#Catamitus

[ooqzcwurcu]

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[casiavium]

Latin translators are not allowed to translate the numerous queer slurs against men who were "passive" in sex as fag anymore. they must be denoted as "bottom (footnote) derogatory"

[pangxueyu]

War of the Chosen Season 3

The War of the Chosen Season 3, is the 3rd WOC, and takes place in February 2023. The WOC S3 was the 3rd WOC of DOX. The deity for this WOC shall be Catamitus the Cupbearer of the Gods who shall bestow upon his blessings on the chosen champions. Catamitus is the most beautiful mortal and the patron of the Aquaric games. Rewards————-The Chosen Ones would receive several rewards. Firstly, he or…

[kevere]

first you’ll see me on the news,

then never again

[eledritch]

YOURE AN AQUARIUS. FIGHT ME. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE OF US. Jk, none of my friends are Aquarius, it's nice to meet you.

Why does this sum up Aquariuses so well?? 

but yo, my fellow ganymedes. how’s it feel to have a zodiac based off of the pretty lad eagle Zeus stole to be his “cup bearer” (yeah, sure, zeus, we all know what cups he was bearing, ya nasty) and gave the poor guy’s father a herd of horses as compensation for his kidnapped son??? pretty good, right

[aimee-maroux]

Ancient Erotica: Words and Sexual Terms from Greek Mythology

There are quite a few sayings and words derived from Greek mythology that we still use today. I put together this little collection of those related to sex and love:

Adonis

Adonis was so sexy, the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone fought over him. And the goddesses were not the only ones interested in beautiful Adonis: Apollon, Dionysos and Herakles all had a thing for the good-looking young man.

He was killed by a boar, in some versions a shape assumed by Aphrodite's jealous lover Ares or Apollon who was enraged that Adonis lay not only with him but Aphrodite as well.

Herakles' death also has something to do with Adonis in one version of the myth: Aphrodite, furious about Herakles seducing her lover, taught the centaur Nessos the way to kill the hero.

Today, we still use the name of Adonis to refer to a very attractive member of the male sex.

Read my story of Persephone and Adonis with Hades watching here.

Androgynous

Androgynos is a word in ancient Greek that is applied to a person doing both active, male things and passive, female ones, specifically concerning sexual intercourse.

It seems to have mainly been used in a derogatory manner for effeminate men.

The god Dionysos, often depicted as an effeminate young man, is said to be androgynos, having a penchant for wearing women's clothing and perfume, but the word also implies that he likes to be fucked in the arse. Our sweet Adonis, who had sexual relations with Apollon and Aphrodite, among others, was also called androgynos because he acted "as a man for Aphrodite and a woman for Apollon".

Today, the word androgynous has lost its sexual connotaton but still relates that someone is of indeterminate sex or to a feminine man or a masculine woman. So it has pretty much preserved its original meaning over millenia.

Aphrodisiac

An aphrodisiac is, of course, a substance that is supposed to increase the libido or sex drive when consumed. It was named by the ancient Greeks for the goddess of love and lust, Aphrodite.

The ancient Greek word is ἀφροδισιακόν, aphrodisiakon, derived from aphrodisios, "pertaining to Aphrodite".

Today, certain food is said to be an aphrodisiac just like it was in ancient times. Just look at all the cook books on this topic! Chocolate would only come to Greece after Europe made contact with the American continent, though. The ancient Greeks had to make do with saffron, pomegranate juice and lentil beans.

I hope it's needless to say that the results of most aphrodisiacs are just due to the placebo effect.

Catamite

The English word "catamite" derives from the Latin Catamitus, a corruption of the Greek name Ganymede or Ganymedes (Γανυμήδης).

The modern meaning of "a boy kept for homosexual practices" is closely related to the myth of Ganymedes, a beautiful boy who was abducted by Zeus to serve as his lover and cup bearer for all eternity.

Hence a handsome cup bearer was called "Ganymedes" (or "Catamitus") in ancient times and the word was used affectionately (unless directed at a grown man). Ganymedes appears throughout Roman literature as the archetype of the beautiful, sexually desirable male slave.

Circe

Circe is the sorceress who turned Odysseus' crew into swine when he came upon her island on his arduous journey.

With the help of Hermes, Odysseus avoided the fate of his crew and the loss of his manhood, which Hermes claimed the enchantress would have stolen unless he made her swear by the gods not to do it.

Circe is maybe the original femme fatale, a beautiful and alluring but treacherous and dangerous woman who will not hesitate to steal your cock under the pretense of sweet love-making.

Today, Circe is used in synonym with temptress, siren, and the aforementioned femme fatale.

In some languages, Circe also became a verb with the meaning "to blind someone with your charms", like the enchantress did.

