Do all the translations have "manure?" It's commonly thought a dog will not soil its own bedding or place if it can help it but sometimes they can't, especially if aged. Our dogs were in their teens, most of them, when they died and anybody who's had a dog that long knows things can happen, particularly with farm dogs. So for Argus (love that name, it says volumes) to be lying in a pile of it shows how low HE has gone also. Everything has gone to pot when the master is gone.
I have to say this, too. It's commonly thought that pigs are gluttons and also wallow in mud etc., but the pig, I believe, is one of the smartest animals alive, is that the case? I really don't want to get into the pigs knowing what's going to happen stories I've heard but we've got a dog who recognizes O and lots of slaughter of "lower" animals, pigs by the noble and loyal swineherd, to feed what essentially more and more appears to be animalistic humans. This SO reminds me of the various Apocalypse novels, Blindness, Mad Max, the Stephen King novels where our society and the rules we hold fall apart with some catastrophic happening and what happens when anarchy rules.
Even 3000 years ago, I would think the audience, which is listening to this portrayal of the collapse of their society being shown in verse would be rooting on O and T and the swineherd, to restore order as they knew it.
There's a new book out now, Robopocalypse, by Daniel Wilson, already optioned by Stephen Spielberg, and another one where a mother notices a doll is entirely too advanced for its programming, but the themes are the same: the end of civilization as we know it and what the good, the bad, and the ugly do then.
In this one we've got Athene on O's side. She doesn't seem to be taking the suitor's side, that's a good point on how Homer treats her and why, Babi!!!
Remember on the Orestia we'll need to vote first, but it's good to see things before I think.
Sally, good point, who would dare hurt Penelope? Of course T doesn't waste time telling her what to do. I remember T telling her to go back to her room the first time, and here in the first bit of 17 he's giving her more instructions. Go bathe and put on clean clothes (somewhere around line 50)...so we can vow formal sacrifice to the immortal gods that Zeus will grant us vengeance."
The foreshadowing here is relentless and heavy handed. As the mother of sons, myself, I am not sure I'd appreciate all these instructions, go here, go there, do this, do that, do you think she's glad to see some kind of manly leadership in him? It's a nice vignette there on the growing up of sons, actually.
The tone seems to have picked up a bit, we've got one prophesy that O is IN Ithaca and making his way there, we've got prayers for vengeance with a capital V, and we've got Men Acting Badly all over the place.
What did you make of Melanthius the...is he a goatherd? He meets O and party who are sort of nervous anyway on the way in and boy is HE hateful? Is there a Hateful Gas about or is all this in aid of stirring up the tension?
"Well, look at this, trash dragging along trash.
Birds of a feather, as usual. Where
Are you taking this walking pile of s-----,
You miserable hog-tender, this diseased beggar
Who will slobber all over our feasts?"---Lombardo 217---_
Man you can't get less hospitable than that! What's this in here for?
And he KICKS him! I'm trying to keep track of the slings and arrows that O will suffer physically here in his own kingdom from the usurpers.
It's funny that everybody is calling on different gods, tho. Melanthius wants Apollo to kill T.
I think all these incidents and people are here so that when revenge comes, as P once again iterates somewhere around
585:
"If Odysseus should ever come home,
He and his son would make them pay for this outrage."
And...
"That means death will surely come to the suitors,
One and all. Not a single man will escape."
So we have to date two blows from the lowest so far, a goat herd and Antinous, "like black death itself" (542) and we've got endless prophesy of (1) the return of O, and (2) vengeance and not a man left alive.
Man talk about "rising action."
How would all this play out in 2011? We're about forgiveness in 2011, right? It's not like they've killed anybody? Are they going to even have a chance to say sorry, yes, do forgive us, we'll go home? If Athene says none will escape, forget the testing of the "decent" men, then if the gods support vengeance we're dealing with a totally different concept of society and gods than we know about now. IS this, as Joan K, says, men ascribing TO the gods their own foibles? Eye for an eye?
But the suitors are only eating and swilling about. Dante would know what to do with them. hahaaha But what does Homer do? They've not killed anybody yet.
This is good stuff, it's like You Are There into Greek history and culture and we've missed our Friday deadline to move on. What's your pleasure with starting or discussing 18?
