Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! Greek & Roman Mythology RetoldHermes Historia: Homer, have you heard of him? Pretty chill dude
On today's Hermes Historia Michaela tells Liv the Homeric origins of her favourite messed up ancient family... For future episodes of Hermes Historia (aside from a few one offs we might release now and then!) subscribe to the podcast's Patreon. The Oracle Edition features AD-FREE episodes, Hermes Historia, and so much more! patreon.com/mythsbaby
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Sources: Brethlein, J. 2010. “From ‘Imperishable Glory’ to History: The Iliad and the Trojan War.” In Epic and History, edited by D. Konstans and K. A. Raaflaub, 122-144. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith. Homer the Preclassic by Gregory Nagy
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Hello, listeners. I still don't fully know how I open these episodes. I'm live. This is Mikhaela.
Hi.
Yeah, doesn't she sound thrilled.
To be here. It's Sunday.
And we are here with another episode of Herme's Historia, which we missed an entire month of them because I moved across the countree and Mikayla, you know, is like off getting an education. It's benefiting this show. That's what matters. Your Greek is It's going to be so good. But now we are back, we're trying to get back into a regular schedule. So naturally we started like the week before Christmas, because that's the right time to get back into a schedule, especially when you have ADHD. It's perfect timing if if I'm being honest and not at all facetious, But here we are. I'm I'm excited about this episode. She and I have been talking for the last hour and a half straight, so we're already a little loopy and I am so ready to hear what you have for us this week.
Mikayla. You know this week, I I mean I had is its no we love crampis.
It wouldn't I know, but it couldn't. It wouldn't be crampas.
He can come by my place any time he wants, is what I'm saying. But this I had two prepared for November, but then we go to see so this great. Oh yeah, yeah, well this is gonna be one of them. We're just not gonna do the other one. I'm just gonna save that for January.
Perfect, that's what I meant.
Yeah, that's what we want. Just it'll go into the future, it'll come. This one is a Christmas gift to me and I guess everyone else, but it's mostly for.
Me and what I am. I've got, I've got my guess, but I don't know how to drill down my guess because we couldn't.
Do you could write it down on a piece of paper.
No, no, I just mean my guess is so wide ranging that it couldn't be just one episode.
So gettings. Yeah, I'm ready this one. Also, you are. It's less gonna be me telling you so much about It's gonna be a conversation you and me, and it's gonna end with the present and it's so much fun. Okay, we're going to talk about Homer. Oh okay, No, no, no, No, I'm not.
Well that's what I thought based on your reaction. But fine, you fin stopped your love for him.
For God, I love that, I know.
That's why I thought it was gonna because for you.
Well spoilers. So we're going to talk about Homer, Homeric tradition and its reception within antiquity.
Oh got it.
Yes, And there is a reason to this and it will come at the end, and that is the present. The present is at the end. You must stick around.
Is it present in both forms of the word.
No, Okay, I don't think so. I mean, you know what, like.
Now and also present like a gift.
It's Sunday. I don't understand. I mean English is weird. Go ahead, go ahead to him. Homer is a pretty big deal, and the hom Oric tradition is pretty big deal. Life you first started somewhere. Maybe you've heard of that. She's a the thing with Homer that I like to profess.
Homer is a pretty big deal.
Have you heard of him? Pretty chill, dude. So Homer was the thing that I think about a lot is he was often like almost like a history book to the ancient Greeks. This was where they came from.
And it was also like all they had as a history, so like imagine, Yeah.
It was a way to understand their place within, you know, like the wider Mediterranean world, and also where a lot of their cultural morals came from.
So it's good and bad.
How do you even how do you even translate a ratte? I have conversations with this with my Greek professor and I'm like, can I just put a ratte? And she was like, then, how do I know if you know the word? I'm like, but it's untranslatable. She's like, just put.
Excellence to be done with it, and I'm like, careful, I don't know too, because it's so much more than that. It's so it's a it's a cultural concept that is not easily translatable anyway.
That sounds like, I mean, because I don't know enough Greek, but it sounds like if I was to try to fully explain Senia, Yeah, like it's just in English, you'll never fully understand and like we we cannot fully comprehend the weight of Senia.
Yeah, and there's stuff like that in the English language too that is hard to translate into other languages. Yeah, and it's true.
Any language is so contextual.
Yeah, yeah, and the language is so tied to culture. So this is why it's nice to read things in their original text. But I also understand that it's a huge barrier for some.