Read Aiaian Summer, a Circe / Penelope erotic short story, here.

Erotic(a)

Unlike the origins of pornography, erotic and erotica are really derived from Greek myth, namely from Eros, god of love and sexual desire.

Hermaphrodite

Hermaphroditos, as their name plainly reveals, is the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. According to some, they were born with both genitalia, other sources (Ovid) say he was born male but attracted the love of a Naiad nymph and their two forms were merged into one. Neither a man nor a woman, they are both.

Therefore, Hermaphroditos is depicted with both, male and female features, usually female thighs, breasts, and hairstyle, and male genitalia.

Hermaphroditos is the god of marriage, hermaphrodites and of effeminates and belongs to the winged love-gods known as Erotes, also children of Aphrodite like Eros and Anteros.

Today, the word hermaphrodite is a biological term for an organism that has complete or partial reproductive organs and produces both, eggs and sperm. Historically, the word hermaphrodite has also been used to describe ambiguous genitalia. The word intersex has come into preferred usage for humans, as the word hermaphrodite is misleading and supposedly stigmatizing.

Read more about the mythology of Hermaphroditos here!

Nymphomania

A nymph is a minor goddess or spirit bound to a particular location. There are dryads who live in trees, like the one comforting Dionysos in "Taken by Greek Gods: Dionysos and Aura", oreads who live in the hills and mountains, naiads who live in freshwater, and nereids who live in the sea. They are usually depicted as beautiful, nubile young women who love to dance and sing and fuck. Their sexual freedom stands in stark contrast to the restricted lives of wives and daughters in the Greek polis who were supposed to be chaste and faithful (not that they always were...).

Nymphs were also a part of the retinue of Dionysos and Pan, or the huntress Artemis. The latter were required to remain chaste, though, lest they were kicked out by the virgin goddess.

Because of their attractiveness, nymphs were frequently the target of amorous satyrs and gods alike. Their attention was not always appreciated, but in general the nymphs happily made love to men or women freely and without care.

The Greek word nymphe (νύμφη) does not refer to the lustful deities in particular, but is used primarily for a "nubile young woman, bride, young wife", a young women at the peak of her sexual attractiveness, contrasting with the word parthenos (παρθένος), "a virgin (of any age)", and kore (κόρη < κόρϝα), a "maiden, girl". Unlike today, the ancient Greeks viewed women as more libidinous than men because sex doesn't stop for them after the (first) orgasm. The insatiable young wife was a popular trope in Greek and Roman comedy.

Today, nymphomania describes extremely frequent or suddenly increased libido in women. The word is no longer in use by healthcare professionals who use the unisex term hypersexuality instead, but it's still a known word with a rather derogatory baggage.

Porn(ography)

This is a bit of a cheat on my part - the word porn originates in ancient Greek culture, but not in Greek mythology. I can make the case that allegedly there were sacred prostitutes in the service of Aphrodite, who is also the goddess of prostitution, but it'd still be ancient culture rather than mythology. But I just wanted to include this word anyway :-)

The Greek word porneia is the root of the English terms porn, pornography etc. It is derived from Greek pernemi (πέρνημι), "to sell", as a pornē was a type of prostitute in ancient Greece. Pornai were the lowest kind of prostitute, but their profession was considered a source of income just like any other. They could be male (pornoi) or female (pornai). The price is often said to be "an obolos", which was 1/6 of a drachma as well as a proverbial coin of low value or a good bargain. The cheapest sex position was called kubda a rear-entry position with both partners standing or, more kolloquial, "bent over in the street".

The modern word pornography thus means "writing about prostitutes", even though it's used for visual media much, much more than for writing.

Priapism

Priapism is named for the rustic god Priapos, a son of Aphrodite who was cursed with an oversized, constant erection by Hera when he was still in Aphrodite's womb. But despite his permanently erect penis, he could not sustain the erection when the time came for sexual intercourse. His father varies from source to source, but Greek historian Diodorus Siculus makes a compelling argument that inspired me to write "Taken by Greek Gods: Aphrodite's Boy Toy":

"Now the ancients record in their myths that Priapos was the son of Dionysos and Aphrodite and they present a plausible argument for this lineage; for men when under the influence of wine find the members of their bodies tense and inclined to the pleasures of love."

Today, we remember Priapos by using his name to refer to a condition in which the penis remains erect for hours in the absence of stimulation or after stimulation has ended.

Satyrism

A satyr is a nature spirit akin to the nymph, inhabiting woodlands, mountains, and pastures. Originally, satyrs had the ears and tail of a horse, sometimes also the legs. Later they began to acquire goat-like characteristics with the legs and horns of goats. Since the Renaissance, satyrs have been most often represented with the legs and horns of goats and lost their horse features.

