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imaginarycircus: (tragedies)
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Whoa

posted by [personal profile] imaginarycircus at 07:01am on 13/04/2010
It's really weird when you can't sleep and you're worrying about the ending of your novel and you suddenly realize the answer to your problem is the meat of a paper you wrote your freshman year in college about The Iliad Odyssey, and specifically about how cunning Athena really is. Zeus may have had lightning bolts, but she could control people to a very fine degree.

Case in point. Telemachus. She didn't want Odysseus to return home to a son who wasn't worthy of him so she took the form of Nestor and horrified him with stories about Orestes. Orestes killed his mother, Clytemnestra, because she killed his father, Agamemnon, when he returned home from the war. (He killed Iphegenia for wind when he first set off for Troy and the whole mess was really because there was a curse on the house of Atreide because one of them fed their son to the Gods) but whatever) Athena knew exactly how to push Telemachus' buttons so that he was pissed about all his mother's suitors, but afraid to do too much lest he have to kill his mother to protect his honor.

Hello clarity. Please be here when I sit down to work later today, hopefully after I've had a bit more sleep. Bleh. Maybe I should just get an early start...

eta: David woke up now that it is 7 am and he said, "Why are you wondering around the house at 7 with no pants on reading The Odyssey?"

Well, why not? :/
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There are 20 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] milaya36.livejournal.com at 11:42am on 13/04/2010
Woo! Yay for figuring things out late at night! (I've done that with science problems before...)
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posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 02:36pm on 13/04/2010
In college that used to happen to me with math and physics problems. I figured out Maxwell's equations in the 24 hour study room and was so excited, but it 4 am.
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posted by [identity profile] firynze.livejournal.com at 01:17pm on 13/04/2010
"Why are you wondering around the house at 7 with no pants on reading The Odyssey?"

...you know, that is NOT the strangest Greek-related question I have ever heard. I think that says something.

Also, the whole Atreides thing? Proof of why you do not taunt the gods. Vindictive bastids, all of them, and creative, too.
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posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 02:39pm on 13/04/2010
Right. You make the proper sacrifices and don't stab their child in his only eye.

Oh, it's not the strangest Greek related question I've ever heard either, but I was a Johnnie.
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posted by [identity profile] firynze.livejournal.com at 02:57pm on 13/04/2010
And you don't challenge them to a blind tasting wherein you decide to see if they can detect long pork. Or boast that your daughter is prettier than one of them. Or...

Heh, classical Greek major here. Specialty in magic. I had some...odd...questions asked of me.
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posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 03:10pm on 13/04/2010
YAY GREEK! I only had two years of it. We also read Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, most of the tragedies, Herodotus, Thucydides, Euclid, etc. So I studied the liberal arts and it really was the quadrivium. We then moved on to Virgil and Cicero and then to Descartes on up through Heidegger and Husserl. Plus lots more math and science and music were thrown in.

Magic? I'm so curious! Magic what?
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posted by [identity profile] firynze.livejournal.com at 03:20pm on 13/04/2010
I only had two years of formal training, and one of those was...er...INTERESTING. Mostly self-study, reading the Iliad as part of a graduate seminar. Most of my work was cultural, not linguistic, which was depressing, as I loved the language. There was just no one to work with after I transferred, though.

One of the guys in my grad seminar was a Johnnie. I envied him so much...such original-language goodness!

Magic, well, everything. I've got dual majors - classics/classical Greek and anthropology, specialty ethnoarchaeology subspecialty Aztecs/magic/religion.

My primary concentration in Greek magic was on parallel uses of magic - basically, what the purpose of magic was in an ostensibly rational culture. Turns out, magic was a parallel practice - it worked as a complementary device next to religion, law, and science, not a replacement for them. The most intriguing case of this is in law, really. There's an entire parallel system of detection, prosecution, and punishment that revolves around magical practice.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 03:32pm on 13/04/2010
Was he an Annapolis or Santa Fe grad? If he graduated before 2000 from Santa Fe I may know him. :D

I loved thinking about that when we were reading The Bacchae and other tragedies that pit science against magic. That's one reason I find alchemy's obsession with astrology fascinating--and that is one of the key underpinnings of my novel.
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posted by [identity profile] firynze.livejournal.com at 03:35pm on 13/04/2010
Annapolis.

See, that's the neat thing about later magical practice, too, especially in the Age of Enlightenment - science was just coming into vogue, and alchemy existed as a parallel practice or counterpart to it, not a replacement. That's where all the confusion about poor Dr. John Dee comes in...
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posted by [identity profile] ataralas.livejournal.com at 03:16pm on 13/04/2010
I've read the Odyssey at 7 am with no pants.

As a seduction technique.

...what? It worked!
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 03:23pm on 13/04/2010
\o/

YOU WIN!
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posted by [identity profile] ladyofthelog.livejournal.com at 01:36am on 14/04/2010
David woke up now that it is 7 am and he said, "Why are you wondering around the house at 7 with no pants on reading The Odyssey?"

Well, why not? :/

<3
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 02:01am on 14/04/2010
That was pretty much my reaction. ♥

How are you feeling?
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posted by [identity profile] ladyofthelog.livejournal.com at 02:02am on 14/04/2010
<33333333

So, so much better. I napped for a while, and I've just been mainlining fluids and nibbling on matzoh. So relieved. TY for asking! *hugs*
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posted by [identity profile] lilaia.livejournal.com at 02:26am on 14/04/2010
I also love the idea of you wandering around the house reading The Odyssey without pants. :D
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 02:41am on 14/04/2010
David said it was weird because it was 7 am and I'd obviously been up for a while.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] bodlon.livejournal.com at 03:50am on 14/04/2010
eta: David woke up now that it is 7 am and he said, "Why are you wondering around the house at 7 with no pants on reading The Odyssey?"

Well, why not?

Exactly. That's, like, the optimum moment.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 03:04pm on 14/04/2010
Can't sleep. Read the Odyssey. Makes sense to me, but I was a classics major who got an MfA.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] bodlon.livejournal.com at 04:07pm on 14/04/2010
Back when I worked in technology, my strategy was to read TCP/IP manuals if I couldn't sleep.

If it knocked me out with sheer boring, awesome! Sleep!

If it kept me engaged, awesome! More knowledge!

It's a win-win.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] imaginarycircus.livejournal.com at 07:20pm on 14/04/2010
I think I used to read Kant like that, but lately its been an archeology text book.
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