Of us, aren't you know? Don't just get a crosses on all of our Greek exams.
I don't know how I do it, Okay, I go without studying every time she.
Tells me that, every time she just live, Oh my gosh, I just did my Greek exam. I didn't get to study at all. I finished it in a third.
Of the time. And I got that happens. Life is so difficult.
Who you have so much trouble learning?
To be fair, I'm already I mean a year ahead in Latin, so I understand the grammar.
Oh to scare, you're a year ahead in laughing.
So from Homer, it was an artificial story that was constructed through a long oil tradition until it was put down towards So this is it's it's nebulous.
You've talked about this, it's yeah, And the I mean Homer as a concept is nebulous.
Was he one guy? Was he many guys? Was he people with who was he he was a dude.
He was He was a fine fellow with a nice face.
He was just ahead.
I honestly don't I don't. I don't believe that Homer was one real guy. But and I'm holding I'm holding a little statue up for Miquelan. Now you can't help But if I don't believe that he was. But I still have like a real attachment to the like bust that we know of as Homer today. He just he looked like a guy I would like to listen to. I would like to listen to him tell a story with his like plucking at his lyre.
So the homeless tales were and also an important part of education to the people of Greece, as it was something you know your children, you would children the upper class men would read the girls were no. Women aren't allowed to be smart? Are you kidding? Well, no, you phrase that poorly, MICHAELA.
The issue is not that they're not allowed to be smart. It's that women have no brains within their little heads to just save all of their energy for the loom.
Women are glorified children that need to be cared and let.
Stands at the house where you want to get into trouble.
At least you're avoiding the sun. And we all know the sun is evil except for that it gives you well, so he makes you happy, but it will kill you. But yeah, anyway.
He was going from one of us who's better at sunscreen, Fine, just showing off. It's better at sunscreen, really good at ancient Greek a year ahead in Latin.
We get it. And Cale never had a sunburn in my life, even when I was.
You're not a white lady, so you win this one, not any other one. White people win everything except the war against the sun.
Oh my god, I love it. Uh So. Another fun thing is people often found ways to tie their own family to figures from Homer and myth in general. You know, I think we were talking about it in the Divination one, where like divine divinatory sort of families would be like we come from you know, Tymesius, and blah blah blah blah blah. Happened.
My name is Alexandra, so naturally Paris Alexandra is my ancestor. Like I was well to tell you.
No, no, no, not big al no, not big al Alexandros not that he was a particularly cool guy to be connected to.
But he was more interesting than Big Al.
Yeah, was he?
I mean I think so because I think Homeric storytelling is always more interesting than history.
But like whatever, so fair a continually fascinating man, because I don't think he had a plan.
Sorry, this is a divergence for the listeners as if this whole episode isn't But to you all, we're recording this right after our episode Battle of the Bastards. It would have come out probably I don't know last week. I afforded when this does, so you can get a better sense of why this is what it is. But I will just pull back to you. Recently sent an email to one of your profs that included me. We won't get into the details on this, but I need you to remind me what you called Alexander the Great alex the Okay, yes, thank you. She wrote this episode and it was you know, to her profit she had a great relationship with and it was just one of the most joyful things to be like c seed on because she just had this like incredibly intellectual and like high brow things to say about the historical records and all of this. But then amongst that, she just said alex the okay, as if it was fully interchangeable and I needed listeners to.
Know that that's life. Man. Yeah, he was pretty okay. That's all I'm saying. I'm not gonna call him you.
Were, you were correct, Thank you. I just appreciate the casual nature with which you will call him Alex the okay and expect that everyone understands what you're talking about.
So, I don't know how much you've actually talked about the oil tradition as a practice.
I've had very intelligent guests come.
And for me, so it's a it's a difficult thing to trace, not least because you know, we don't have any actual because.
You know there it's like saying the the mystery calls are just so mysterious. Yeah, that was the point.
I think the biggest thing when you are trying to oh god, I'm putting on chaptic like a man. You can't do that.
No, you got to do the like they just full Yeah, that's that's how they do.
Anyways, to understand like oral tradition, you kind of have to be steeped in it. You have to go experience it because I think but in the Western world and Western traditions were very removed from orality and how stories are told and passed down that it's and we're much more kind of steeped in written word, so we kind of.
It's really difficult to conceptualize the difference.
Yeah, and I feel like I'm really lucky because I was kind of in both worlds growing up where I you know, I was a huge book nerd growing up, but also I'd be at ceremony and I hear stories from elders and get to sit at you know, sit at their feet and listen to these stories. So I kind of got the best at both worlds. And yeah, you've.