Satyrs are libido-driven creatures in Greek mythology, usually depicted naked with oversized erections and often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike, but thankfully with little success. They are also shown masturbating or engaging in bestiality.

Despite their ridiculous appearance, satyrs were also thought to possess useful knowledge. The wise old satyr Silenos was the tutor of young Dionysos when he was still a demigod and the satyrs remained his faithful companions when he ascended to godhood.

In modern times, their notorious sex-drive gave rise to the term satyrism for extremely frequent or suddenly increased libido in men, the spear counterpart to nymphomania. Healthcare professionals use the unisex term hypersexuality for both sexes today.

to tantalise

Tantalos, who was welcomed to the feast of the gods of Olympos, took advantage of their hospitality and stole nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods to bring to the humans. He also gossiped about the secrets of the gods he heard at their table.

But his truly wicked deed for which he deserves to be thrown into Tartaros is the serving of his own son, boiled and cut up in a banquet he threw for the gods. The gods saw through this gruesome deception and refused to eat, except for Demeter who was distraught by the loss of her daughter Persephone at the time and ate a part of the boy's shoulder.

The Fates brought the boy back to life and the gods gave him a shoulder made of ivory by the divine smith Hephaistos himself. Poseidon wanted him to live on Mount Olympos, but he was thrown out by Zeus because of his anger at Tantalos.

Tantalos himself was thrown into Tartaros, the deep abyss that is used by the gods of Olympos as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked. His punishment for his acts was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit-bearing tree with low-hanging branches. But whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised them just short of his grasp. And whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any.

Today, the word "tantalise" stands for temptation without satisfaction, for the torment of someone with the sight or promise of something that is unobtainable, akin to the fate of Tantalos in Tartaros.

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[greyjoyed]

absolutely insane that the word catamite exists in asoiaf especially since it comes from a reference to zeus and ganymede (in latin, catamitus). does greek mythology exist in westeros grrm

[homodnp]

were the romans and greeks really *that* gay? please give examples

hehehehe my time to shine has come

[disclaimer: if ya wanna get really technical ‘straight’ ‘bi/pan’ ‘gay’ didn’t exist as concepts in rome and greece, they didn’t even have words for it, because it was assumed that anyone could and would fuck anyone. so while the greeks and romans weren’t precisely ‘gay’ (although obvs as a gay i know what people mean when they say it don’t woorry ajkbfj), the greeks and romans weren’t straight either ;)]

- obvious example: achilles’ soulmate was a dude called patroklos and their ashes were forever buried together in the same urn when they died.

- caesar had flings with both men and women, and according to his critics, he was a big-time bottom. same-sex attraction was common but it was only not a bad thing as long as you were a top. being the bottom was seen as a sign of inferiority or submission. so if you disliked someone, even in politics, one usual way to undermine them was to say they’re a bottom. in caesar’s case, a dude called suetonius was very guilty of this; he claimed that another dude called curio described caesar as ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife’ (again because wife = submission = bottom and man = domination = top, in ancient standards). (however i don’t think that biased intentions makes it any less likely that caesar had things with guys, again because guy-on-guy action was so common.)

- mark anthony had a boyfriend/acting ‘husband’ as a teen. again there’s debate over how true it is because our source was his public enemy, a dude named cicero. cicero actually framed anthony as being the dude’s sugar baby/prostitute. but it’s likely that they did have something because cicero’s style was to manipulate existing truths, rather than to lie outright.

- it was a greek lesbian named sappho whose name and origins later led to english ‘lesbian’ and ‘sapphic’. you’ll notice i haven’t mentioned a lot of women and that’s because rome and greece were heavy patriarchies - men and men’s influence and crafts were much more favoured. women did write and craft and hold influence, but we’ve lost most of all of that since: when greece and rome as we know it fell, the neighbouring/descendant civilisations (who were also patriarchal) again favoured men’s writings and pottery and crafts and stories. so historiography is a lot more difficult if you want to study ancient women because the sources have been lost. and the men whose writings were saved barely wrote about women other than to tell them what or what not to do. thus we don’t normally hear about female homosexuality. but boy oh boy do we know it happened anyway - not just because of sappho, but because we know women were kept together in their homes all the time without husbands’ supervision and could only travel outside if they were maidservants, going to the water wells where other maidservants congregated 👀 

- homosexuality appeared a lot in their religions and not necessarilly in a negative way. apollo is a very famous example of a god who loved men and women (one of the saddest well-known greek myths is apollo accidentally killing his male lover, hyacinthos), but even zeus had a boytoy as hiss cup-bearer called ganymede. (ganymede’s latin name was catamitus, where we get the word ‘catamite’ from.)

