Conversations: For the Love of a Good Man, Gays in the Ancient Greek Military w/ H. Voss

Liv speaks with author, poet, and big ol' nerd H. Voss about queer relationships in the ancient Greek military and the way that aligns with the Roman story of Nisus and Euryalus from Virgil's Aeneid. Read more from H. Voss here https://www.harrisonvoss.com/publications, and find the Ancient World Magazine article about Nisus and Euryalus here https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/nisus-euryalus-poetry-philosophy/. This episode was recorded a number of months ago. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://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. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com grouptrip.

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• 2:15Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Miss Baby and I am your host Liv, here with another poorly microphoned introduction. And why, why does my microphone sound funny? Well, because I'm in Greece, so you will have to forgive me. I am currently in between the two group trips that we've had this year. We are rocking our way through Greece. It's so hot and I've just woken up, so excuse me for being bad at ad-libbing in this moment. Today, I am here with another conversation episode. Today, I spoke with

• 2:53Liv Albert?

  Harrison Voss about, well, gays in the military, gays in the ancient military, gays in the ancient Greek military, if we're going to be really specific. And we are, we talked about just generally same-sex, same-gender relationships in the ancient Greek world, obviously applying to men, because let's be honest, we don't really have much in the way of evidence of women. But the relationship between men is fascinating. And Harrison has done a lot of research on that. He is both a writer and a poet and an all-around enormous nerd for this. I mean, who doesn't want more of these kinds of retellings, but

• 3:37Liv Albert?

  also digging deeper into those ideas? So check out the link in the episode's description. We really dove deep into this topic. We talk a little about the Sacred Band of Thebes, but also just this broader idea of these kinds of relationships in the ancient military, because turns out, what huge surprise, there have always been gays in the military. And a quick note about this episode, we did record, honestly, a handful of months back now, so there might be references here and there to the overall terribleness of the world that haven't aged or have.

• 4:33Liv Albert?

  Conversations for the love of a good man. Gaze in the ancient Greek military with Harrison Voss.

• 4:56Liv Albert?

  Hi, how are you? Thank you for coming on my show. I normally am better at introductions than this, but here we are. It's been a day.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, no worries. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

• 5:11Liv Albert?

  Happy to have you. I, we were talking off mic, but now it's on, but I'm always so thrilled to have, I mean, I will always take any and all topics about like queerness in the ancient world, but specifically, I mean, gays in the military. I think that is, you phrased it off mic, so I won't pretend that I said that first. I did steal that from you directly. But I'm so interested, like, how did you get into this? Can you tell me a bit about your background? Like, where are you coming to the topic from?

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. So I guess to begin with, I should say that I'm not a, like, formal scholar.

• 5:48Liv Albert?

  That's fine. Neither am I.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  We love it. But I, I guess, let's go all the way back to the beginning. So when I first became interested in ancient Greece as a kid, a lot of kids do.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  And then, like, throughout middle school and high school, you know, became very fascinated in it. And studied it then in college. And my senior year of college, I opted for various personal reasons not to do a thesis, but I was like, okay, if I'm gonna do, not write like a big BA history senior thesis, then I want to do, like, take history seminars and like do kind of independent research tailored to, you know, my interest in ancient history. And so at that time,

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Again, I apologize if this is like kind of rambly, but like.

• 6:44Liv Albert?

  No, no. And also I'm sorry to I throw you in and then it becomes like, oh, God, right on the off the bat, like, try to tell a life story. So don't. No pressure.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  No, no worries. And also like my sort of like academic interest in ancient history is very weird in that I entered it kind of through the medieval back doors, I like to say. Through the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire, which I'm not sure how much you know, your listeners know, but was the continuation of the Roman Empire into the Middle Ages. And a lot of the awesome stuff in ancient Greek that we know and read about today is from them. They were preserving it, commenting on it, riffing on it. And their culture really from, you know, late antiquity, all the way to 1453, when the empire ended,

• 7:37Speaker 03

  was really imbued in this ancient culture, this ancient Hellenic culture specifically.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  And so I was fascinated by that civilization, really wanted to study it in college. Didn't really do my due diligence when I was applying to college because there was only one history professor in the department who, like, I could have used as like a major advisor in Byzantine history, and he left my sophomore year. So I was like, all right, work. I guess we're gonna go, we're gonna go back to ancient Greece because.

• 8:13Liv Albert?

