun fact 😭), and acting like they fixed something by "adding" onto "flat female characters" in a way that reads inauthentic and ignorant to the source material. I get wanting to prop up one's chosen ship, it's just the hypocrisy of promising to be more progressive in one area, but diminishing the progressiveness of another, that kills me. Anyway! Sorry for the rant, I just have a lot of feelings I wanted to share because of the movie and I know you've talked about all this before—it's just something hard to discuss on the internet without people coming down your throat 🥲. Anyhow, justice for Briseis, is my rallying cry, I love her so much, queen made a whole war stop for her and managed to escape from Agamemnon unscathed. Queen who launched a thousand ships to my heart 🫶🏻.

I'm glad you re-watched it! It's a beloved of many Greeks since the movie is quite epic and makes you understand some of the original's glory. Hector, Andromache and Briseis are some of my fave characters in the movie, and it made me also look out for those characters when they appear in the text.

Btw, I would love to know a Palestinian's pov on our shared traditions and myths, how do you guys learn the Greek myths, what parts of them have had perhaps an affect on your heritage and since when, etc! 😍

Briseis' situation is complicated one because many people won't catch the nuance of her living in a patriarchal society as a war captive and thus developing a strange co-dependence to her captors. In addition, the Homeric Epics are a work changed by time in the Greek society, as people added and altered stuff, so many storylines have been affected by other layers of patriarchal societies. So of course the notion of "slave girl mourning her captor's friend" would seem natural, because they probably don't consider a slave woman's POV. Or perhaps she was in the mourning because she had to be there as a woman "belonging" to the Greeks, and the text does not mention it explicitly because it a given for the era. (I don't recall the whole relevant text sorry)

I am not sure if the average author - judging by what is published in the Anglophone market - can handle the complexity of Briseis and other women in the Trojan war. For Briseis one could go for a romance there but they'd have to depict all of her psychosynthesis properly, so it doesn't come off as "Achilles killed my family but he is hot so I love him". To be fair, it is a challenging task but I am still sad that I haven't heard retellings that do this well. Such a retelling done well would be chef's kiss!

As you said, unfortunately, the writers for now focus on the couple Achilles x Patroclus which, ok, let's accept it since it's a ship and there is some background to it (although those guys are most likely 1) cousins 2) very close to each other like brethren in a way westerners misinterpret). I've enjoyed Song of Achilles and I am surely not against such works, but you are right that the female heroines are reduced to flat characters. A fandom full of women manages to be misogynistic - again. We shouldn't be surprised because misogynistic influences are very strong in our societies still, although many don't see it 😕

nusa-jabber

@wordsmithic Hi! Sorry for the belated reply, lot of things were happening on my end, so it took me a while to reply. First, thank you for the kind and thoughtful response, my thoughts are exact on the complexity of Briseis and Achilles, as well as the historical context they come from—it's what makes them so interesting to me, and why I wish people invested more in their relationship and exploring it. And yes, the inner misogyny is what really kills me by the end of the day, because... why. As to Palestine's connection to Greece: We're both part of the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece has directly taken myths and gods from us or fused yours with ours when you guys conquered us (and we both conquered and mixed myths with North African, haha)—the Levant was directly part of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, as well, and still has Greek and Roman ruins for it. Actually, despite Palestine being the founder of Christianity (which North Africans then brought to the Greeks and Romans—this is a common theme of dissemination between our cultures, lol) are mainly Greek Orthodox (some Catholic or a flavor of it) because of the Greek and Roman Empires. Some famous examples of Greek mythological figures who are originally Palestinian include Aphrodite (Astarte), Zeus (Baal), Athena (Anat), Adonis (Adon, technically Lebanese/Syrian too—fun fact, there is a famous Syrian poet who uses the name of Adonis because of this), and more. You still see their Cana`an roots in Greek myths through different ways, too, like how Aphrodite is the goddess who came from the other side of the Mediterranean/sea foam (her animal being a dove is also indicative to her Palestinian roots: doves still have symbolic importance in Palestine today); how anemones, from her and Adonis's love story, still have relevance to Palestine today (going as far to be informally called, "The Palestinian Poppy"), because they represent love and the martyrdom of the native people who have witnessed injustices on our soil, such as Jesus Christ (who—from an atheistic POV—may have been inspired by Adon's story); how Zeus sleeps around because his Cana`an counterpart is the god of storms AND fertility (the Greeks just left that out when adopting him, lol); how Athena is Zeus's favorite because, as Anat, she is the wife of Baal and fights to bring him back from the underworld, everyone else be damned; how Athena is the founder of olive trees, which originate from Palestine and still hold cultural significance to the point we have the oldest olive tree in the world; etc. Greek myths, themselves, also directly acknowledge the roots of other Levantine characters like Dido from Tunisia, who was Phoenician; Europa, who would be Lebanese today and where the name "Europe" came; Aphrodite and Adonis's daughter, Beroe, also Lebanese, and where Lebanon's capital, "Beirut" got its name—Adonis's River (also known as Abraham/Ibrahim's River) still bleeds, yearly, in Lebanon:

