Filling A Request On Twitter For Hektor Experiencing A Moment Of Happiness, And Really, Isn't That What

Blessed with visions pt. 3

Do you have any article related to the odyssey you'd reccommend as complementary to the source?

sorry i've been sitting on your ask for so long! i am not and never have been a classics student; i came across most of these articles incidentally or here on tumblr:

"the odysseys within the odyssey" by italo calvino

"a note on memory and reciprocity in homer's odyssey" by anita nikkanen

"penelope and the poetics of remembering" by melissa mueller

"a glossary of haunting" by eve tuck and c. ree (this is mostly about horror fiction and settler-colonialism but it has a gloss on the cyclops that i think everyone, certainly everyone american, should read)

silence in the land of logos by silvia montiglio chapter 8: "silence, ruse, and endurance: odysseus and beyond"

"the name of odysseus" by g.e. dimock, jr.

also ok it's very much not "good" but there's an article by w.b. stanford called "personal relationships" that just lists all his hot takes about the relationships in the odyssey for 25 pages. it reads just like scrolling the blog of a mutual twice removed. they let men publish ANYTHING in the 60s. i love this essay. i would read this essay out loud over discord right now if someone asked me.

yoo imma fight a river god

everyone loves Predynastic Egyptian Terracotta Bowl with Human Feet. shout-out to a real one

There's been some amount of academic discussion about Paris' two names - usually in terms of which is earlier and where they come from and what epithets are used with which name. (Most of his epithets "belong" only to Alexander, if you're curious.) But, a small branch of it is "who uses what name, in-story, in the Iliad" ; Ann Suter (this woman, uhh her ideas are pretty crazy so approach with awareness of that), I.F. de Jong and, commenting on especially the latter's article, Michael Lloyd.

I lean more towards Lloyd's assessment that de Jong's premise (that "Paris" is between the Trojans and "Alexander" for the Achaeans as a sort of 'international' name) can't really be supported. But! That doesn't mean you still can't have fun with the split in names and get something in terms of character and worldbuilding out of that!

So, first of all, in the Iliad, "Alexander" is used far more than "Paris". Only Hektor ever uses "Paris" in direct speech, about or to him (we'll get back to Hektor).

Everyone else, Achaean or Trojan, uses Alexander.

Both Suter and de Jong would, in various ways, either ignore this or explain it away as a "this only happens when the Trojans are talking to Achaeans" (Hektor, before the duel), or "what is said is going to be said to Achaeans" (Priam, telling Idaeus what to report to the Achaean commanders). Honestly, that seems overly complicated and not very reasonable to me. Especially in the case of Priam, if Paris was the name he's most used to using, there is no reason for him not to use Paris and then Idaeus simply switches when reporting the speech to the Achaeans. Yes, reported speech/instructions are usually relayed verbatim, but switching a name wouldn't be changing what's actually been said.

And, anyway, coming back to Hektor, who is the one to most consistently use Paris? Also uses Alexander, when thinking to himself, in his own head. (He also uses Paris to Achilles.)

Myth-wise, in various later sources you get the very logical conclusion of "one name was given by his foster father, the other by his royal parents". (Though there's not necessarily any consistency, even with one writer, which name was given by whom.)

Given the way the Iliad prioritises Alexander, I'd go with that Alexander is the name Priam and Hecuba gave their son, even if he was going to be exposed, before giving him away. Given how Alexander is used by basically everyone to address him, this would make good sense, I think. The Achaeans would only know of Alexander, prince of Troy, and that is certainly the name most/all Trojans would use. Paris is then the name given him by his foster father. Hektor using it can be turned into a look into their relationship, because what you see is Hektor using the name of the "outsider" (by a bare technically "not" his brother), to insult his brother, when he's angry. A verbal distance to add to the emotional one, if not one that's complete and sometimes blurs.

(This doesn't take into account post-Iliad sources, where 'Paris' vastly outnumber the uses of 'Alexander'.)

Debated posting this for a while because. yknow. but i figured it was all artistic enough that it couldn't hurt to share. Odysseus and Penelope truly are the only couple ever tbh, i love how much they love each other <3 Referenced from "Paulo e Virginia" by Puttinati

“Please, let him be soft. I know you made him with gunmetal bones and wolf’s teeth. I know you made him to be a warrior a soldier a hero. But even gunmetal can warp and even wolf’s teeth can dull and I do not want to see him break the way old and worn and overused things do. I do not want to see him go up in flames the way all heroes end up martyrs. I know that you will tell me that the world needs him. The world needs his heart and his faith and his courage and his strength and his bones and his teeth and his blood and his voice and his– The world needs anything he will give them. Damn the world, and damn you too. Damn anyone that ever asked anything of him, damn anyone that ever took anything from him, damn anyone that ever prayed to his name. You know that he will give them everything until there is nothing left of him but the imprint of dust where his feet once trod. You know that he will bear the world like Atlas until his shoulders collapse and his knees buckle and he is crushed by all he used to carry. Dear God, you have already made an Atlas. You have already made an Achilles and an Icarus and a Hercules. You have already made so many heroes, and you can make another again. You can have your pick of heroes. So please, I beg you– he is all that I have, and you have so many heroes and the world has so many more. Let him be soft, and let him be mine.”

— Please, let him be happy ( j.p. )

Speaking of how Troy 2004 has personally offended me:

They took sandpaper and went to town on Hector. Smoothed out all his imperfections because how can good man also be bad man sometimes oh no my brain can't deal with that.

Also they didn't make him nearly as scary as he should be. Hector in the iliad is the. Scariest. The achaeans are terrified of him. Like he's the guy that walks on the battlefield and people run for their lives. He can lift boulders. He gets his ribcage smashed and gets back up like ten minutes later (granted, that's apollo, but in the god-less universe of troy they could've used it to make him even scarier) He doesn't go home all clean, he goes home and talks to his wife and holds his son while covered in gore. It's stressed that nobody but Achilles can beat him. He nearly burns the ships. He boasts and commits hybris after killing Patroclus.

Hector is the unbeatable war machine that makes mistakes sometimes, that morphs into a loving, smiling dad when he sees his son. The unbeatable war machine that's keeping an entire city safe, that gets scared and runs for his life when he knows he's in actual danger. That in the second-to-final moment has to be tricked into bravery, to stand and fight, so he has the chance at the final moment to recover from that and be supremely brave again and run straight to death, with his mind set on glory. Because he's extremely human right to the end. And his pride is as huge as his feeling of duty and love.

Also they took away that great scene where he's like "fuck your bird signs" he was such a legend for that in the iliad.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus is extraordinary for the flexibility with which he can inhabit many different names, or no name at all. It is this quality of being multinamed and nameless that enables him to survive. By contrast, almost all the warriors of The Iliad yearn to have a name and a story that lasts forever. Their many names and titles, as sons and brothers and comrades and fathers and rulers, are essential to their identities, their connections with one another, and their fame after death. They fear, above all, being humiliated (cursed with a negative name), or forgotten and nameless. The lists and catalogs of names are essential to the poem’s own work, of memorializing and mourning the dead. Once the bodies return to dust, these syllables are all that remain.

– Emily Wilson, Translator's note for The Iliad.

reminder that hektor talks to his horses about how wonderful andromache is