Also got defense against the sun in the process, like something a big win.
Look, sunscreen is important.
As somebody is just a third fourth generation colonizer with literally nothing more that I can look back on except that my family apparently landed in quote unquote Canada in the seventeen hundreds. You know, we just don't have a lot. So I respect that.
Just slather it on you. I should. I should be wearing some have a window bight.
There look really Mediterranean. When I get a bit of a color, you know, I can say the level of colonial white lady that.
I am but skin cancer can kill you. Yeah, so we can't. Actually we don't actually know at all what these stories were because we weren't there. We didn't get to hear the the Ioidori sing these songs and actually hear which things are concrete and which things are not. Because the thing with like these the stories is we read the Iliad now and we say, oh, this thing is this and that is fact, you know, like.
Like this is in the Iliad and this is not like ours. We can say and conceptualize now.
But how do we know this was actually something that was part of the story versus something that could be moved around and be more interchangeable with other details.
So you know, they're let alone what ended up in the final result that was recorded, you know for historical purposes, like because yeah, like they could have been these things could have been shifting and changing per audience. But then also on top of all of that, we have like the okay, well, when the Athenians wrote it down, like what the fuck were they doing with it? And what ended up in our version today that we can't separate, But they might have been like, well, Athens is more important, like we're gonna change.
This or whatever, and what is the motive is why is this detail important versus why is it not? So like these are the things with about orality and oral tition. So like I know they've they've done studies on people and like oh, closer to the Mediterranean. I don't remember where are right now, but they've gone and listened to oral storytellers who can hold these really intense long stories like that are as long as the Aliad and the Odyssey in their brain and they try to understand why. And it's because of things that we see in the town, such as like uh, like certain set phrases, you know, these things the similes always get me as a good example for that, like.
Yeah, uh epithet, just us, this guy did all of these things bazillion years ago, just so Achilles, Fadder.
River Ana, Sagamemnon, and and then he goes on it's like that says a lord of Yeah whatever, okay, but.
I'm just so jealous that you know so much changing Greek off the top of your head.
So there's set phrases that like they these poets don't have to think about like they there are things that you can just say and it fills space. So that your brain has time to think up the story as you're going along. Epithets are in that set set phrases, like I said, little tidbits that are just you know, you'll read the Iliad and you'll be like, why was that important? And it wasn't. It was important for the poets so that they had time to actually think of what they were going to say next and throw it in.
Do you think that those are equivalent to like I just.
Did, like to like yeah, to like.
Oh I love that idea.
Yeah, it's just it holds space so that your brain can have time and so likely. Oh, so you know they are set points that happened to, set plot points that have to happen in each story. So certain things like maybe Petrocolus always has to die because or maybe not Petrocolus always has to die, but something has to happen to Petrocolis so that Achilles goes crazy because this is a story about man.
In the Rage of Achilles, Yeah.
You know, we need Achilles to go Barcus, We need Achilles to be pulled out of the war, need something to pull him back in. This person has to die, but how it happens, who does it sort of those little details. Those are a bit more flexible and you can change versus which audience you have. Uh So, you know, if you're gonna be in a you know, maybe you're in Ionia along the Ionian coast, uh wow, in the you know Asia minor, thank you so much. Maybe you're there and those people you're closer to where Troy may have actually been or the Trojans may have actually been. You don't want to be going in there, and you don't want to be you know, you want to be making a story that's more accessible that they would like more.
So, Yeah, you're not going to like amp up all the Acayans because you're gonna be more interested in like amping up the troad or whatever.
That's where you are. These are the people. They are gonna be all like yay whoo, that's us versus you go on into the Peloponnese and suddenly you're just like whoa yeah go a keyans, Hell yeah, look at them go in They're so powerful, those those evil others. You know, like there's things it's nebulous. Yeah, and things change, and that's why we have so many different things.
Context you will I love Yeah, like it is entirely based on the context of of when something is being performed. And but the performer too is such an interesting thing to think about. Yeah, but and but like I'm thinking more of the performer on their internal side, like yes, their performance, they would want, you know, to do all these things for the audience, but also just on a personal level of the performer, like they are. It reminds me I did the the Q and A I did earlier this week. At the time of recording this, you know, somebody asked me about translations and like, just how much can a translation alter the work itself? And it's like completely and also not at all, and also a little bit here or there maybe or whatever. But like every single thing about a translation because it is the same as a person reading the text originally, Like everything about a human being taking in a story a work of art is completely completely contextualized. It is based in where everything personal about them, about their preferences or the way their brain works, like all of these different things that would apply to like, yeah, the storytelling process in the first place, let alone, as it all came down to us later.
