Status report

[altivo]

Argos has a head and a muzzle. Or at least, I know that's what they are. His ears are not yet attached, so he can't hear yet.

*sneaks off to bed*

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Argos. :)

Named after the Kindgom in Ancient Greece? Or the mail order catalogue company? :D

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Yes, that kind of springs to mind... After living in the UK for a couple of years. :P

But good to hear the suit is progressing well.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Or progressing at all. There have been too many distractions and more urgent tasks. Now it gets priority.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I dunno about mail order catalogs or kingdoms. Argos (or Argus, if you Latinize it) was the faithful dog of Odysseus, the only one who recognized his master after an absence of 20 years or so, when the wanderer finally returned to Ithaca from the Trojan War. The long wait of the faithful is thus tied to the theme of the weaver in Penelope's trick to foil the suitors, as she wove by day and unwove her work by night so as never to finish her garment.

Argos has patiently waited 20 years for Fennec to recognize and acknowledge his love.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

There was a third option then. I never did read Iliad. I was close though. Hope the suit works out. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Not so much the Iliad as the Odyssey, which is more readable. For me, the main interest in the Iliad is the largely clandestine love affair of Achilles and Patroklos, with its tragic conclusion. Otherwise the thing is just a long boring war story. ;p

Argos is a name for a guardian or watcher who never leaves his post. Doubtless Odysseus named his dog for the original Argos, a servant of Hera who had been set to guard Io and keep Zeus away from her. Right. Like anyone ever succeeded in keeping Zeus out of pretty girls' bedrooms once he spotted them. Anyway, Hera gave Argos a thousand unsleeping eyes so that he wouldn't miss a thing. When he missed anyway, she turned him into the first peacock, and the eyes are the round spots in the peacock's feathers.

The hound of Odysseus was hardly more than a pup at the start of the Trojan War. By the time his master returned, in disguise to find out what his wife Penelope had been doing and whether she was faithful to him, only old, gray Argos recognized him. The story says that Argos tried to rise but was only able to wag his tail and then died.

I have what is probably a bad tendency to fill my writing with this sort of allusion that no one really recognizes. It's sort of a private amusement. In this case, though, Argos doesn't have to die at the end of the story, and yes, Fennec's eyes are finally opened to the truth about both himself and his long time friend.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I'll have to read that one if I can.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The first 23 chapters (about two thirds of the book) were written during last year's NaNoWriMo and that draft is still online at FurRag.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually you were closer with your reference to ancient Greece than anyone else has been in the last year. Some have mentioned Jason's ship, the Argo, and his sailors, the Argonauts. Americans are prone to think of Argo in connection with starch, since it's an old brand name for cornstarch used in cooking and also laundry starch. Classical myth and literature has been absent from school curricula for so long over here that most don't even know who Odysseus was, let alone that he had a dog.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

It's never been taught in UK schools in living memory from what I can gather. I am just lucky in that I used to read a lot.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I believe it is still a part of university curricula, at least some places in the UK. Over here you'd have to search high and low to find even a university where you can still learn Classical and Homeric Greek. I was fortunate that Michigan State still had a Classics department when I was there. It would have already been gone I'm sure except that the remaining three professors were all tenured and the school was just waiting for them to retire or die.

[hrrunka]

I got both the Illiad and the Odyssey thrown at me in school. I think we got bits of the Illiad thrown at us in Latin, but I never got as far as doing Greek (though, at one of the schools to which I was sent there is an old chalk pit that was converted into a faux Greek theatre back in the late 19th century, in which the school performs an ancient Greek play every three years.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Every three years? What do they do in the other two?

The Iliad in Latin? Sure it wasn't the Aeneid instead? Vergil wrote the Aeneid in Latin, and I don't think the Romans knew much of Homer. Vergil probably was familiar with it, but he told the story from a different viewpoint, that of the Trojans.

[hrrunka]

Oops! Brain-fade! You are, of course, correct! It was the Aeneid we had to read in Latin, and the Homer we got ready-translated. It is curious that the Romans tied their roots into the Trojan War...

Oh, and the other two years they generally use the theatre for a Shakespeare play. And for the rest of the year it gathers wind-blown leaves, and rain, and snow. Even in summer it could be a chilly place to spend an hour or three...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, better Shakespeare than nothing, to be sure. They could do a lot worse. The only Shakespeare I've seen played outdoors that seemed to make sense in such a setting was A Midsummer Night's Dream, though.

I have come not to expect brain-fades from you, but I'll let this one slide since you have such a cute plushie picture. XD I suspect the tying of Roman roots to the Trojans was some sort of political manipulation to justify the conquest of Greece and enslavement of its people. I honestly don't know that though, because I focused on Greece and not Rome, and my Greek is far better than my Latin. (Though both are encrufted nowadays...)