#roman epics

[mask131]

Roman sources 1 : Roman myths

I was asked by @subjects-of-the-king if I knew of some actual ancient Roman sources about the Roman gods in their specificity. Note that I am NOT an expert on Roman religion, and that I mostly rely on books written by experts and people that studied the Roman religion and culture - but I do know of a few “direct” sources, and I will split them down briefly in two.

The first part here being entirely focused around myths. All the texts below are about Roman authors writing the myths and legends of their mythology - and... if you are interested in the pre-Hellenized Roman gods, it won’t be of any real big use, because as I said, almost all of Roman mythology is just a copy-paste or remake of the Greek one. BUT these texts are without a doubt much needed to understand how the Romans received the Greek legends and how they re-adapted them to their own religion and culture (plus if you want to compare the Greek and Roman versions of the legend, you’ll need them) 

The same way the Greeks myth have two huge literary monuments at their base (Homer and Hesiod’s works), the Roman mythology relies on two big authors that made a bridge between Roman and Greek culture by importing the Greek legends into the Roman world, or creating the first literary Roman legends. These authors are Ovid and Virgil.

Ovid is of course most famed for his “Metamorphoses”, (Transformations), a collection of tales of transformation from the Greek legends, re-adapted for the Roman religion (plus with some purely unique Roman legends). “Metamorphoses” is especially famous due to the reverse-influence it had on the reception of the Greek myths - as I said before, Ovid invented a LOT of rapes of “Classical mythology”, and turned a lot of consensual or un-ambiguous Greek mythological relationships into rapes and sexual abuses. Ovid however wrote many other works that are of relevance to the Roman mythology - two I can quote of the top of my head at “Fasti” (The Festivals) which details the Roman calendar, its various festivals and celebrations and the legends tied to them (so we do have here some additional info about Roman religion itself), and the Heroides (Heroines), which is basically a set of invented letters presenting mythological heroines in a confessional mode. 

The other big behemoth of Roman mythology is without a doubt Virgil, thanks to his most famous work: Aeneid. THE Roman epic poem, conceived as a direct sequel to Homer’s “Iliad”, and inventing a cultural/legendary/historical link tying the Greek mythology to the Roman one, with the founding hero of the Roman civilization, Aeneas. Just like with Ovid, while the Aeneid is his most famous works, Virgil wrote many other pieces very informative about the Roman gods - such as the Georgics, which is... a poem about agriculture basically. But when you remember that originally the pre-Hellenized Roman gods were agricultural and nature gods, centered around a farmer-religion, it makes sense a poem about agricultural chores turns out to contain a lot of info about myths, legends, rites and gods. 

Beyond those two main guys, there are several other authors that made their mark and influence over Roman myths.

# Statius, who wrote two Roman epics; the Thebaid and the Achilleid (two Roman rewrites of Greek myths, respectively the fight of Eteocles and Polynices for the throne of Thebes, and the life of Achilles). Another big Roman epic we know about (but unfinished) is the Argonautica, by Valerius Flaccus - which as the title says is a Roman retelling of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. 

# Seneca, who was one of the most famous play-writers of Ancient Rome, and left us numerous famous Roman theater plays presenting Roman versions of Greek myths: Medea, Phaedra, Thyestes, Troades, a Roman Oedipus, etc...

# Another BIG author when it comes to Roman myths is without a doubt Hyginus, who produced two works entirely about collecting myths. The first is “Fabulae”, which is one of the biggest myth compilations ever produced by a Roman authors, around three hundred different stories compiled together - though, due to the huge number of stories, Hyginus sacrificed the poetic complexity of Ovid and Virgil, and so he often tells the myths in very short, simplified forms so he could cram as much as he could. His second work is basically the same thing - but this time with a theme, “De Astronomica”, a compilation of myths entirely centered around astronomy and the constellations. 

# Not a Roman author, but a Greek one tackling the Roman stories: I will briefly mention here Plutach’s famous “Parallel Lives”, of their full title “Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans”. As the name says, Plutarch decided to present biographies of famous, noble and legendary Greek and Roman figures, placed together in parallels - and I include the text here because it covers the mythical first rulers of Rome, such as Romulus and Numa Pompilius. 

# I will finish this first list with a very... unusual work. Apuleius “The Golden Ass”, also known as The Metamorphoses of Apuleius. It is a late Roman novel (written somewhere on the second century) and... it is a very strange, unusual weird story. It is an humoristic, bawdy, almost erotic story of a man ending up turned into a donkey by mistake and following the adventures of various people, but it also sometimes turns into grotesque and nightmarish horror (mostly thanks to the constant involvment of terrifying witches), and it ends up as a mystical quest under the Roman cult of the goddess Isis (it shows here the “late” part of the “late Roman era”, since Apuleius’ text depicts a Roman religion stuffed with “foreign gods”). And it contains numerous very influential tales of Greco-Roman legends - most notably, it is in this story that you will find THE most famous and complete version of the myth of Psyche and Cupid, so famous that during European Renaissance it was THIS version of the myth that was known, and no other. 

(A second part of this post will arrive one of these days, centered about texts talking of religion and rites, rather than myths)

[demigods-posts]

imagine a world where the heroes of olympus series was one big crossover. a world where we meet an eleven year old boy named jason, no last name because it reminds him of his mother — a drunk who literally threw him to the wolves as a toddler. jason, who's earliest memory is chewing on a stapler and his older sister tending to the wound on his bottom lip — but he hasn't seen or heard from her since they were separated years ago. jason, who grew up reaching for the sky like a purpose, desperate for a chance to prove himself. jason, who fought to save the world at fifteen years old. and jason, who finds himself in the grand canyon four months later with no memory of who he is or where he came from, feet away from some frantic sixteen year old girl in search of some dude named percy jackson. imagine what this could have been.