- this one’s kind of niche but i just love it anyway. a speech called Against Simon, written by a celebrated athenian speech-writer called lysias. it was about big drama between a dude called simon, the prosecutor, and an unnamed defendant whom lysias was defending, and they’d both been fighting for the time and love of a young guy called theodotos. so basically twilight’s love triangle but greek and gay. also the case went to court because simon had tried to murder the contender.

- a brilliant line of roman graffiti in pompeii, italy: “weep, you girls. my penis has given you up. now it penetrates men’s behinds. goodbye, wondrous femininity!”

i could definitely find more if i kept searching but my dinner’s getting cold, sorry afjkbfbjakajfkb. enjoy!!

[antinous-posts]

Catamite

In ancient Greece and Rome, a catamite (Latin: catamitus) was a pubescent boy who was the intimate companion of a young man, usually in a pederastic relationship. It was generally a term of affection and literally means "Ganymede" in Latin, but it was also used as a term of insult when directed toward a grown man. The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the name of the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer, according to Greek mythology. The Etruscan form of the name was Catmite, from an alternative Greek form of the name, Gadymedes.

In its modern usage, the term catamite refers to a boy as the passive or receiving partner in anal intercourse with a man.

Contents

References in literatureEditIn Plato's dialogue Gorgias (at 494e), Socrates uses the term in a conversation with Callicles contrasting appetites and contentment.The word appears widely but not necessarily frequently in the Latin literature of antiquity, from Plautus to Ausonius. It is sometimes a synonym for puer delicatus, "delicate boy". Cicero uses the term as an insult. The word became a general term for a boy groomed for sexual purposes. Also appears in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.Stephen Dedalus ponders the word in Ulysses when discussing accusations that William Shakespeare might have been a pederast.C. S. Lewis in his partial autobiography Surprised by Joy described the social roles during his time at Wyvern College (by which he meant Malvern College) as including the role of "Tart": "a pretty and effeminate-looking small boy who acts as a catamite to one or more of his seniors..." and noted that "pederasty...was not [frowned upon as seriously as] wearing one's coat unbuttoned."Anthony Burgess's 1980 novel Earthly Powers uses the word in its opening sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."In the post-apocalyptic landscape of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, the narrator describes an army on the move on foot with "women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites".

source: Wikipedia

Picture: The Aduction of Ganymede by Zeus, by Eustache Le Sueur, 1617- 1655

[art-now-uk]

Cardinal Sins (Catamite)., Robert Adam

The reinvention of a well-known product that is either loved or hated and repackaged. Using the mythology of a Catamite,(a young boy kept for homosexual sex by an older man), the Latin Catamitus a variant of Ganymede son of Laomedon,(beautiful youth, cup-bearer to the Gods). By combining these two maxim's the painting is a statement of the hypocrisy of religious vocations being a safe route for paedophiles to exploit vulnerable children under the protection of the Church. The suspended Rose, (subrosa) Latin in secret. The Cardinal jar lid collar. The items of bribery in the children's tattooed hands.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Cardinal-Sins-Catamite/721395/2229802/view

[roamingholiday]

Friday, September 29th 2017

POMPEII, AND THE BAY OF NAPLES, IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE.

Before I go into more detail, I just wanted to mention something. For most students at Temple Rome, they have chosen to study abroad here rather than elsewhere simply because our school has a campus here. It’s a study abroad opportunity, true, and they enjoy living here because it’s different from the United States, because they get to experience a new culture, learn a new language, and it’s in Europe, which means quick and cheap flights to anywhere within the EU. I don’t disagree with any of that, and I think they’re all perfectly, excellently valid reasons for choosing to stay here for a semester or a year.

That’s not why I’m here, though. I’m in Rome because it’s Rome. I’m not jetting off to Munich or Paris every other weekend because this isn’t just an easy access point for me. I’ve been studying Latin for six years now. I’m getting a degree in Classics. I never grew out of my little kid obsession with Greek and Roman mythology, and now I’m majoring in it. I was seven when I first picked up a book on mythology and I haven’t really put it down since. I’m in Rome. I get to walk along the Tiber each morning and see the Colosseum in the distance and that is ridiculous to me, even now, after almost two months. I’ve read letters and poems and speeches about the streets that I’m walking down to get to school every day and that’s insane.

Rome is a modern city, though, and it’s impossible to forget it, even with my imagination. So you can imagine how I felt wandering through the ruins of Pompeii.

I’ve been to Pompeii once before, on a day trip for one of my roommate’s birthdays, and we did a rather stumbling self-guided tour which, while very fun, was hardly informative. This particular trip, however, was an excursion associated with my Roman History course, lead by a professor who lives and breathes classical history, and who promised us before we left that it would be a death march through the ruins and we would get more information than we knew what to do with over the next three days. I was, as you might expect, very excited.

