Anghraine

I didn’t manage to stick it out and finish the Metamorphoses yesterday (in fairness, I had a three-hour phone call) BUT I just finished it now!! All 470-odd pages.

The summaries of the Aeneid were … well, clearly summaries of the Aeneid, but at least easy to breeze through, the pages arguing for vegetarianism were not breezy but at least unexpected and interesting, and “The Deification of Caesar” was honestly kind of hilarious (but reinforced Augustus == earthly Jupiter with all the complicatedness that entails). And then there’s the conclusion, lol:

if a sacred poet
Has any power to prophesy the truth,
Throughout the ages I will live on in fame.

Well, he’s not wrong!

Tagged: #he has a whole stanza about how he'll be remembered forever and i kind of love it

Onto Book 2 of the Metamorphoses and “Phaëthon and Phoebus”! This one is interesting because I didn’t really dislike anyone in it? Or at least not their actions?

Sure, Jupiter kills Phaëthon, and you understand why Phoebus is so upset about it, but also Phaëthon was burning up so much of creation that even Pluto was going wtf??? down in Tartarus and Earth herself begged Jupiter to do it. Phaëthon was kind of annoying, but just in a kid-out-of-his-depth way.

IDK, it was interesting to read one with a bunch of gods in it and people having semi-decent motivations for their actions.

Tagged: #in fairness a bunch of phaëthon's relatives get transformed for no apparent reason #but we don't know who did it so ... #also interesting: if anyone is at fault here it's phoebus for making such a rash offer to a mortal boy #but i think the narrative is /very/ sympathetic to him while describing jupiter as 'fashioning excuses' #so if anyone is coming off badly it is—yet again—jupiter #aka celestial augustus