Andromeda is also half-Palestinian, specifically from Jaffa, through her mother, the rocks where she was tied still here:

And while I know Greeks and Turkish have a tense relationship, The Iliad itself features the indigenous people of the Levant as the Trojans: Troy is in modern Turkey, in which the Turkish today are a mix of Turkic East Asians and (now) Arab Levantines, who are also made up of groups who were once considered "Greek," like the Philistines with Palestinians, Anatolians with Turkish and Syrians, etc. King Midas also comes from this area, as does Tyrian Purple that marked Roman royalty (purple itself is from the Levant/Lebanon specifically). Hermes is also credited to have birthed Arabs, though his son Arabos, in Greek mythology and—expanding the Arab bracket to include North Africa, we have North African characters in Greek myths like Medusa, Calypso, Circe (where I suspect the North African witch stereotype may come from), Poseidon, etc. Heck, as I mentioned before, the North Africans were the ones to bring Christianity to Greece and Rome at one point, with their own editions, like the Trinity. Basically, my point is, Palestinians and other Levantines know and interact with Greek mythology because it's also our history—we call each other cousins because we very much are. We're geographically, biologically, historically and culturally linked—one of the Levantines most famous queen is Zenobia and the proverb of "sail the seven seas" is directly related to us as the Mediterranean/overall region:

Our histories are pretty circular too, since we'd keep conquering and influencing it each other, whether it be through the Roman Empire, the Ottomans, Andalusian (and North Africans with the Maltans, who Calypso is also suspected to be from totally not a coincidence), etc. Us in the Mediterranean were just always up in each other's businesses, being an annoying, nosy family, lol. I've said this before in another post, but it's genuinely impossible to study one Mediterranean culture, religion and history without knowing the other, because we all influenced and borrowed from each other at some point (our languages itself root from the Phoenician Alphabet, which was the first alphabet). These modern divisions are just that: New, and meant to divide us as East vs. West, white vs. colored, etc. For a long time, Greece was considered part of the "East," and for good reason. Anyhow, sorry for the spam! I'm just really passionate about this aspect because a lot of Levantine and North African influence and characters in Greek culture and stories unfortunately get erased because of these new divisions that separate us. That said, we also have people like my cousin and husband, who are a Palestinian-Greek pair and you genuinely could not tell the difference of who's from where 😂. Two of my main characters from one of my scripts is also a Palestinian-Greek pair because of this history (I'm a huge ancient and modern Mediterranean geek), so it's something I just love to talk about.

wordsmithic

Ooooh thank you for the long answer!! No spam at all! Your post has lots of good info! From what I've read I also placed Andromeda somewhere near Palestine! She was probably Phoenician and she could be a Philisteen too. The interaction between Palestinians and Greeks is long and undeniable! I didn't know a few things like Andromeda's rocks and Adonis river!