We took a big coach bus down on Friday, boarding at 7 in the morning exactly (I am not afraid to leave late students behind!! -Professor, on three different occasions when reminding us that when he says we leave at 7 he means we leave at 7). We were immediately given a forty some page packet of maps, floor plans, and letters of Pliny, and then left to fall, one and all, to sleep during the first couple hour leg of the journey.

We did not end up in Pompeii during the first day. Instead, we went to a beautiful little town called Terracina, in the bay of Naples, to visit the temple complex of Iuppiter Anxur, a gorgeous building that overlooks Terracina and the bay from a cliff, with foundations dating back to long before the Romans were out conquering the whole of Southern Italy (the Roman colony of Terracina, if you were curious, was founded in 329 BCE), though the current iteration was built primarily in the first century BCE, at the time of the second triumvirate, as part of a veteran colony. The temple was probably dedicated to Jupiter (hence the name), though there are theories about it really being a Venus territory.

At the base of the cliff on which the temple sits, notable because it’s not actually a natural cliff. About two thousand years ago, give or take a century or two, the Romans decided that going around the mountain took too long, so they just…. moved the mountain. Carved it flat and made a passageway. If you look closely at the cliff you can actually see Roman numerals that were carved into the rock to indicate how much was cut away at that point. At the highest point, 120 ft of stone was removed.

Terracina and the bay of Naples from the temple, because it was stunningly beautiful.

There is no photograph of the actual temple, I’m afraid, because there was no way to get a good picture from the base of the cliff, and no way to capture everything when we were wandering around inside. Google Terracina Iuppiter Anxur if you’re curious.

Following Terracina, we headed off to the Villa of Tiberius.

CRASH COURSE IN VILLAS: There are two kinds of villas. You might think that there are three kinds of villas. You would be wrong. The two kinds of villas are called villa urbana and villa rustica. Neither of them exist within the boundaries of any ancient city, because villas are, by definition, country estates. If it’s a house in the country, it’s a villa. If it’s a house in the city, it’s a domus at best. The villa rustica is essentially a farmhouse. Rustic, you might say. Like something one might expect to exist in the countryside. The villa urbana is like if you were a very rich person and could pack up everything that you liked about being in a booming metropolis of a city like Rome, and then stuck it in a house in the countryside so that you could feel free from city woes. There is an absolutely hysterical genre of poetry written by Roman poets who think that they should be able to tell you how to live in the countryside and ‘rough it’ because they happen to have access to a house that is, in the most basic sense, in the country. Lots of stuff about how to farm written by dudes who have, once, glanced out of their gilded window frames to observe a slave in the field across the way. Go read the Georgics (Virgil, pre-Aeneid. Don’t get me wrong, fantastic political commentary in that poem, but in no way is it actually about “agricultural things,” even if that is the Greek translation of the word georgic.

Villa culture was, essentially, about flaunting wealth, and reveling in your own status as a highly educated member of the elite. You built the houses to have massive libraries and statuary and a view of the ocean, so that you could roll around in your own cultural and intellectual heritage in front of the fishes, and generally prove that you were better than everyone else.

Anyway, the Villa of Tiberius. Tiberius was emperor after Augustus, and got the entirely unenviable task of trying to convince everybody that emperors were a good idea (Augustus never technically declared himself emperor, you know?) and also trying to sort out the mess that happens when there are no rules because one single genius invented the entire government structure and ran it by himself for forty five years and then died without telling anyone how he did it all. I do not begrudge him his gorgeous villa, if only because he deserved a place to get some R&R after years spent trying to drag a reinvented governmental system from the hands of a dead man.

The coolest part of the villa (both figuratively and literally, actually) was the natural cave in the cliff wall that the villa was built next to. The base of the villa opened onto the ocean (you can not buy beach front property this good today, my friend), but the entire left side extended into the cave, and incorporated a gorgeous series of tide pools, both natural and manmade. This cave was the crowning jewel of Tiberius’s villa, and included several incredible sculptures that now live in the museum next to the villa’s ruins.

Statue of Ganymede, above the cave’s entrance. Looks like he’s got wings, but he doesn’t, actually, this is a statue that depicts the precise moment that Zeus, having looked down across the mortal world and seen Ganymede and thought Wow Pretty, sent an eagle to abduct him. For those of you who don’t know the myth, Ganymede is literally so attractive that Zeus makes him a god on Olympus. Just for being pretty. He’s Zeus’s cupbearer. If you thought people were joking about how very startlingly gay Ancient Greece was, you would be very wrong.

To be clear, there is nothing heterosexual about this story. At all. Zeus did not make Ganymede a god because he was lonely and wanted a good buddy to josh around with. Just. To be abundantly clear. Very very homosexual feelings all around, here. I say this because I once had someone tell me, to my face, that there was no way ancient Greek gods were actually gay. My dude, you have no idea.

