[emerges from a pool of blood and viscera]

hi i just wrote a paper on manhood in the iliad and i didn't get to write about everything i wanted to because me and my project partner were too mentally ill about the iliad already and there was a page limit so now i have so many words about the way men will define themselves in times of war and how those aspects which are most important to their character get amplified and how their relationships to their fathers are so defining of how they view themselves as men and also how men will form bonds beyond simple companionship and how they need each other and AURGHHHHHAHFA AFLAJD [explodes]

new benign toxic trait just dropped, it is: dipping out before the end of a loop so i can go and watch neoptolemus sadly hurling himself up and down a stack of crates

[at Achilles's funeral] Agamemnon: *places his hand on the pyre and sobs* Agamemnon: How could you do this to me? We are so understaffed.

i love the part of sophocles' ajax where odysseus very carefully, very diplomatically debates agamemnon, trying to convince him that ajax deserves a proper burial

some of my favourite lines:

AGAMEMNON: Odysseus, are you for me or are you against me, and for this man? ODYSSEUS: I hated him when it was honourable to hate him.

!!

ODYSSEUS: He was my enemy, but he was also noble. AGAMEMNON: And you have respect for an enemy's corpse? ODYSSEUS: I am moved by admiration for his greatness, rather than by hatred for his smallness. AGAMEMNON: He was a man of many turns. ODYSSEUS: Many of our friends later become enemies. AGAMEMNON: But do you wish to praise these so-called friends? ODYSSEUS: I do not see friends and enemies as mutually exclusive.

and the finishing blow:

AGAMEMNON: I see now that every man works for himself. ODYSSEUS: Who else should a man work for?

eyes

Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos, tr. by Anne Carson [ID in alt text]

RIP Odysseus you would have loved long distance calls.

RIP Diomedes you would have loved Call of Duty voice chats.

RIP Patroclus you would have loved winning every high school popularity contest.

RIP Achilles you would have loved Alpha male TikToks.

RIP Agamemnon you would have loved being an asshole CEO.

RIP Nestor you would have loved toddler leashes.

RIP Cassandra you would have loved being able to sue people for the damages they caused you.

RIP Hector you would have loved the Kentucky Derby.

RIP Paris you would have loved doxxing people anonymously.

RIP Helen you would have loved women getting to have rights.

RIP Troy you would have loved fire extinguishers.

I finished rereading the odyssey, so now I have come with more shitty memes

So I uhhh... I finished the Iliad. I had a lot of fun but there were so MANY weird ass funny moments that I HAD to draw. Enjoy my personal retelling of these bits. (The designs for the characters are very undocumented and definitely not final though).

PART ONE:

Part two over there!

she gets me she just does

Agamemnon, Steven Berkoff

why is the prophecy never convenient for ME

Something I find makes the life and death of Achilles far more tragic is the fact that all he is is the Trojan War. His parents’ wedding begins the conflict, and he dies before the end of the war. His entire life was spent in something he had no control over. Did he know Helen? Paris? Hektor? The Trojans became his enemies only when he reached the beaches of Troy.

Hell, if we go by the Achilleid, Achilles didn’t even know what the war was about until he was sailing to Troy. A young boy whose birth produced an unjust prophecy that dictated the rest of his life: Live long and die in obscurity, or die in war and live in the minds of the people forever. No greek man of his time could bear to die in obscurity, but it was especially impossible for Achilles to do so. His father Peleus, a legendary Argonaut whose adventures would be remembered for millenia, his mother Thetis, a towering goddess raised by the queen of the gods herself.

Their child had to be known.

At Aulis the greeks call for Achilles, a legend before he even steps into the battlefield, and he is forced to go to war. And he fights, he kills, he ravages the city of Troy. A boy who has never even seen a battle in his life, living in peaceful Pthia and later protected by mighty Chiron in Thessally, becomes a machine specifically created for one purpose: To destroy Troy.

This is the reason why Achilles refuses to fight after the taking of Briseis. Unlike Agamemnon, who lived before the Trojan War, who had a wife and family before the Trojan War, who will leave Troy. Or Odysseus who will tell his tales to his son and wife after 20 years away. Or Menelaus who after years regains his family and rules Sparta in peace. Achilles has no life, no future, he IS Troy, more than even Hektor, Paris, and Priam are. Thus, when his honor is threatened, everything he has ever lived for has been taken away from him. Realize that before the taking of Briseis, Agamemnon mentioned takingthe “bride prizes” from the other greek kings and despite this not going anywhere none of them attempted to argue. Would Odysseus attempt to kill Agamemnon if his bride prize were taken? Would Diomedes or Greater Ajax?

And yet, after Achilles lives his entire life for war. After he struggles and suffers so much at the face of adversity. At the loss of his everything, Patroklos. At the slight to his honor. He spends the rest of eternity regretting everything he had ever done. Perhaps it is a mercy to Achilles that shades forget their life on earth

dad jokes

going to have to unfollow you , for humiliating me in front of the other war lords