According to Cypriot archaeologists Aphrodite was initially a mother goddess, local to the island. I'm not sure she is Astarte but certainly there were later elements added to her worship that shared many similarities with Middle Eastern neighbors. (dove, seafoam, poppy etc) This is archaeologically proven, after all. Greeks lived in the island along with the Phoenicians at the time.

I have not seen how Baal and Zeus or Athena and Anat may come from each other in archaeological sources here. But I'm sure there are similarities and common inspirations as we were so close to each other! I hadn't thought of Athena and olive tree correlation. For Adon we know that there was inspiration from the East and we can trace his story with Aphrodite from there.

And yes, there are so many characters that came from the Levant! Europe (Ευρώπη - wide/big-eyed) is a Greek word but her father was Phoenix and it's likely she came from there! (I honestly don't remember but I'll search after that!) Greeks agree as well that our stories are interlinked with other peoples. It's impossible to study one nation without, at some point, having to learn things about another. We are all one pond, after all! It's usually the Western countries that want to forget our neighbors.

The history of Christianity is interesting. Greece was the first European nation where Christianity was spread. Apostles directly from Judea came here to preach and baptized the first European ever. They were Judean Jews with some Greek knowledge and philosophy, largely opposed to the Phariseean law. I don't remember any sources speaking of North African apostles and preachers but do let me know if you find them!

As for the Trojans their location shows they were probably part of the Hittite empire. I wouldn't consider the Turks at all because they came at least two thousand years later, and the Arabs were not too many in the area yet. But of course, in any case, the Trojans were Anatolian!

"These modern divisions are just that: New, and meant to divide us as East vs. West, white vs. colored, etc. For a long time, Greece was considered part of the "East," and for good reason."

That's right! Not only were Greeks recognized as "white" veeery recently by NW Europeans but Greeks who know their history and culture do not consider themselves exactly Western either.

lastromanticist

Just adding that one of our two main epitomes of Psuedo Appolodorus library is of Palestinian origin or atleast had Palestinian provenance in preservation as the Sabbatical epitome.

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deadbaguette

Tell me you only have a surface level understanding of the Trojan war without telling me you only have a surface level understanding of the Trojan war

lastromanticist

Sweet Juno would condem me for wealth

Great Minerva would hang me for battle

Yet Paris is a fool for choosing the damnation of love.

Troy will never not fall

#reblog poem #trojan war #been reading dracontius again

an-ruraiocht

while i'm here

smash or pass: cú chulainn from medieval irish literature

smash

pass

Voting ended onOct 30, 2024

an-ruraiocht

#I mean #he is a massive giant man

actually although cú chulainn is occasionally depicted as a giant in later folklore, in medieval literature he is very much not. if anything he is on the small side; at one point it says that he's the size of a teenage girl. the one exception would be during the ríastrad (distortion, warp-spasm, etc) where he kind of becomes... abstract in a way that elongates his body significantly and also turns it inside out. but most of the time he is just a litel creacher

apologies if this is disappointing to anyone but it felt important to clarify in case anyone else was basing their decision on size

sagasandtales

My general idea of his age is like 17, as he is just out of the boy troupe, so hell no. Not to mention the rest of his whole mess.

Also rather famously, he killed a dog.

lastromanticist

Too young and Fergus is like right there instead

#smash or pass me the champions portion

castlescrumblingdown

Hi lads,

I know the world's on fire at the moment but the Dutch government is planning to cut 1 billion Euro in education funding and, as always, the ones who are going to be hit the hardest are going to be small departments. Most important to my interests is the Celtic BA program at Utrecht.

I've been to Utrecht, I've met the students in this program, I've seen the high quality of work that this department is capable of producing, the training that it gives its students, and how far the Dutch government has already fallen behind with regards to its support of Celtic Studies as a field. If this is allowed to happen, I am worried that it might functionally obliterate the presence of Celtic Studies in the Netherlands, when Celtic programs around the world are already constantly under threat of elimination or merging.