And there is, at least my opinion, I think there is no way for people to remove bias when they are writing things, or interacting with things, or be telling things.
It's why I think AI is like people want well terrifying bullshit. Fucking absolutely we should not be giving it any time. But also like, even if it wasn't all of those things, it's why I think that AI like will literally never reach any kind of of real artistic anything like, it will never mirror mirror anything about the ancient world, say specifically, because every single thing is so inherently tied to it being interpreted by a human fucking being anyway down with the robots.
So it's also important to know who is your performer, And like I think like there was probably famous poets or the ioidor these are the these are the Iodos, the Barns. Yeah, yeah, he's the bar and he's the one who's singing and telling the story. And I bet there was famous ones where they're like, oh, you know, have you seen this guy's you know, have you seen Megacles's performance of this thing? Versus have you seen I can't think of any other names, Homer.
Let's pretend he was just one of them.
Have we seen he always does it like this? And that guy has this point of view, and I really like, Oh, I really like the way this guy presents these aspects of the way he talks about nature and his things like, oh, I love the nature imagery. Every every performer would have their own bias, and it wouldn't it would also seep into their performance no matter where they were. They could be tailoring it to their individual audience, but they could also still be having their personal touch in it, which is important. And then the other thing of it all is the meter.
Uh.
It was done in a specific meter. It's called dact caxameter. It was six units of long short short. The last unit unit would be two syllables. And the meter is actually incredibly helpful for the poets because it gives them a structure, two ways to tell the story, and it's very rhythmth and you can hear it, and you really if you can. If you I, I can't do it in the Greek, I'm very bad. Oh look at you. Yeah, go for it, because.
I picked up So I recently found a couple of lobes which, just to the listeners, have the Greek on one side in the English on the other, which is so fun. But I figured out that the person who had had it before they had scanned a little bit, not like just little bits of it here and there, so I could leave, I know.
But they did it.
No, it's great because they did it for me.
I'm never gonna do it.
And they did the first line, so andra moyene musa. I probably didn't do that great with the actual.
Mall and with that, yeah, and Plato.
In the pay musa so, oh, god, not even try. But poly is one of my favorite words.
This is a compli, this is the poly How about that? Oh, polyphos is a word. My Greek professor said to me, you don't ever have to remember this, and now I can't forget it. Maybe it's uh, it's uh. It's an automatic pia for one ancient not amount of beer. It's for it's describes the sea so like uhlasa uh. And it's basically like loud thundering, loud boring that like it's you know, when it's during a seas that it's kind of a bit. That's what that is. And I think it only appears in Homer and so there's no reason to remember it, and yet I can never forget it. I love it.
Well, that's like poly I think is one of those ones. That's it's I don't think it probably appears in too many places because it's so specific to Odysseus and I complicated.
It's the yeah, but.
It well, it came up in a recent the Q and A I did because it's like, over the years it's been I think the most the clearest, like literal translation of it would be there was two different and I forget who did which, but like one did poly trop as many ways and also many turns, and so like they're both like literal translations, but they don't really mean anything in English, and so that's why it's it's to me more interesting that then. Yeah, Emily Wilson did the complicated.
Which is such like it's one of those things. It is, like we were saying with the uh vetta and yeah.
It's a word that it does just does not have you. It doesn't have an English equivalent, So you will always have to have your your like the the translators, you know, inherent humanity there, whatever bias you want to associate. But it's just like the nature of being a person will always have to come in because a word like that just does, yeah, does not have an English equivalent. People got the men got so mad when she said complicated because they like put some kind of negative association with it, But like, complicated does not have to have a negative association like it literally Okay, it's like, oh, you don't like complicated, but a man of many turns would be better? Like which one means more in English spoilers, it's complicated because polytrophone is a complicated goddamn word.
Why can't I find it in my dictionary? Pos Where am I? POI?
Poor Polly?
I know Paul? Okay, where but pom pop? Where is Lambda? I'll do this later. That was one. That's the thing about home. What I really do like about our two Homeric text is the first word tells you everything you need to know about the story. Right. It's in the Odyssey Android Man, this is what the story is about. Man and Iliad Maine and rage. This is what it is. That rage, It is that wrath, it is that uncontrollable. You can't. It's it's that emotion. It's it's I love rage for it. That's my favorite one for it. But anyways, yeah, back to more homer Oh where was I so we know that these stories existed all over the Greek mainland, and it existed all over the Aegean, it existed all over the Near East and beyond.