[agir1ukn0w]

sorry but snow is such a well written iconic villain and donald sutherland performs him so fucking good it's almost hilarious how i start practically foaming at the mouth every time the man opens his mouth to say something deplorable in those movies, like he's so utterly and despicably wrong about almost every crucial thing from katniss and peeta's relationship to human nature as a whole and yet the second he starts talking about how hope is the only thing stronger than fear and how you have to allow a little hope but control it so its spark doesn't grow into revolution and how it's the things we love the most that destroy us you bet your ass i am on the floor screaming crying throwing up because that is my psychotic mustache-twirling villain RIGHT THERE

[fangirltothefullest]

Can't stop listening to No Longer You and it's SO good and I can't help imagining Janus as the prophet and leading Roman in this terrible waltz.

[firnen-the-teragram-teabag]

[galacticsabc]

Pallas Athena

[lyculuscaelus]

We’re in one of the oldest fandoms where the canon itself is long lost and the source materials for us to draw inspiration from are those of the earliest fanfics themselves—two of which being commonly accepted as beta canon due to their top quality. Sometimes these fanfics contradict each other due to all sorts of OOCs and inconsistencies which is forcing us to choose our own sources to rely on to draw fanart and write fanfics. Each generation of fanfic writers are introducing more headcanons in their works and sometimes their fanfics of fanfics become so popular that they are prompting new sub-fandoms to emerge, inspiring more people to draw fanart and write fanfics for these fanfics of fanfics. It’s almost as if there is a family tree of fanfics and we’re now reaching the third generation and beyond

[not-sure-what-im-feeling]

Comics I wrote the dialogue for! Art by @thegoldenduckie

I haven’t really done comics yet so I’m still figuring some things out lol

[seeminglyseph]

All the wolf references, especially for Telemachus, but they've also come up a bit for Odysseus, probably come back to Odysseus' grandfather and Hermes' son Autolycus, the master thief, whose name I believe according to some websites translates to "The Wolf Himself"

So "Little Wolf" is likely Telemachus being of a line of wolves.

Even Odysseus was "the pack of wolves is swimming with the shark now"

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

*cocks gun super srsly* Say ‘the cycle’ one more time! SAY IT!!

[houseofmcallister]

hey epic the musical fans, come closer im gonna do something very normal and im not about to trick you into readin g the odyssey why would i do that ahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahha anyways check out this cool link ooooooooo you wanna click it so bad oooooooooo you wanna click this second link soooooooooo bad. and this third link too oooo you wanna click them you wanna click this fourth link sooooooooo baddd dude

[finelythreadedsky]

the aeneid as a post-apocalyptic poem, yes sure, the fall of troy is the end of a world, but what about the aeneid as a pre-apocalyptic poem???? vergil does all this ideological work setting up augustus as the telos toward which the entire arc of history bends and you can argue how he really feels about that but regardless, doesn't it mean that augustus is the end? that there is nothing beyond him, nothing after him? vergil poises himself as writing at the top of the world and there's nowhere else to go from there when that moment passes

[ditoob]

You know, for all that Aeneas claims to hate Odysseus, you’d be hard pressed to find two characters in the Epic Cycle who have more to relate to eachother about. Sure they fought on different sides of the war but nobody, except for perhaps Aeneas, could truly understand what Odysseus went through.

While if they ever saw eachother Aeneas would most certainly try to kill him, I think they’d have a lot to learn of eachother if the conditions had just been a little different. I suppose it’s one of the many tragedies of war, two fathers so similar, yet so different.

(Anyway on that Aeneas and his crew flipping off Ithaka while Odysseus is still at Kalyspo’s will never stop being funny to me)

[apollonianposts]

launch out on his story, muse, daughter of zeus,

start from where you will - sing for our time too.

[m-for-now]

Does anyone have fun headcanons for some random events that happened at Camp Jupiter during the time of the Titan war? Because we know next to nothing about the Romans but I refuse to believe they didn't have any crazy weird events and quests.

Like, if the Seven were to talk about the time before HoO (or generally any Romans and Greeks) and Percy and Annabeth would go like "Oh and we went through the sea of monsters and ended up on Circe's Island that one time" or "and that's how Percy showed up to his own funeral", sure, that would be a crazy story. But Jason also defeated a Titan on his own and Reyna only ever went to CJ After Percy and Annabeth were at Circe's island, what was the crazy stuff that happened in between?

Also what did the Romans think Caused the Titan War since they obviously couldn't have known it was Luke?

[thylionheart]

I LOVE the mythological trope of trickster gods turning into Death gods, but even though Hermes has so much going on within his domains, he is, at the heart, meant to be a trickster god. And I love the fact that he doesn’t really trick mortals, just the other gods. He’s a deal maker, but he’s a deal maker with mortals in the way of “I’ll give this boon to you if you do something for me, nothing too crazy or that will harm you, you’re definitely benefiting more in this exchange; I’m just doing this to fuck with some other god lol”

Analyses of the Odyssey make Hermes giving Odysseus the plant to thwart Circe a symbol of Hermes being the “messenger” of knowledge [which- also there is a really interesting connection between trickster-psychopomp gods and esoteric knowledge], but really… we all know Hermes is only doing this to fuck with Circe bc they’re exes