(I mean, more accurately speaking Zeus is just very, very pansexual (or bisexual, depending on your preference), but this particular story is just super gay.)

Also, for those of you clever cookies who noticed that I’m not using the Roman name, good for you. The Ganymede myth does exist in Rome, he’s called Catamitus and was abducted by Jupiter, but this sculpture is pretty definitely Ganymede, because the theme for all of the sculptures in the cave was hellenism (or How Greek Can You Be: Roman Edition), but I’ll get to that later.

More cave! You can see the Ganymede sculpture all the way up at the tippy top. It’s a recreation, also, the sculpture is, the original is in the museum to preserve it. Most of the floor of the cave is taken up by a tidal pool, too, and you can see all the way in the back a carved out portion, and what looks like a door, and a glowing white square next to the door. For size reference of just how large (I hesitate to call it gigantic, only because I know there are caves that are much, much larger, but it was big to me, okay?) the cave is, I am about as tall as that glowing white square thing in that cut out room. Yes, I’m bitter about that. Moving on.

Another angle of that same cut out room, now inside the cave. You see what I mean about the floor, yeah?

From the back of the cave. There was a large space behind me, of course, and there were those cut out rooms, but most of the cave was taken up by the pool. The theory is that there would have been a bedchamber area and a dining area in these cut out spaces, so that when the weather was too warm Tiberius could retreat to his cave house and live comfortably.

As you can see in the background, that whole area on the left where there doesn’t appear to be any sign of human habitation is the ocean. Honestly, if this were my villa, I would probably never leave. Screw running Rome, I want to sit in my cave beach house and read from my enormous library and have my servants bring me whatever I want. Sounds like a good life.

Now we get to the museum, and an artistic rendering of the cave statuary as it probably stood. That beautiful still glassy pool wouldn’t have been empty, not in an emperor’s house.

You’ve already gotten the spiel about letter E, Ganymede, so let’s move on to C, all the way in the back there (where I was standing to take that cave mouth photograph, actually, though that means almost nothing to you).

A recreation, of course, we don’t have this entire thing, but we have enough fragments and enough literary sources describing it to thing that this is pretty close to the original. This is, in all his alcoholic glory, Polyphemus, the cyclops from the Odyssey, who captured Odysseus and his men in his cave to eat them. Odysseus disagreed with that plan of action, for fairly obvious reasons, and thus got Polyphemus drunk, stabbed out his only eye with a burning stake, and then hitched a ride on the undersides of Polyphemus’s sheep (poor guy was a shepherd) in order to get out of the cave without being noticed (Polyphemus was blind, see, not dumb, so he felt the backs of his sheep to make sure that none of his captives rode out on them. He didn’t think to check the underbelly of the sheep because who rides on an underbelly? Nobody, that’s who). As one does. He also told Polyphemus, as he left, that his name was Nobody, which is why none of the other cyclops came to the rescue when Polyphemus shouted for help, because Nobody was attacking him.

This is B, from that little drawing up there, though it doesn’t really look like all that much. It’s made from the fragments that we have, rather than being a reconstruction, like the Polyphemus scene. It’s from the Odyssey as well, later on in the story, when Odysseus’s ship must pass by the cave of the monster Scylla. Scylla is a sea monster, who has dog heads instead of legs. Yeah. Not dog /legs/ instead of legs, or a dog head instead of a head, but dog heads, multiple, for legs. I’ll let you figure the logistics of that one out, because honestly I have sat through an entire class where twenty classics students, plus our classics PhD professor, tried and failed to understand how exactly that might work. Horrifying? Yes. Very confusing? Also yes. Something that it is very difficult to make a statue of? Also also yes.

This particular scene is of Scylla taking men directly from Odysseus’s ship to eat them. With her human head? With her dog heads? Who knows! Not us! We don’t want to!

We’re missing most of the figure of Scylla, so you’re just going to have to imagine a beautiful woman somewhere in the center of the piece, somehow emerging out of all of those dogs. Also, that hand in the front there is supposed to go on the prow of the ship, we think, but that doesn’t fit the reconstructed image at all unless the artist just threw all of anatomy out of the window when he made the piece, which is not a thing to rule out.

Interestingly, the sculpture is, apparently, made by the same workshop in Rome that crafted the fairly famous sculpture of Laocoon and his sons being eaten by two giant sea snakes. There is a theme in this workshop’s work, can you tell?

Neither of the other two statues were intact enough to take photographs of, just a fragment here and there. However, we know that D, from the drawing, is Odysseus and his bro Diomedes stealing the Palladium of Troy, which was a little statue of Pallas that represented the safety of Troy.