People the Greece were not the first to do it.
No, no, no, people moving on this is I love orality and I love following myths and stories and finding a little bits that connect because I love that idea of going to a new place and someone tells you a story, yeah, and then what what about it? Connect? Like hits your heart because stories are so human and it's not in the it's not in the details, but it's in the sort of the wash that's underneath of the what is that that touches you and makes you go oh oh that reminds me of this, or that feels like home like and people were doing this. It's it's where it's like it gets complicated. Now we have, you know, really complicated things about like original intellectual theft or copy by broadly or you know a lot of people talk about like appropriation. They're like, oh, they took this from this thing, and I'm like or and then they'll say that about like antiquity too, where I've seen people say things like oh, you know, like the epic of Gilgamesh doesn't get enough credit, and these people were just like appropriating from that, and I'm like, you got to stop there. Yeah, Like there's really big.
Difference between appropriation and inspiration.
Yeah, And what we're seeing is people moving and connecting with each other and that is really wonderful. And in a way that they are connecting with each other through story, they're going, oh, let me tell you this epic about my thing, and then they hear that and there's a part of it that that really rings true. And so when they go and they tell a new story to their family member or their community, they bring a little piece of that in. And that's that fills my heart with warmth because it's so human and I think me coming from such an oil culture too, where it's that was such a big part of my grow my growing up and why I fell in love with Greek myths is you know, my sister found a book of Greek myths and I remember sitting on her bedroom floor and she was standing on her bed and she was telling me these stories about about you know, the story I remember the most was her telling me the story of Perseus and that's only because my sister is today. That's my sister's name, and I just remember her telling me the story and the way that Ori Elders told us stories and that like that is what got me so excited because I was like, oh my god, I understand this and it feels familiar and like home and there's bits of it that are they ring true to me And well.
I mean that's the most human thing about it too. It's why I love the antient Greek world. Like I didn't grow up with that that storytelling aspect, but like, to me, all of those things and and the way that people do you still use it today, Like that's what makes it so human. And again why I use it also as an example to like fucking hate on Ai because we'll just literally never have that humanity. That is what makes this stuff good. It's what makes it interesting is that it's being interpreted by humans.
Yeah, and I think that's the really lovely thing about Homer And when you really got to kind of sink your teeth into is understanding and kind of letting the canon of it drop away. Yeah, the text that we have, Okay, this is what was written down, but where did this come from. And then you also have to you know, I was saying earlier how this was sort of like a history for them. It was how they understood their place within the water bur Trainian Why is that? Okay? So now we're seeing that human connection that these people had, especially the earlier periods. I'm not so much classicalne later like you know, society changes, but like, yeah, having that that that connection and that heart in it, and when you see why it was important to people, why it's stuck around.
That it just reminds me of when we did the Bronze Age episode because that came up, or episodes because that came up so much of like the way that yeah, like the Homeric tradition was their history and the way they used it to connect with their past. You know, even when that passed, you know, we know or chaeologically speaking, like did not have those connections to the story of the Iliad, but that doesn't change anything about the way that the individual people of the ancient world used it as a way to connect with their history.
And I find Greece especially interesting in that aspect because you have the early Iron Age right where there is in recent generally there is such loss that I think is not seen elsewhere in the Mediterranean, you know.
And well they had like a full language shift.
Yeah, like well like because like linear b is is still Greek, but it's with syllabic scripts, and then they get the Phoenician writing and that changes into the Greek that we know. But it's just.
That's just gonna say. I just want to because I think that these days I can't hear anything without making the connection. So I just want to remind all of the listeners that Lebanon, the ancient people of Lebanon, the gave us as a Western world. They gave us the alphabet, they gave like literally, there would not be English, there would not be our letters today if it weren't for the people of ancient Lebanon. And the idea of calling it greater Israel just because the West wants to is fucking hot nonsense. Oh my god, Israel is bombed Lebanon so many times in our lifetime, let alone in the last hundred years, and I just think I just I need us all to remember that when we say Phoenician, yeah, we mean Lebanon.
Yeah yeah. Tier Tier, the home.
Of the ancient Phoenicians, and the alphabet and Cadmus and everybody in between. Lebanon, Israel bombed Tier and it needs you all to know that because we need to be just yeah, okay, sorry, the world's great.
