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Claude-Clair Francin (1702-1773) “Ganymede” Marble Located in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

In 1743, Louis XV of France commissioned the statue for the gardens of Versailles. A plaster model of the figure was exhibited two years later at the Paris Salon, but Francin never finished the marble. At the request of the count of Maurepas (chief adviser to Louis XVI), Nicolas-François Dupré completed the statue in 1777-87.

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“Nothing I say was learned from others. This is my life, my ordeal, long as the siege he laid at Troy and more demanding.”

— Clytaemnestra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon [transl. Robert Fagles] (via injusticeworth)

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Andromache and Hector

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all this pyrrhus talk got my thinking about that scene in the Aeneid where Andromache meets ascanius

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“Then the Father opened out his golden scales. In the pans he put two fates of death’s long sorrow, one for Achilleus and one for Hektor the tamer of horses, and he took the scales in the middle and lifted them up: and Hektor’s day of doom sank down, away into Hades…”

— The Iliad book 22, The Death of Hektor

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“Then down from heaven came Athene and drew nigh him, fashioned in the likeness of a women.” from The Odyssey of Homer by W. Russell Flint (1924)

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Why do you think Menelaus was the only Achaean warrior from the Trojan War to get promissed an afterlife in the Isles of the Blessed? Proteus tells him this, but all of the other warriors are seen with other souls in the dank part of the Underworld by Odysseus, including Achilles, Agamemnon and Ajax. Even the "mortal half" of Heracles, the greatest hero of all, is there, not in Elysium.

well, he's zeus' son-in-law. proteus' prophecy definitely makes it sound like it's a rare priviliege that menelaus will be allowed to go to the blessed isles after death, but i don't really read it as menelaus being the only achaean warrior ever allowed to.

when it comes to who odysseus says he saw in the underworld, i'm half "well how reliable is odysseus as a narrator anyway" (i love the apologoi for this btw!) and half "whoa those ancient greeks sure had a lot of different traditions for how the afterlife worked" and it wouldn't surprise me if book 4 might reflect different traditions than book 11. i'm really intrigued by the internal inconsistencies in the homeric epics (there's a book about this called sense and nonsense in homer that i've been meaning to read but haven't yet). fascinating stuff!

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i'm too academicbrained to just go "lol no" at any part of ancient mythology but i still think the isles of the blessed is a really weak concept and i don't vibe with it

oh no your favourite greek heroes died? no don't worry babe they totally went to the VIP Level 2 where they just kept doing stuff

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i'm very tickled by the suggestion that the reason menelaus went largely untouched by the tantalid family curse was because his marriage to helen, a daughter of zeus, acted as a kind of inoculation

like not only is my wife hot as fuck, she's given me antibodies against the compounding sins of my ancestors

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here's another reminder to NOT send me asks complaining about other tumblr users and their mythology takes, even indirectly. even if you don't name them. if you want to know my thoughts on something mythology related, just ask me my thoughts, i'm happy to share them. i've been online since the dial-up days, i'm way too old and busy for "fandom drama" or whatever

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Emil Wolff, 1802-1879

Thetis on a Dolphin, n/d, marble, 91x83 cm

The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg Inv. H.sk. 1449

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..

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Antonio Bellucci, 1654-1726

Mars and Venus entrapped by Vulcan, n/d, oil on canvas, 84.4x231 cm

Private Collection

This painting originally formed part of a group of four overdoors, of which at least two formed part of the decoration of the State Apartments at Chatsworth in Derbyshire in the 18th century. (Sotheby's)

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SEVEN AGAINST THEBES: 

SEVEN Against Thebes is the third part of a trilogy written by one of the greatest of the Greek tragedians, Aeschylus in 467 BCE, winning first prize in competition at Dionysia. Unfortunately, only fragments of the first two plays, Laius and Oedipus and the accompanying satyr drama Sphinx remain. Based on the well-known ancient Greek myth surrounding King Oedipus of Thebes, Seven Against Thebes centers on this rivalry between Eteocles and Polynices, the two sons of Oedipus, fulfilling the curse of their father, never being able to settle their dispute and, in the end, falling by each other’s hand. As evident with his most famous work Oresteia, Aeschylus may well have been the only tragedian to treat his trilogies as a single drama. This practice is evident in Seven Against Thebes where he makes a number of references to events from the first two plays.

Read More

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Reblog this and add the name of your favourite Greek tragedy