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oh, if Anaitis has been born a man, she would have revelled in it, she would have dared Hector to the fight without waiting for all that nonsense about dead lovers and teenage sulks.
Antinous did not learn many lessons from his father, save this: if you make enough people believe you are important, one day it may actually be true.
I glance quickly into the nearby shadows, into the hot places of the earth beneath their feet, for Eris, lady of discord, wondering if she has stolen into this little assembly – but no, this is entirely, absolutely the stupidity of man without the interference of gods. It is fascinating in its detail and pettiness.
he is also unpleasantly friendly and honest.
The women, of course, are the impious ones – not the men. My husband Zeus has made this point very clear, and mortals do learn from their gods.
He has seen her grow, and one day wishes he would be able to express something of meaning to her on this theme; but the words are tangled on his lips, it is never quite his place to say it.
There is still the last grey of night hanging like a cobweb on the day.
However the gods move in our lives, good sister, let us not imagine they move for any whims save their own.”
Here, Andraemon paces. A little to the left. A little to the right. Zeus used to pace in such a manner when contemplating matters of great import. He found that the action of movement, of striding this way and that, made it seem less dumb than when he simply stood, jaw drifting down, eyes up, lost in thought. A leader should look like their thought is a vibrant, potent thing, consuming all their body, all their might. For many, the performance of thinking oftentimes exceeds the actual energy being expended on the thought itself.
How strange it seems that to make men of these boys, Athena first makes them children, driving from their minds all thoughts of mortality, all notion of blood as they run, run, run for Laertes’ farm.
but the short swords of the Greeks, weapons you might hold against a woman’s throat as you explained in short words what her future would be.
There are those who are beginning to realise that honour has nothing over a still-beating heart.
She should run to him and hold him in her arms. But he will be angry if she does. He will say: I am a man now. I do not hide behind women. I do not need to be known as the son of a woman! And he will push her off, and spit at her feet, and never look her in the eye again. But perhaps one day, he will remember that she was there, that she wept for him, that her love surpasses all others. Perhaps one day yet to come.
Sorrow unmans him. He will never look upon it, never wash it away with cool balm, nor name it, nor call it his own, and so instead inwards, inwards, inwards it curls like the weedy root that becomes a tree within the unwatched soil of his heart.
