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[garland-on-thy-brow]

Could we get more thoughts on the possessiveness of your version of Pompey please?

a lot of it has to do with wanting everything sulla had and more, and crassus is at that very fun intersection of something sulla had and more. so naturally. he wants crassus in every way sulla had him, and in every way sulla did not. and he'll never get crassus coming to him (like crassus went to sulla) but he can get something else that is more valuable on this stage of politics: a partner.

crassus' own attitude is complementary to pompey's, since he decided to be co consul's with pompey! more than once! in a way, crassus bet his life on pompey. wow.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

@soldatrose Julia as Octavian's double kind of brings to mind the Caesarion situation except Julia has a better Julian claim that Octavian (by virtue of not being adopted) so he tries to absorb her by marriage rather than by execution.

By the way, the ending of Giulia e Sesto Pompeo is haunted by Caesar's clementia: earlier Julia dared Octavian to show himself a son of Caesar so now he has to prove a point. Feels like for Octavian it is a constant race against his dubious family position (I call him Octavian, but in the opera he is Octavius throughout), thus all the claustrophobic marriage-and-adoption play that will follow.

So Crébillon père and Voltaire agreed, in their respective Triumvirat plays, that Sextus Pompey and Octavian should be in a love triangle. But only one decided their shared love interest should be a Julia, making it a quasi-incestuous infatuation on Octavian's part (not literally because they are not closely related: a daughter of Lucius Caesar would be Antony's cousin and not Octavian's; but thematically because Octavian makes a big deal of his Julian adoption).

It is neat how Octavian in the play, in the process of supposedly avenging his father Caesar, murders someone else's father with the same name (in turn causing his unavenged ghost to wander). Kind of Cinna the poet situation.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

i don’t think this counts as a box at this point

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Translation (by me):

Pompey. [...] This avenging danger that I hold - observe it - I shall plunge into the heart of the cruel and vile Octavius.

Fulvia. I shall change the wedding pomp into sorrowful funerary wails, and the hateful marriage bed into tomb.

Pompey. Come great danger, would you...

Fulvia. Look it firmly in the eye.

Pompey. And in the grave ordeal...

Fulvia. My hand shall not tremble.

Pompey. Your heart is strong and viril. But should the fate prove adverse?

Fulvia. The shadow of my unfaithful husband shall precede me, covered in his blood.

Together. Let the hour of vengeance come with haste; soon my heart will be satisfied.

[Giulia e Sesto Pompeo, Soliva/Perotti]

Sextus Pompey and Fulvia conspiring together is hot.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Thinking about how Contro un cor che accende amore and Voi che sapete are parallel scenes. Rosina in Le nozze responds to Cherubino with "Bella voce" - the same words Almaviva says to Rosina in Il barbiere.

And then the count questions her and locks the door the same way as Bartolo used to in Il barbiere.

And considering how the prequel was written later, one could get a time loop out of it.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

[Snail by Peter Engel.]

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Highlights of the week.

Went for walks.

Did medical quests.

Visited a new place.

Went to a coffee shop.

Made brownies.

Made chocolate bars.

Made hot chocolate.

Roleplayed about fate and curses.

Added new things to the origami house.

Got new paper.

Got a haircut.

Wore nice clothes.

Listened to and read Graun's Cleopatra e Cesare.

Listened to and read Cimarosa's Cleopatra, was disappointed.

Listened to and read Giulia e Sesto Pompeo, now THIS was fun.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

[...]

[...]

Il Catone has the most unexpected EVER version of Porcia.

The author got weird with Plutarch Cat. Min. 30, taking it to mean that Pompey offered to marry Porcia, and she was in favour.

So in the opera Porcia is eager to accept Pompey's proposal that she hopes will soon "make her the Empress of Rome", and holds moreover that "any price is good to pay in order to reign" and that "for achieving greatness, deceit is a virtue". Cato is understandably shocked by his daughter's sentiments.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

in today's letter: plancus tries to say him not picking a side in the civil war is cool actually, and that he totally doesn't want rewards and honours and maybe a triumph for doing nothing, but also like. if he was given those things he would not turn them down :)

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[garland-on-thy-brow]

[Giulia e Sesto Pompeo, Soliva/Perotti]

Sextus Pompey and Fulvia conspiring together is hot.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Spoiler for the ending of Giulia e Sesto Pompeo.

Octavian does an impression of himself in Corneille's Cinna. Very annoying.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Cato is slaying absolute Pharsalia. Would LOVE to hear it sung. I will translate and post an excerpt later because it is inconvenient from the phone.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Anyone surprised a Habsburg wedding has metatextual incest?

Ascanio in Alba is so boring, it must have been composed for a Habsburg wedding, thought I. And I was right.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

The lightning was SO BLUE. The lightning that strikes Dr. Frankenstein's castle at the moment of Sacrilegious Creation in pulp horror blue.

YES, the Cato-Cassius parallel! I was thinking about it before sleep because Il Catone (quoted above) is about Pompey trying to buy/seduce Cato, which echoes in Caesar trying to buy/seduce Cassius in La morte di Cesare (Cato's reaction to Pompey: "Ah che Catone i fini tuoi comprende", "Cato sees your ends right through").

@catilinas I have just had a dream that a colleague called me to inform me he watched a screen adaptation of Pharsalia that came out recently, in which Cato, with his crew of seamen, summons artificial lightning using a bulky device he constructed. I remember they had to rotate some huge coils by the ropes, which was hard work, sinews bulging etc.

The episode, according to the dream, is based on Pharsalia Book 2 starting from the line 288 (which, when I looked it up, is Cato's direct speech - "That even I am rendered guilty will stand as a reproach to the gods" (trans. A. S. Kline). Wild!), and has a Wikipedia article dedicated to it.

My colleague, however, suspected that Lucan misdated the event and wanted me to date it based on other sources.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Last lines that I read before sleep.

[Cato's direct speech:] "What chimeras do you imagine? For Pompey, to take the throne? To hold Rome in chains? And for Cato alone, to be a Sinon of such guilty machinery?"

[Il Catone, Bernardino Moscheni. Translation mine.]

@catilinas I have just had a dream that a colleague called me to inform me he watched a screen adaptation of Pharsalia that came out recently, in which Cato, with his crew of seamen, summons artificial lightning using a bulky device he constructed. I remember they had to rotate some huge coils by the ropes, which was hard work, sinews bulging etc.

The episode, according to the dream, is based on Pharsalia Book 2 starting from the line 288 (which, when I looked it up, is Cato's direct speech - "That even I am rendered guilty will stand as a reproach to the gods" (trans. A. S. Kline). Wild!), and has a Wikipedia article dedicated to it.

My colleague, however, suspected that Lucan misdated the event and wanted me to date it based on other sources.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

@catilinas I have just had a dream that a colleague called me to inform me he watched a screen adaptation of Pharsalia that came out recently, in which Cato, with his crew of seamen, summons artificial lightning using a bulky device he constructed. I remember they had to rotate some huge coils by the ropes, which was hard work, sinews bulging etc.

The episode, according to the dream, is based on Pharsalia Book 2 starting from the line 288 (which, when I looked it up, is Cato's direct speech - "That even I am rendered guilty will stand as a reproach to the gods" (trans. A. S. Kline). Wild!), and has a Wikipedia article dedicated to it.

My colleague, however, suspected that Lucan misdated the event and wanted me to date it based on other sources.

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Reading Il Catone by Bernardino Moscheni. Pompey got compared to the Sun four times within the first two pages.