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#classics tag
morosexualhoratio · 1 year
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hey girl sorry um. we stabbed your boyfriend in the senate house. yeah a seer told him to beware the ides of march but he didn't listen. brutus and cassius got him. i'm so sorry
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othellho · 7 months
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Sophocles, Elektra, trans. Anne Carson [1123-1140].
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antiquery · 11 months
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been thinking about Medea lately, and I think I’ve finally figured out why the attitude of “wow Medea was right, go off queen” (e.g. this post) really gets on my nerves: I think it’s sexist!
like, let’s be absolutely clear: Medea’s actions at the end of the Euripides play are deeply, deeply evil. Jason and Kreon treat her horribly, and there’s no excuse for their behavior, but like...Medea slaughters two innocent children and an innocent woman in cold blood, not to protect herself or someone else, but to ensure Jason’s suffering. that’s evil.
the idea that Medea could possibly be justified in such an action fundamentally requires us to hold her to a lower moral standard than a man in her same position. the implication is that Medea’s experience as a woman in Greek society entitles her to revenge at any cost: she has been wronged, so punishment is hers to exact. we don’t consider this acceptable when Achilles is asserting that his grief over Patroclus entitles him to the emotional torture of Priam, and in fact the great human moment of the Iliad is Priam’s plea to Achilles to return Hector’s corpse. same moral standard applies to Medea. her rage over her mistreatment is not the problem: her violence against innocent people in an attempt to drag Jason down with her is.
which is not to say that I think Medea is a one-dimensional character! I think Euripides was really onto something with the way Medea agonizes over what to do during the play, by turns committing to this great evil and shrinking back in horror at what she’s contemplating. I also like the emphasis he places on Medea’s divine origins, her connection to the world of the gods via both her bloodline and her practice of magic. it creates this sort of dualism in her character: there’s Medea the human woman, who’s deeply in love with Jason and in agony at his betrayal, who loves her children and is terrified of what will become of them, and of her, once she’s forced to leave Corinth. this Medea is angry and scared, helpless to save herself or her children, helpless to make Jason understand how badly he’s hurting her.
and then there’s Medea daughter of the sun, Medea the hero, whose response to Jason’s betrayal is to make his life a living hell. except Medea-daughter-of-the-sun and Medea-the-human don’t exactly share the same value set: the former is the latter with all of her humanity stripped away, whose purpose is wholly aligned towards divine justice. but divine-Medea is powerful, and if human Medea only lets her, she can make damn sure that neither of them ever feel helpless again.
honestly my ideal version of the play is a tragedy about Medea’s fall, whose central tension is whether the human part of her will give in to the divine part of her under the stress of betrayal and rejection. at the end of the play, Medea gets everything she ever wanted (power, glory, fear, vengeance)-- all it costs is her humanity. but I think that only works if you frame Medea’s actions at the end of the play as horrific, rather than a triumph; if you take the morality of her actions seriously, as opposed to justifying them prima facie because she’s been through hell.
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My friend turned to me today and asked “is Cicero based or cringe” and I had no idea how to answer them
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some-sort-of-siren · 7 months
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The thing about the Iliad is all the men are undeniably gentle. They’re warriors and they’re killers and yes, the blood doesn’t phase them, But they’re also gentle. It’s why we see Hector playing with his son, Achilles crying with Priam, Odysseus being referred to not as the son of Laertes but as the father of Telemachus. Homer wants us to know that these boys were not warriors from birth, they were thrust into it unwillingly and though they’re good at it and they want the glory, they’re people at the end of the day and they love more then they hate. Hector and was it Menelaus? Book 5? exchange gifts! Diomedes and glaucus exchange armor! These men are gentle and they do not want to be fighting and they are good at it but they do not love battle, that’s not why they’re heroes. They’re heroes because they are all fighting for someone at the end of it, not something. Because at the end of the day, it’s about the people they love because they are not warriors at heart. The war is about Helen and it’s about glory, but it’s also about Penelope and Andromache and Priam and peleus and all the families of the warriors. Which is why the Iliad has survived this long.
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markantonys · 9 months
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i was already hollering over julia telling iullus it's safe for them to bang now that she's pregnant, and then i remembered this line from macrobius and hollered even more
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goingtothebes · 8 months
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claricemedici · 11 months
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Favourite historical figures: Germanicus
“He had a polite and modest personality, a wonderful openness and honesty about him” - Tacitus
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hadleyfraserfaggot · 5 days
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Oedipus at Kolonos (Trans. Robert Bagg), Sophocles | Antigone (Trans. Robert Bagg), Sophocles
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penmeetspage · 3 months
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ANYWAY so are we going to talk about how when Odysseus is uhh. Strongly Recommended to apologize, he launches immediately into an explanation instead? Not in any tone suggesting he's deliberately/defiantly doing that instead, but... I mean I've been that kid! My little brother was that kid! If you can just explain well enough what you were thinking and what your actual intentions were, then They Won't Be Mad At You, right?
And in the attempt to explain it right you completely forget to get to the actual apology part, for the actual damage you actually did.
Self recognition through art I guess?
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tryworks · 1 year
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from the roman epitaph section of thelatinlibrary: while i lived, i drank gladly. drink, you, who are living!
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classicsstudentsunion · 2 months
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How many letters in Thyestes? Ate
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othellho · 6 months
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Sophocles, Elektra, trans. Anne Carson [135-156].
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athenas-sw0rd · 2 years
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Achilles: If a stranger came up to you and said "I'm your dad's friend, He told me to pick you up" what would you say?
Neoptolemus: I'd say "You're lying my dad doesn't have any friends!"
Achilles: Not where i was going, but ok.
Odysseus, 10 years later: ...
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trans-marcus-brutus · 11 months
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Haha wow Michael posts art on tumblr for the first time in millennia have my messy Antony and Cleopatra doodles for no reason
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some-sort-of-siren · 1 year
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