  Okay, that is funny.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Like, you know, I've always been fascinated in the ancient world and with Greece in particular. You know, I loved, I don't know, I was just like, kind of like a nerdy kid. I loved, you know, Greek myths and really like Greek, Greek history. And I'm also very like stereotypical. Boy, history lover and I love military history. And, you know, now with this sort of route studying Byzantium gone, you know, I knew well enough that, okay, my real interest in the civilization was sort of this Hellenic underpinning.

• 8:56Liv Albert?

  Because it's the best.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Exactly. No, you're right. You're right.

• 9:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  And I'm like, this Byzantine, I love Leonore Neville, who has a great quote that's like, I want classicists, like classic students to be reading Thucydides and the Princess Anna Komneme, who's this 11th century, or 12th century, pardon me, historian, because she was writing in ancient Greek, you know, in the Thucidian style, thousands of years later.

• 9:23Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  And it's like, you can like read them in dialogue so well. So I was like, all right, if I can't study her, then I'll study Thucydides. So started to do that. My major advisor was a fantastic professor. I'm going to shout out Richard Billos, amazing man. And he taught a seminar my senior year on the Golden Age of Athens. And I hadn't known, so I guess remind a little bit, the first semester of my senior year, I took a classical literature seminar.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  And from like the class I had taken until that point, I was like, kind of aware of, okay, you have,

• 10:14Speaker 03

  like, I knew that, like, the gayness was a thing in ancient Greece. I'm like, you know,

• 10:20Liv Albert?

  They make it pretty obvious. Like, a lot of people have tried to get rid of that, but like, they made it pretty obvious.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Really obvious. And like such to the point that like, I, you know, my dubious ass was like, oh, but like, how gay was it really?

• 10:36Speaker 03

  And then it's like, you read any like classical Hellenistic later historian and like, they're talking about like so and so's boyfriend, like ratted him out, like, like all these little anecdotes about, you know, same sex couples, pretty much. And so I was like, okay. And of course, you know, you have, Um, like people like Plato writing about it. Um, and so I was like, all right, in this classical literature course, I really want to look at we, because we read basically from like Sappho through Imperial Roman literature. I want to say like Livy.

• 11:14Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Um.

• 11:16Liv Albert?

  Fun.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:18Liv Albert?

  No, the Sappho is fun.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  The Sappho was really fun. Uh, the Sappho was great. Uh, but, and I know, um, you're, um, actually, I don't know. Are you a Virgil stan? Like not a big Virgil stan?

• 11:33Liv Albert?

  I'm not a Rome stan. It's kind of my, that's kind of my stance broadly. Uh, because they're so militarily empirical, I guess is how I'm going to phrase it.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:45Liv Albert?

  Um, but I do find them, I do find Rome interesting. I think it's hard and I'm sure that you've, you know, encountered this in your own way, but like it's, Rome is a hard one because 50 50, the people who are interested in study ancient Rome are either like cool nerds or fascists. And it's like, it just to me like Greece, I mean, Greece obviously has like similar vibes, but because so much less of their military history and like, just because they were so much less, um, like imperialist minded, I guess, or like rather their empire was a lot less destructive. Uh, I just find I end up loving Greece more, but I do love when other people come on to tell me about Rome.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Well, unfortunately I won't be one of those people.

• 12:33Liv Albert?

  That's fine. I do prefer Greece. The Romans weren't as gay. That's why Greece is more fun. They were, but they were different.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  No, but you're right. Like, so that's also partly, I also have similar misgivings with Roman, also with Rome, like all the names, this is gonna sound so silly, but all the names are the same. So like,

• 12:51Liv Albert?

  And they're way more boring. Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, so that being said, I did love the Neid. Um, I just like, think it's a fantastic, interesting piece of literature. Obviously I love Homer, you know, like,

• 13:07Liv Albert?