Interesting story about Pallas time! So, while most people associate the name Pallas with an identity of Athena, as in Pallas Athena, that wasn’t the original Pallas. She was a nymph, a friend of Athena’s who trained with her when they were both young (relatively speaking, seeing as Athena was never technically young, she ‘sprung from Zeus’s head fully formed’ which is also a mental image that you really don’t want to think too hard about), until one day Zeus looked down, thought the two of them were fighting instead of training, and distracted Pallas with his shield in the clouds long enough for her to pause, and for Athena to accidentally put a spear through her heart. Athena was devastated, created a likeness of her friend and placed it in Troy so she would not be forgotten, took on the name Pallas Athena, and also declared herself an eternal virgin, by the way, because that is a totally rational reaction to the death of someone who is definitely just a friend. Ehem. Anyway. That statue was stolen by Odysseus because he has no sense of the sacred, so that the Greeks could defeat Troy without their guardian spirit. The Palladium was then moved, some say, to Rome, and placed in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum, to keep Rome safe.

The final statue, A, on the left of the diagram, is a bit of a mystery. It’s two figures, one of whom is dressed in greek armor circa the Trojan War, we know that. The current theories are either that that is Menelaus holding the body of Achilles, or Achilles holding the body of Patroclus. I prefer the second interpretation, honestly, both because I like that story better, but also because according to the Iliad Menelaus didn’t even like Achilles, and I’m pretty sure the myth has Ajax getting all weepy over his body, not Menelaus. I don’t even know where we got the idea of Menelaus from, honestly, because it doesn’t make sense narratively. Also, there are so many statues of Achilles dramatically holding up Patroclus’s body and looking like his world is ending (which it is) that it just seems more plausible that it’s them.

All of these scenes from the Odyssey and the Iliad do actually have a purpose being in the villa of a Roman emperor, by the way, for all that they absolutely also represent the best of Greek legendary history. The villa is built next to the mountain Circeo, which is supposedly the mountain where the sorceress Circe lives, whom Odysseus visits and is enamored by for a full year (anyone who wants you to feel sorry for Odysseus taking ten years to get home clearly has no idea what he was doing in those ten years, honestly), connecting this place in historical memory to the idea of Greek travel and Mediterranean exploration, a thousand years before Rome became a superpower. The statuary is both Tiberius’s way of proving that he is very educated, because to be educated was to be familiar with Greek works, in that time, but also paying homage to local traditions, and retaining the Greek background that all of Rome is simultaneously enormously proud and very ashamed of. The relationship between Greece and Rome is very big sibling/little sibling, where the little sibling becomes enormously successful in life and the older sibling’s accomplishments, impressive though they might be ordinarily, fade to the background in the world’s eyes, but in the eyes of the little sibling they’ll always be. Well. Their older sibling. It’s one part reverence, one part hatred, and a whole lot of uncomfortable familial feelings that few people ever untangle without the help of a very, very good therapist.

After the Villa of Tiberius, we stopped in the unbelievably adorable little town of Sperlonga for lunch. I cannot overemphasize how beautiful this place is. Entirely made of tiny little streets that don’t allow cars? Check. Built of that beautiful white stone that glows in the ever-present sun and makes you feel like you’re wandering through a castle in the sky? Check. Flowers spilling out of every window box, and overhanging trees and vines providing both riotous color amidst the gleaming white buildings and much needed shade? Check. Absolutely breathtaking view of the ocean from the cliffs that it is perched on? Check. 10/10, would go back just to gape at the sheer gorgeousness of the place.

Following lunch, we got back in the bus and drove until we hit Naples, and the Archeological Museum therein.

I typically don’t…. Well, it’s not that I don’t like art museums, I appreciate them in a general sense as cultural conservation, and in certain moods I enjoy walking through them. I just tend to get distracted when looking at something purely visual for too long. It’s why I also do other things while watching TV and movies. So I go through art museums pretty quickly, and as long as I’ve glanced at everything, I feel like I’ve successfully taken everything in. It’s probably why I am the worst person to go to an art museum with, just in general.

(Books, by the way, in no way count as purely visual objects, and I can happily read a book for hours without getting distracted, but that’s reading, not looking.)

However. If there were ever a museum that I could lose a day in, it’s this one.

We covered quite a bit of material, mostly on hyper specific things (-and this is the scrollwork from the top of one of the columns on one of the temples on the Capitoline hill, note the beginnings of Ionian influence in the for the most part standard Doric structure-) that I feel like would not be particularly interesting to you, and in fact are not particularly interesting to me, mostly because that particular lecture tended to be geared towards the art history class, and not my Roman history class, but there were some great pieces of statuary that I want to note.

First, there were the simply exquisite pieces from Rome’s south east bath complex.

