WAKE UP BITCHES THEY FOUND NEW EURIPIDES FRAGMENTS

The Judgement of Paris, Frontispiece from Padraic Colum’s The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tale of Troy by Willy Pogany (1918)

the telemachus-menelaus-helen scene in the odyssey is frankly insane btw like the fact that menelaus is trying as hard as he can to be subtle about telemachus’ presumably dead father before helen bursts into the room and is like hey guys probably shouldn’t say this but I knew your dead dad lmfao!!!! and everyone starts crying. so she drugs everyone at the table to make them stop before talking in WAY too much detail about the time she bathed and nursed odysseus back to health in front of not only her husband but odysseus’ son and then menelaus starts talking equally extendedly about how helen tried to get them killed in the war and like their stories are mentioning odysseus but clearly there is some unresolved baggage going on between them from the trojan war and telemachus just has to sit there silently until they finish at which point he IMMEDIATELY excuses himself and says they all need to sleep. homer was crazy for that

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

When I saw this picture, I knew I had to draw it with Hektor and Andromache, it's perfect for them~

penelope didn't have to turn the tree bed into a riddle. she could have asked odysseus to prove his identity, to tell her something only he would know — which she actually did a few books earlier, when she asked the beggar to describe odysseus, and odysseus told her about a purple cloak with a particular golden brooch that she fastened herself twenty years ago. when penelope tells telemachus they have signs by which they'll know each other, you sort of expect more of the same. and instead, she decides to trap him. like a bug in a cup.

and it's delightful to me, idk, how odysseus has been trapped and cornered in various way throughout the odyssey, but arguably never so that he has to tell the truth to get out. (with the phaeacians, maybe? the omniscient narrator corroborates some of what he tells them, but do we really know everything?) and in fact he is not trying to get free of penelope. he wants something from her, wants to convince her, wants to be welcomed home, but until this point he's lied to her, revealed himself to other people before her, and been distant with her (though also patient! he doesn't try to strongarm or rush her into accepting him; it's his idea to sleep elsewhere).

except penelope isn't looking for him to be distant and patient. penelope lies in a way that requires odysseus to stop playing along — not only to prove that he knows what odysseus knows, but that he's willing to tell the truth about himself.

i WISH more people knew about age of bronze, it's literally the 'historically accurate' comprehensive and GAY adaptation of the trojan war all the accuracy warriors are clamoring for

it's a comic series written and drawn entirely by Eric Shanower, started in 1998 with those exact parameters

historically situated in the Mycenaean/Hittite cultures

drawing from nearly every text on the war from Homer to Shakespeare

explicit about the possibility that achilles+patroclus may have been meant as lovers. Shanower is gay himself, and found it important to depict them as such all the way back in 1998.

it can be read here in part or here completely (🏴‍☠️), but i also highly recommend supporting the artist, since this is a multi-decade passion project.

If you have achieved something, please remember to observe a mandatory period of basking in the warm glow of your achievement like a lizard on a stone, lest you teach your brain that effort is futile, actually, because it didn't get to enjoy its happy chemicals, so, naturally, nothing good ever comes of trying. (And no, avoiding punishment is not a reward!)

I recommend, like, 5% of basking time in relation to whatever time you invested into achieving the thing minimum. And if you can't make your own bask, friend-brought is fine (= tell your friends!).

everyone shhh for a second and look at this ink doodle of diomedes and glaucus hugging by 18th century painter antoine-jean gros

Ancient Greek culture/mores for deceit and archery is like

Male-coded intelligence vs. female-coded trickery, FIGHT

Male-coded intelligent warfare (fighting from afar is smart and minimizes injury so you can do more of it) vs. female-coded fighting from afar because of trickery and cowardice in not standing up to close combat, FIGHT

Myth-wise, then you've on the one hand got all those female characters resorting to trickery to achieve their aims (Hera, Klytaimnestra, for example) = bad. And on the other hand you've got characters like Odysseus, where the deceit of the wooden horse, which would be the modern-day war crime of perfidy, is smart and good.

And you've got instances like an author writing a dialogue between Chiron and Achilles, where Achilles is scorning archery for being a cowards' method of combat and Chiron rebuking him that it's smart fighting. And in extension/connection, we've got Odysseus who is archery-coded (even if he does not do any archery in the war, at least in our surviving source(s)), and, in the Odyssey, using it to win the day, contra Paris, our ur-example of ~bad coward archer~

From The Odyssey Of Homer Engraved From The Compositions Of John Flaxman.