  I mean, if you were to say otherwise, I would probably have to kick you off the show.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  But I, you know, I'm like, why can't, why can't we all be friends? Why can't we love both? But, uh, so in this class, um,

• 13:21Speaker 03

  I, for like a final paper, I was like, oh, I'm gonna put Virgil's and Neid, specifically the episode in Book Nine with the soldiers Nice and Euryalus in dialogue with Plato's Symposium.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Which, I was riffing off of a argument, I want to say the class's name, his last name is Mikowski, where he talks about how, you know, okay, Virgil seems to be very clearly being like, oh, Nice and Euryalus are like the Achilles and Patroclus in Plato's Symposium. And basically, my paper was like, um, no, I mean, they are like, um, they're definitely a homoerotic pair in sort of as Plato lays that out in his Symposium, but not the Achilles and Patroclus.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Because Plato's very, I can't, I want to say it's in the Phaedrus, his Phaedrus speech. He talks about how Achilles and Patroclus are the, not the ideal homoerotic pair, but sort of like the unique homoerotic pair. Because, you know, this goes back to the classic argument of like, who was the top or the bottom, pretty much, in their relationship of whether, because Achilles was younger, he was the beloved, he was the Oromanos.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  And so by dying afterward, after Patroclus, he then is kind of like the more outstanding beloved. Like, that's not how the lover and beloved dynamic was supposed to work. The ideal lover and beloved dynamic that Phaedrus discusses in the Symposium is that you have

• 15:26Speaker 03

  And I can just get into also the, again, apologies for rambling, but sort of like pederasty as an institution.

• 15:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. So again, not great. Three thumbs down.

• 15:40Liv Albert?

  If it helps, I've done like a two or three part on the symposium where I basically came across like that.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:46Liv Albert?

  Where I was like, it's really, some of the stuff that they talk about is interesting from certain, um, like points of view, but also broadly, pederasty, terrible, gross and weird.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's horrible. Um, it's like really, really bad. And

• 16:03Liv Albert?

  It's so hard the way they talk about it too. Cause it's like, yeah, especially the symposium because you're like, you're making really interesting points about same sex relationships and simultaneously.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Exactly. Um, no, I think, um, uh, Yentl Love on your, I listened to your conversation with her and she makes the great point, which I'm like, no one talks about this enough, how

• 16:27Liv Albert?

  I love Yentl.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  The, um, oh, absolutely. Uh, the age dynamic in the pederast, pederast relationship mirrored pretty much heterosexual relationships as well, where the heterosexual marriages, I should say, um, where, you know, the wife would typically be married when she was a young girl.

• 16:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Girl. Yeah.

• 16:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Um, so really not great. It seems to be that the Greeks just were really interested in young people, which is gross, but that big set.

• 16:59Liv Albert?

  It's hard to love them and also easy.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, the institution of pederasty seems to have originated in, I would say, the archaic period seems to be the consensus. Um, and we have really interesting early evidence, um, from Crete, actually. They're both from Crete. Um, or no, I'm sorry. One is from Crete. Um, where the, there are these statuettes that were discovered at a sanctuary to Hermes and Aphrodite. And it's of like an older man and a younger man holding hands. And it seems to indicate, um, sort of like an initiation ritual. Um, and

• 17:42Speaker 03

  The writer Strabo quoting an older historian, I want to say from like the fourth century B.C. Ephesus, he talks about a Cretan, a really weird Cretan ritual where you would have an older lover, an Erastes, as the Greeks would say, would go to the family of a younger man, the Aromenos, the beloved, and say, hey, I want to abduct your son and take him to my country estate. And then for two months, they would like hunt feast, just like guys being bros, you know,

• 18:24Speaker 03

  like out in the countryside. And then at the end, the Erastes would gift his Aromenos a bunch of gifts, but most notably to me was a set of armor.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  And also the Aromenos would be able to re-enter society and be known as, I believe the word is Klynos, so famous, like he was known as famous for having gone through this sort of initiation ritual. And then on the island of Thera, so Santorini, these inscriptions have been found, which I find interesting is that they are, I believe, some like the earliest in like the Greek alphabet, like the use of the alphabet. And they're at a sanctuary to Apollo, and it's literally saying,

• 19:13Speaker 03

  like, so-and-so banged so-and-so, and then so-and-so banged me. And, or like, so-and-so banged so-and-so, like, and he's, he also danced for Apollo. Like, they call upon Apollo. So like, there's a lot of debate as to whether these inscriptions are, you know, graffiti, because they do, they kind of are similar to, you know, much different contexts, but like later Roman Pompeii and graffiti.

• 19:42Liv Albert?

  Which it's often just for the context of listeners, too, like, it's, it's one of those places would, I imagine, I mean, I know the case for Pompeii, but given it's Thera, Santorini you're talking about, these are places where we have really unique examples where we can have surviving graffiti, whereas normally those things would be lost to time, but both of those places were preserved by volcanic eruptions. But I imagine.

• 20:08Liv Albert?