I urge everyone who can to sign the international petition here -- I don't have high confidence in the matter due to years of seeing other Celtic programs fade away, but anything that can be of use.

an-ruraiocht

shipping cú chulainn/fer diad but specifically from the eighteenth century text that has fer diad being twenty years older than cú chulainn, because i want to watch the world burn (think it's funny when discourse mongers get mad about things that are absolutely not the main issue here)

an-ruraiocht

honestly there is a lot of comic potential here if you're not a coward

lastromanticist

From the little I have read on this text it's totally nuts sometimes in a great way .its just not that accessible unfortunately

#ulster cycle #coimheasgar na gcuradh #early modern irish literature

yourcurrentany

And Achaean Miku

Yeeh

Miku Pelides Hatsune Achilles yeh

#jointheserver #palamedes #trojan war #vocaloid #ifihadthetimeidmakehersingtheilliad

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yourcurrentany

Hey so

I made a discord server about the Trojan war

Here are the channels

I’m Achilles!

You can be whoever you want, god, warrior, etc! The only need is that it’s a character of the war! (No need to be important on the story, just related to it)

If you want to join as any Trojan war character just ask for it! (I send the invitations privately)

An ode to legendary poets

I adore you poets

Orators of life

Without you legend nor love would come to life

Those of legend I favored most

And my love of narrative

Flows with Thomas's Rythme

For he Rhymes like his fairy love

In sight nor in sleep did

John Barbour proclaims Scotland's might

On the British bards I also love

From taliesin to Gwynn ap Nudd

In gnomic verse they did perscribe

All to live a pleasant time

To you Oisin son of Fionn

I hold the greatest love for him

Who you in verses honey lipped

Made the ideal of leadership

Beautiful Homer who sweet voiced

Made the world rejoice

In the tale of Achillies Rage

And Ullyses fame who faced backlash

For his putrid portrayal of trojans past

By those of the seven hills

Who sought in vergil the cure

To what they perceived as Homeric Ills

Antar is his own delight

Displayed within that holy sight

Shown his love as equal to his might

Before Islam grew so bright

That overcame the Persian past

Foretold and forewarned in sweet Feredowsi's verse

Who made rostam glimmer in Sistan

Under light from Zoroasters first and only

To those who sing Sunjata's might

In Mali over day and night

Too many to name but all great the same

As that Hero with Iron Bending fight

To you anonymous men who utter words to audience

Who make story upon story flow

I want to listen , I wish to learn

To poets I love and those I do not know

#poem #romanticism #lyric #legendary poets

As much as I love the Heroic

I sometimes tire of Gods and monsters

I wish to hear the details of peasant men

Who sew and grow and toil

From day to day again

There is beauty in the pastoral

More than can be assumed

To practice craft despite the fact

Many do presume a lack of wisdom

In its workings by the way

To craftsman , farmers , labourers, and artists

I wish you the brightest day

#poetry #lyrics #romanticism #well wishes

yourcurrentany

Odysseus: Aah...sweeeeeet sweet revenge.

Idk what they meant with the Ajax thing so I just made this sketch-

Politics vent Post - warning discussion of crimes against humanity

I'm an international relations student in my full time, and I just happen to be doing my dissertation on US Evangelical support for the Israeli regime, and every day, I wake I Curse that state and its crimes. The amount of bloodshed propriated by a regime largely propped up by realist war hawks and lunatic apocalyptics makes my blood boil. I have to get this work done, I have to channel this hate into something positive, but on the one hand, I feel so disgusted treating this subject with careful academic gloves , these are real lives and the more I read the more I weep.

#personal #politics #Christian Zionism

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an-ruraiocht

as far as i can tell, ruraiocht/rudraigecht originally just meant like. "fiction". "romances". etc. [eDIL link] [dinneen link] such a flex for the ulster cycle to be like "yeah we're going to take this whole generic term for ourselves actually thanks bye" (which is to say, slaps that it was so important and genre-defining as a type of romance to acquire the generic term as a specific term)

#all fiction is in some way about fionn to me #fenian cycle

shumw4y-deactivated20250804

Taken from Slieve Gullion, Northern Ireland

lastromanticist

A pretty (mc)cool guy hunted here once

#fenian cycle #landscape

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