So West is awesome, you know, like the collapse hit the entire Mediterranean. Yeah, but I think I find it especially interesting to think of Homer and the collapse and the Bronze Agent sort of that period because it hit Greece was hit very hard and they.
It was not, which is on all of the maps of the Bronze Age collaps just because I've already gone there. Just everyone they want to google a map of the Bronze Age collaps You want to know one of the most ancient words on there, it's cauza keep going.
So like it's when you have such a collapse that happens, you get almost sort of like culturally disconnected and to the point where they couldn't understand, you know, how did the people we came from build these things? Because we can't do that anymore.
So they have this big disconnect and grain.
Yeah. So then you have these stories that talk about, oh, look at these things that our people did, you know, like we battled this huge war with people across the waters, and we would and it's like it becomes a thing where you go, oh, this is our history. It connects you to your land and your space in a way. And I you know, there's always the big question like did a Trojan war happen? And I think, yes, there was war to that degree.
No, yeah, there's no, there was no, no exactly the gods were not involved. Spoilers, sorry to break into.
But it it just it connects you to yourself, and it creates culture, and it creates community. And another way that this happens is through family groups. So like I think of like the Spartan Kings who were the the Heracleidae, right, like there their two family lines, they had the dual Kings. Each family line was from one of the one of two of Heracles's sons, and that that was their claim to their standing within their community is oh, yeah, we can have this power, our family can have this powder because we're the sons of Heracles, like of course we should have this. And so that becomes important is people find ways to tie themselves and their families to characters from the past. And if we even go all the way to like fucking Rome man, like who is the eventual emperor the adventure? He was a king. I have all these qualms about Rome and all I'm say they fucking hated kings and yet they had them, and Augustus was just a king in a different name. And I don't care what anyone says. That's what anyways, this.
No, but please, this is not the time for me to get into this ram.
But I've been.
I haven't had a chance to talk to you about it. But I saw a gladiator too, and I need you to know that they call him the Prince of Rome.
I would like you to know. I haven't seen it yet.
Great, well, they call somebody the Prince of Rome as a good thing, as a like this long lived, like the true Prince of Rome kind of thing.
And I think because it's it's Cara color and getta geta.
Yeah, but they are not other princes of Rome. I won't spoil the rest.
But that's that's so much later and like that's what third century I think.
Yeah, yeah, so it's like they're all so so Caracalla and Gaeta, who are the children of Assyrian and a Tunisian or rather Libyan sorry Syrian and a Libyan are the whitest boys from quite quite quite Britain. They're the palest of the lily white anyway. Also, there were great whites in the Colosseum. Don't worry about it. It's fine. Not sharks, Makila. So that was where that was where my two passions came together. Because if there's anything that I love, yes, exactly, if there's anything I love as much as antiquity, it's sharks. And when I tell you, I saw great whites in there, and I said, you know, it would be silly to have I mean, it would be absurd to have any sharks in the Coloseum. But the idea of picking the one, the one species of sharks that to this day in the bullshit twenty twenty four, we have never had a great white kept in captivity. But oh no, please, they put them in the fucking colisem.
I always like, I'm so curious. We haven't figured out why. It just never works.
They're too big and awesome.
I certainly can't be in the whales in antic Sorry, we've kept whales in captivity.
Mammals they're easier to predict, I know.
Anyways, science is fascinating. It makes me very happy. And so I'll continually ingest things from scientists, but I will not do the research myself.
The thing you will learn from scientists, and I can tell you right now as a non scientist. They didn't have great whites in the coliseum. Sorry, I know, but I.
Want there to be. Look, I don't need Gladiator too to be accurate. I need it to be campy. I need it to be.
It was very enjoyable. I would I could talk to you about it more. But I'll never get over the great whites in the coliseum that we can have. But also the fact that everything was just so fucking white anyway.
Yeah, I mean that's just media though, Like no, but.
It was that they also yet like again they just nobody can figure out that to put color on ancients. Yeah oh yeah, not even the Yeah, I just mean the complete lack of.
So pretty. So you went to the thing at the mat yeah didn't you? Yeah? I hate you. I'm so jealous. We were talking about family ties. Yeah, you know, like people do this. Sorry, I brought us so where fault? Like okay, so here we go, yea like on Chios himself, the island there was a family group called the Hamadi who claimed a set from Homer. You know, it's it's a way that aristocratic families use to explain their position within the world. And I'm absolutely certain this happens all around the world today. Oh it's just like I'm from this.