  Like saying all of that, that these inscriptions from Thera had to be much later because like the eruption happened before, before like the alphabet existed.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  Yes, no, this is true. So these are from the, um, I want to say the eighth, seventh century.

• 20:24Liv Albert?

  Oh, cool.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Seven centuries. Um, and the, like, again, the argument rages. My personal opinion is that they actually are of a sort of like sacredness. Um, because A, they like call explicitly upon Apollo at the sanctuary to Apollo. And also if they were seen as, um, you know, profane or blasphemous, they probably would have been scratched out. Um, like the fact they still were there kind of indicates, okay. They seem to have been connected to this religious space.

• 20:59Liv Albert?

  Very Apollo. Sorry. Just like very Apollo.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Very true. Very true. Um, that's a great point. Didn't even think about that.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  But, um, so you have these, um, in, I, I guess the preceding archaic period, in the archaic period preceding the classical period, um, you had pederasty as a sort of an, um, initiation ritual in various parts of Greece and, um, which then carried into in certain city-states, um, into the classical period. Um, and this is sort of, I guess, the underpinnings to, to go back to Plato, to what they were trying to get at because now you have like philosophers in the mix and they have to kind of like,

• 21:49Speaker 03

  not necessarily problematize, but like, understand why things are the way that they are, I guess, as philosophers do. Um, and so they, in the symposium, they.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Um, they, I, I speak as though like the interlocutors in the dialogue are like, they're in the room with me now.

• 22:13Liv Albert?

  Where is Plato? I, I don't really want him around.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  But, um, there's a very discreet difference between like cosmic love, I want to say like or, or onus love and, um, or just, yeah, just like the more baser erotic love. And the idea was that this basic erotic love was not what paterasque relationships should be about. Like if you have, um, if you have that, then it's, it's bad. Um, which I mean, I agree.

• 22:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Um, and so what the symposium really does, um, is talk about like the virtues that can be gleaned. So again, harkening back on this sort of like, um, initiation process, this sort of, um, like this mentoring process, I guess, that could be derived from these relationships. And so Phaedrus in his speech is explicit about how, um, this would be really great for the military. Um, how if you had an army of soldiers made up of paterasque relationships, then they would never lose a battle. Um, and what I find interesting is that he's like, well, it's because the Erastes, the older lover, he would never abandon the younger to be killed.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  And the younger, um, would want to impress his boyfriend, so he'd fight harder. Um, and I'm like, yeah, great, classic, classic toxic stuff, love that.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  And then the next speech, Pausanias, um, he goes even further and says basically these relationships can be used to cultivate, should be used to cultivate virtue. So the older mentor, the older Erastes, he should be teaching the younger Romanos basically like what, how to be a virtuous man, pretty much. Um, and the idea being that if he does this, then it would better the city as a whole, because then you would have a virtuous, you know, citizen body.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  So then I took those two speeches and then looked at Nisus and Eurialis, this episode in Virgil's Aeneid. And to give context for listeners, in this part of the Aeneid, Aeneas is in Italy. He's like, I'm gonna go get some Italian allies. You guys, you know, pop a squat while I go do that. And then the Trojan army gets, you know, besieged. They're under attack. And so these two soldiers, Nisus and Eurialis, are like, all right, let's sneak out across enemy lines. Go warn Aeneas. Like, hey, this is the situation. You gotta hurry back and help us. And the way that Virgil depicts them is very much in this pederistic, like,

• 25:04Speaker 03

  older Erastes, younger Romanos dynamic. So Nisus is the Erastes, Eurialis is the Romanos, and Nisus is specifically saying, well, really stuck out to me was he says, what is this desire that, you know, is making me want to perform this deed? Like, has it, it's almost as if the desire has become a god to me. And the word that he uses specifically is cupido. And when you look at Plato's speeches, in the Symposium, it talks specifically about how Eros, again,

• 25:40Speaker 03

  desire, will be the one, the god that inspires, you know, the soldiers to go for virtue, pretty much. And this then gets the two soldiers, they go to Aeneas's son, Ascanius, and basically get permission to go, you know, on this mission. They get caught because Eurialis sees a nice shiny helmet. And then they're killed. Eurial, here's what's like really important to me, at least, in my nerdy brain, is Eurialis dies first. So the beloved dies first. And Nisus is unable

• 26:25Speaker 03

  to defend him, but he's, because he's unable to defend him, he then is killed.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  And this to me is like, okay, this is how you have them being the ideal relationship. Because with Achilles and Patroclus, Achilles in Plato's Symposium is the Aromenos. And Patroclus is the Erastes. So it's the, it's the reverse. Patroclus dies first and then Achilles dies for him afterwards. According to Plato, this is what the Erastes should be doing. If the Aromenos either lives or dies, doesn't make a difference. The Erastes should be dying for him. The Aromenos shouldn't have to die for him.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And that's, so that's why I was like, okay, Nice and Realist. They are a specifically a platonic, romantic couple. Yeah, platonic with a capital P.

