Tag Archives: mythology
The truth behind the Trojan Horse
From The Classics Library
A techie note from church
This morning in Church it was my turn to read the lesson from the Hebrew scriptures, about Joseph being sold to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of Silver (Genesis 37). I also read the assigned part of Psalm 105, where this story also comes up.
17 | He sent a man before them, * Joseph, who was sold as a slave. |
18 | They bruised his feet in fetters; * his neck they put in an iron collar. |
I saw the phrase “iron collar” and my mind immediately went “Anachronism!”. Continue reading
Large Scale Engineering in the Bronze Age
Extensive remains of vast Mycenaean citadel revealed
A team of archaeologists is excavating the remains of a vast ancient Mycenaean citadel, known as Glas or Kastro (castle)….The area is estimated to measure ten times the size of the ancient citadel of Mycenaean Tiryns and seven times that of Mycenae.
From (W)Ilios to Turkey
Minoan and Mycenaean, Matriarchy and Patriarchy
History is much too messy for simplistic interpretations.
The elves of Iceland
Elf lobby blocks Iceland road project
Why So Many Icelanders Still Believe in Invisible Elves
The description of the the elves in the second article reminded me very much of the elves in Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword. This is not at all surprising.
Faith, Myth and Star Wars
The newest George Lucas production, Red Tails, forces a Star Wars nerd to come to terms with a troubling philosophy
From faith stems nuance. From myth, generalities. And, sadly for us, the spirit of myth is winning: We revere Star Wars because to our minds—modern machines that equate religion with superstition and are willing to disregard imperfections in science but never in dogma—the movies represent transcendentalist humanism at its best, a perfect manifestation of that noxious label, “spiritual,” that people use to describe themselves when they’re too dull to believe in religion and too dim to understand science. This is why the Force has become the organizing metaphor of our time; there’s no better one for those who believe that if we only open our hearts and understand people are all the same and all good we’d be enlightened enough to lift rocks with a tilt of our heads.
Just how idiotic is this logic will become evident when we examine the controversy known in geekdom as the “Han Shot First” incident….
(My emphasis)
By way of the Episcopal Cafe.
I want to see this
In classical Greek theater, a tragic trilogy was often followed by a “satyr play” on the same subject for comic relief. Such a play accompanied the Oresteia by Aeschylus, but, alas, it has not survived.
However, when the BBC did a television version of the Oresteia in 1979, called The Serpent Son, they had two modern writers fill this gap. The result was Of Mycenae and Men.
Actually, I would also like to see The Serpent Son. Diana Rigg played Klytemnestra!
From RogueClassicism.
Good Historical Novel
Helen’s Daughter is about the life of Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Troy, and granddaughter of Atreus (Hence the Amazon blurb’s reference to “the curse that haunts her family”). The author, Laura Gill, knows the Mycenaean Greek world very well and tells a gripping and realistic story about what Hermione’s life might actually have been like.