Americans hold on to the idea of being like more family was on the Mayflower or something.
Humid, right, I like the I like the my oh my, my great great grandmother was a was a Cherokee princess, and I'm like, we didn't.
Have those, but okay, they roam didn't have kings either, but they did.
The amount of rage I feel about that. They're like, no, it's not it's not And I'm like, what do you call the one? And then they call him? What's it? This is me just being I haven't been in the woman mindset for a while, delightfully. It's so fun though. But one of the names, it means like the first among men. I'm like, what is that? But a king? You motherfucker?
Well, Alexandross means like defender of men, but it's not a king.
So you know, that's just a name. Well yeah, but that's just the name. Philip is loves horses right naturally, and then my favorite city in antiquity, Philipopolis.
Horse lover horses, horse love horse Oh.
The city of philip Oh got it.
The horse philip though, if you want.
Had its own city something.
I need everyone to know that I have been playing the sims and if you get a horse, one of the auto generated names, one of the only ones that is not like some silly horse name is Bucephalous. And I was like, that is a joke for a very select few people, and I support you, I love thank you. I had to go tell Dina and I was like, you didn't get this joke, but I was there. It was pretty funny.
So I'll now give I'll give my gift.
Great. This episode was your gift to me, because utterly unhinged.
Just thinking about orality and oral tradition and what homer Eggs means to the people of Greece and ending with this nice little you know, it's how people made ties and explain their positions in society. And all this is because I found one bit of information that came from one old, old, old classical like dictionary of names that I cannot find its source for. So I cannot speak to this, is this actual credibility, but I would like to believe in my heart. That's so, there's my caveat. This comes from an old source, but I love it so much that I don't care.
I'm ready and support you.
So as Lip knows and you all failed to find out. Now, I have an immense love for the alchi They are my favorite family.
Can you explain that more?
Thank you? Our group of aristocrats in Attica and the Peloponnese, they had members and such children about Alcmius something like that. Yeah, and it's uh, you know Pericles. I was no, No, Alcibiades is an alchemund Yeah, oh yeah, Pericles was. We'll get there. I'll tell you after. I will tell you my now, but we will tell you my my best boy, best disaster boy number one disasked for Alcibiadi, season Alcyonid and the alc claim they come from the family of the lad who stemmed from Nellius. Yeah, who was the father of Nestor. Oh wow, they're going all the way.
I was gonna say, like, that's coming, I can tell it's Nellius, and I was going to forget who of course, but of course he's a father.
Of Nestor, so they claim descend from Nestor's fucking stretch, guys, and I love the implications.
I think that I just think that who who do I claim uh to be descendant from? Ohpasia, let's go with her.
He wouldn't be asked who do I?
I will like, Yeah, I would like to be claimed to be a descendant of uh as Possia, not Perocles as the dad. Though I'm somebody else. I don't love his brainchild. It's not gone worked out.
Well, I well, you know, it's complicated. I'm still trying to who would I be.
I think that maybe you would be descended from or at least from the uk one to Chaos.
Chaos. It might, yeah, just maybe I love that man. But anyway they say they come from Nestor, the long line of Nestor ends without Kibati.
Poor Nestor.
That is so much funnier once I finish all the other episode.
Yeah. Well, the point is, guys, that it's a fucking hot mess. So the idea of just having a hot mess family descended from Nestor is kind of rude because he was like, pretty objectively, okay.
I will say, I will say, I don't think the whole family is a hot mess. I think Kibati is the end result. He's the hot mess. This is what happens when you asked of the message. Oh hell yeah, this is what happens when you have too much. You know, you have a life. No, it's just too easy in life, you.
Get But those are those two things are tied getting power and having it too easy.
In Life's my aunt and I will say huge family and Athenian history, and they're really interesting and they do a lot of things, and they're just utterly fascinating, and they always, I mean, we'll get more into it later in another episode, but they always are blamed for when things go wrong in Athens, which I find no fascinated.
I mean, me too, but only I know so little. I only know that part of that is that Alcibiades didn't actually go around and chip off all the dicks of all the herms. And that's too bad because I like that claim.
Yeah, well, I think that is the end of a very long history. They like even before all of that, like the idea that your.
Family's very long history ends with you being accused of chipping all the dicks off the herms.
And Athens is like pretty great, defecting twice, attempting an oligarchy kit coup. You know, he was a wild guy. I love him.
Expedition went so well for him, It went so well for the to get there.