This is a multi-figure piece done in a similar style as the Scylla and the Laocoon pieces I’ve mentioned before, depicting the story of Dirce, a woman who insulted another woman named Antiope, who just happened to have two sons Amphion and Zethis, who got upset at the insult and, as you can see, behaved in that totally rational and calm way that all Greeks and Romans are known for, and punished Dirce by tying her to a raging bull in order to be trampled along the streets of Rome. Fun times.

This sculpture would have been featured at one end of the bath complex, and at the other would have stood a statue of Hercules. We saw that statue, significantly larger than lifelike, as well, though I neglected to take a picture of it. The statue is of a single figure this time, and is called Hercules at Rest, because he’s just kinda standing there, leaning on his club. He looks kinda tired. Me too, buddy, me too.

The statue is significant particularly because it represents a shift in focus in the Greek and Roman art world, from Classical to Hellenistic. In classical style, heroes and gods are typically depicted doing heroic things. Hellenism focuses more on the humanity of heroes and gods, and tends to show them doing rather uniquely human things, like leaning on their clubs to catch a break because just because you can carry the world on your back doesn’t mean you should, Hercules.

Another feature of hellenistic design, and one that makes this my favorite era of ancient art, is that the sculptures take great delight in hiding things in their designs, so that one has to observe the entire piece to get a full understanding of the story being told here. In the case of the Hercules statue, my professor instructed us to walk around to the back of the statue to “see what you observe.”

As the statue was both very large and also not wearing pants, we were all…. mildly alarmed at his suggestion, to say the least. However, we are also sheep, so we dutifully trundled around to the back of the statue to look.

Behind his back, Hercules is holding something. Three round somethings that, back when the statue was painted in its full glory, would have been done in gold.

The presence of the three golden apples, hidden so casually in the statue’s slumped over posture, gives this Hercules at Rest a definitive place in the timeline of the myth of Hercules, and also explains the need for the rest in the first place. Hellenism is about humanizing heroes, sure, but they’re still heroes, and the artist knows that. Even heroes get tired, but heroes get tired from doing things like holding the literal weight of the world on their backs and stealing impossible, Trojan-war-starting prizes from dragons in the gardens of goddesses.

In summary, a good statue.

My least favorite statue, by the way, was this one:

I do not like when the statues have eyes. I just don’t. Why would you do that. She’s going to come alive and murder everyone in this museum. You’re going to have that on your conscience, unnamed dude who thought that five of these were good decoration for his entryway.

(Unnamed dude was actually pretty cool, he owned the House of the Papyri, a villa that was discovered and named for the number of papyri preserved in its library. The statue is one of the Danaids, who were fifty daughters of the king of Danaus, who married his daughters all off in one fell swoop to a fellow king named Aegyptus who happened to have fifty sons. Due to unclear circumstances, the fifty daughters all killed their husbands, all on their wedding night. Except for one, who was clearly just a coward or something. Anyway, there were statues of all fifty of the daughters in Augustus’s temple on the Palatine, and this unnamed homeowner decided to copy his emperor’s super creepy taste in artwork. He was actually probably fairly close to Augustus, at least as much as anyone was, because in his library he had a book dedicated by Virgil himself, and everyone knows that Virgil was Augustus’s bestie. As much as anyone was.)

There was more, so much more, in the museum of Naples but frankly this post is already over four thousand words and I am fairly sure that no one cares about my unhealthily strong opinions about the styling of various Roman emperor busts, so I think I’ll take my leave here.

We left Naples and headed to a hotel in Paestum, called Poseidonia, which was very lovely apart from having a super weird bathroom set up. I may have flooded the bathroom. Just a little bit. There’s just no wall? There’s a little square of tile, with a lip, theoretically to prevent the water from going anywhere, but then the shower head points out into open space and all that the lip on the floor does is block whatever water the shower sprays around the bathroom from getting back tot he drain and long story short I flooded the bathroom a little bit.

But then the hotel was thoughtful enough to provide me with a really delicious gluten free dinner and so all is forgiven really.

[shiny-skiddo]

thank u so much for the roselia! shes so cool

I'm glad that you like her!

[autisticsimon-archive-blog]

i love u, earthly embodiment of science!

[buckyremember-archive-blog]

catamitus replied to your post: I have a question for the trans commun...

body dysphoria, yep. (although not all gender dysphoria is body dysphoria)

pretty please explain? i want to be as accurate as possible

[nonbinaryresource]

catamitus replied to your post:Can u be non binary and cis?

can i just add that u can be non-binary without identifying as trans, but that doesnt make you cis. maybe that’s what anon was asking about?

yes, this is also true.

[adrocks]

andrew scott?

JOHN UR GETTING BACK INTO MY SHERLOCK PHASE

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