no emo jokes, please

The image of Eros as a dart-player is funny enough, but it gets even funnier when you realise that, at the time, the term didn’t refer to playing darts, but to their military precursor: a sort of small javelin, typically 2-4 feet in length, with a heavy lead-weighted head to allow it to pierce armour and foul shields.

before i do that though i should probably explain how roman names work. basically you’ve got a first name (eg gaius) and a family name (eg mucius). now if you’re one rockin dude you might be given a super cool nickname (eg scaevola) to distinguish you from all the other boring ass bitches in your family, and you could then pass it on to your kids if you wanted

so how did scaevola get his nickname? well, way back in fuck-all bc, rome was getting attacked by these guys called the clusians, and our pal gaius mucius decided to sneak in and kill their king, lars porsena. unfortunately on the day that ol gaius did this, the clusian soldiers were getting paid, so porsena and his secretary were dressed up the same and gaius couldn’t tell which was which. so instead of coming back later like a normal person, he went ‘well fvck it’ and decided to murder one of them. turns out he murdered the wrong guy. WHOOPS. understandably porsena was not pleased with this and had gaius captured. however, gaius was one hell of a baller, because he was like ‘whatever, kill me if yov want, bvt some other roman will follow after me, cavse vs romans dont give a SHIT abovt dying’ and to prove his point he STUCK HIS RIGHT HAND IN A FIRE and just sort of stared at porsena while he roasted his own hand like anderson cooper with a mic at a trump rally, and i guess that freaked porsena out so much (which, fair) that he and his buddies packed up and left. after that, everyone started calling our buddy gaius ‘scaevola,’ which means LEFT-HANDED