He didn't even get there, Okay, famously successful expedition. I love it so much. It makes me so happy.
Well, I'm I don't know honestly, Like I can say these things with confidence, but only because I know these like little bits and pieces. So I'm I'm quite excited to actually learn the details because I really, I mean, I really leave it to other people to teach me the history stuff so that I can like live in the mythology.
And I so I'm ready. I'm ready. Well, we'll go chronologically from the beginning and when we'll get to the end. Are we going to begin Nellius? No, you can do Nellis all right, I can't even he had.
He doesn't come up as anything. I said that, Like historically they say, I think he was in another big war, but it's really just that it's nest Or son of Nellius, like through a the Iliad that was literally Nellius has claimed his fame was that he was Nestor's father. I think for the most bark.
For him today. There you go, that ends with the alk on it.
I oh, I'm excited. I am excited. Uh well, listeners. Slowly but surely, these episodes will become I won't say less unhinged because I think that this is the fun way, but I will be better prepared to keep myself on track as we keep going.
We'll figure out a good time to record.
Yeah, We're still learning this whole new time zone thing, and I'm still learning to get into a space where my brain wants to sound smart because just turns out it's sometimes it's really fun to live in a realm where you don't have to be intelligent at all.
Yeah, I feel that.
Yeah, you know, I just I feel like I just need a little.
Bit of that for a little while, honestly.
But in the meantime, oh my god, the oral tradition is one of my favorite things. And I'm so excited for you to tell me all about this fucking family, and not least because I am excited for you to get to feature your guy because he's so funny.
He is my favorite and one day I'll get my back piece of him done and it will be beautiful and people will go why, and I'll go, why not? What do you mean? Why not? I have a flaming chicken on my arm? Man? Did you think I do anything?
I have a classic heart with a banner that just says Eric Gorn. Sometimes we just need to have fun.
You just got to get a silly tattoo because it makes me so happy.
Sometimes you just gotta put extra love of Aragorns. I realized recently that it's like just so directly next to my like enormous side piece of the hilt of Narsil too, And I was like, wow, like, you're really just hard for this man, No regrets, just commit, just Commragorn's worth it.
But I wasn't. I didn't love him when I was younger.
I say that, Oh, no neither, because I was young and thought yeah, and then yeah exactly.
And my mom turned to me and she looked and she go, you will grow up and you will understand why your mom, I love Eric Gorn. Right, she was white. I remember watching it as an adult and I was like, oh, Nancy, again, why is this woman consistently right? Oh?
It's almost like when you're young, older people tell you that you'll understand war when you're older, and that's like the most fucking infuriating thing to hear when you're young, and then you keep getting old and you're like, oh, it was completely true.
My mother was right. She did with Buffy. I said Angel and she went, no, Mikayla Bye, you'll understand now. I'm like, oh, I understand. I don't know.
I didn't get full Spike. I don't know. I'm not gonna get it.
I get it, I get it, I get it. Anyways, thank you.
All to the listeners for listening to this. This is uh, we are truly I mean, December is a wild enough time without us both. MICHAELA has just been in finals. I just moved across the country and I'm trying to be intelligent again. Uh, And you know, sometimes we just got a rant and ramble about our favorite topics. And that's what world the oral tradition is because it's the fucking best. I honestly could hear it and or talk about it forever. Yeah, it's endless. So I'm gonna finish this off with again me trying to read the first line of the Odyssey because it feels cool. Andra moy Ande Mala and I know I do not know the meet her very well, but I still want to try.
I'll give you the iliad, I'll give you.
Do it, Pola the most, Suka said, Heidi proe apsin heron alto and Loria knusin o te pas wowsa.
You went a little further.
Well, now, I'm not gonna try.
I just looked at it. I know that now right your brain. I do need a little bit more time to sound those out.
I've not been learning like my fair if I've been going through the iLiads so much. Sophia. Yeah, that's it.
Ends with well, and mine is reading with with just being me being physically able to pronounce them, not because I actually know the words.
So I just went to the end. That's thus the plan of Zeus was completed.
Dum dum, thank you for listening. Let's talk about miss Baby was written and produced not was not written and produced by me. That's just what I say. MICHAELA wrote this shit. Uh and I don't need to read the rest of the credits. Thank you all so fucking much for listening. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. I don't know tell your friends I am live and I love this shit, and McKay Cayla, I'm here too, and don't know how this became my thing, how we have to go up with a better one, but until that, it's hilarious.
