Honestly, this book is difficult, for me, to read hence I’m writing notes as I work through it. While reading, I use thiswebsite to provide ambience! The sounds of the fire crackling and pages rustling makes me feel very…cool so I highly recommend listening to similar tunes while reading ♡
Hello friends! I’m welcoming the new week by beginning a new book. I’m excited to begin reading ‘The Odyssey!’ I hope this month has been kind to you x
When Odysseus describes staying on Aeolus’s island, he uses the word φἰλει (10.14), which has been taken to mean that Aeolus hosted him in a friendly fashion. It is then followed by Odysseus saying that Aeolus “refused nothing” when he asked (τι κεῖνος ἀνήνατο, 10.18). While φίλει has both platonic and romantic/sexual connotations, parallels could be drawn between Odysseus’s arrival and reception on Aeolus’s island, and his arrival and reception on Circe’s island (wherein he enters a sexual relationship with the goddess and is then taken care of through her resources). Thus, it is not inconceivable that Odysseus had a similar relationship with Aeolus in book 10 of the Odyssey. In this essay I will
ngl im kind of obsessed with how odysseus meets achilles and ajax in the underworld and is like ‘why are you guys still upset about dying, just be happy ☺️’ bruh
Phemius is portrayed here on the reverse of a silver hemidrachm coin from ancient Thessaly, minted by the Ainianes. They were essentially a tribal people/state with their capital at Hypata, rather than a conventional Greek polis. The coin dates from the 360s to 650s BC. Phemius is shown nude but for a belt holding a short sword in a scabbard and a chlamys draped over his shoulders and arm. He’s hurling a javelin with his right hand and holding his petasos, as if it were a small shield, with his left. ΑΙΝΙΑΝΩΝ is inscribed and on the ground line between his feet is a sideways Φ (=Phemios). The obverse shows the laureate and bearded head of Zeus.
I know Odysseus’ whole thing is how much he loved his wife (even in the original books I assume) but I’ve never realised how refreshing it is to see a male character actually love his wife so sincerely and publicly
The gays once again ruining the ‘i hate my wife’ jokes industry
The 5 lost epics of the Trojan War narrative that fully tell the whole story. The Iliad is the second epic and The Odyssey is the seventh; the other 5 poems were written around the same timer period as Homer, and one of the authors (who wrote 2 of the 5 lost epics) was Homer’s son-in-law. Not to mention that each subsequent poem takes place right after the events of the prior. So yeah, 5/7ths of a whole epic series are just gone forever, save for a few verses here and there, and we’ll probably never find them.