• 27:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but also like, sorry, etymologically, I've been thinking about, because you know, sometimes you just have a brain that thinks about etymology like on a regular basis. And I think about platonic so often because it's like, we say platonic, but then also you go back to Plato and it's like, do you mean platonic? Because, but also just to go to everything you just said, because that's, it's so interesting. And I, I've always, I've always found this, well, I mean, the Symposium is both so interesting and so messy, like, it's wild. I mean, it's, it's, it's an incredible piece because it really does give you so much information, I think, about like these types of relationships in the ancient world. And then obviously also is like so problematic.

• 28:04Liv Albert?

  But one of the things that interests me is how, you know, Plato, through that conversation, is essentially trying to like retcon Achilles and Patroclus, right? Like, because what he's trying to do is write an Erastes, Aromenos relationship into a Homeric text, a work and a story which preceded, we assume preceded, Erastes, Aromenos relationships. And that's why he can't quite make it work. Because it existed outside of that mentality. And I, but I, and it's just such an interesting thing because yeah, you're like, everything. Fits and then and then you have Virgil coming in later, who's writing with all of this in mind,

• 28:48Liv Albert?

  with with all of this in his background. I mean, that's just the fun of ancient texts broadly, right? It's like all of like the stuff that they did and did not know and looking at why some people write things differently with all of this information and and the Aeneid like, for all that I don't really care about the Aeneid as like a piece of Roman literature, I do care about the Aeneid as like a late-stage epic, I guess, is how I would phrase it like, I care about it as an epic poem written in full realization of everything that came before it, because I think that it is quite unique in that way. And this is such a great example of that, because like, he clearly could write, he he basically like did, he wrote what Plato wanted Achilles and Patroclus to be.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I'm, I just have to say, that's also why I love the Aeneid, like, is because, yeah, to me, it's like this apogee of, um, you know, classical literature up until that point.

• 29:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Um, you know, because again, like you said, like, he had all this amazing literature before him to work with. Um.

• 29:51Liv Albert?

  And he wrote it on purpose, which I think a lot of people, it's hard to differentiate that from Homer, because we conceptualize Homer as like a person who wrote it, and that is generally incorrect.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:01Liv Albert?

  And and so like, if you really think of it like, no, the Aeneid was written, whereas, you know, the the Homeric epics, we could say were composed, right? Like, they weren't, nobody sat down and was like, I'm gonna write this out in this like, you know, uh, like poetic verse, like, no one sat down and was like, I'm gonna do this, whereas Virgil then did. And so what, like, what does that impact? You know, how he chose to tell his story? It's just so interesting compared to the alternative.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  No, absolutely. And what I find interesting about Homer in that, um, yeah, again, my, uh, history advisor was of the mind that, and I know that this is like a scholarly camp, um, that I'm like, sure, why not? Uh, because Homer was sort of like a composite of, you know, traditions and whatnot. Um, you would have had, and it would have been, you know, composed during this, you know, Iron Age period where you had like, in places like Crete, um, and Thera. Um, you know, heterous relationships as these initiation rituals, you would have some, you would have like some like, like bones to throw to them pretty much.

• 31:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  In, in the Homeric um, epics, while also for communities who didn't like that, who didn't have those relationships and were like, we, we do not support.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  You know, you couldn't go to the rhapsode and be like, hey, what's going on here? It'd be like, I didn't say that they were, you know, lover and beloved like, that's, that's not it.

• 31:36Liv Albert?

  You're reading into it.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Which I think, I mean, to me, that, that makes the Homeric um, epics like even that much more rich. Because it's just, you know, there are, there's, there are fullness of like Greekness all over the Greek world, pretty much.

• 31:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, it's also interesting to think about them as like composites over such a long period of time.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:03Liv Albert?

  Too, right? Where like, there, there's, I don't think this really applies to Achilles and Patroclus, because it's like so heavily in, it, it like is the story. But for so many other things, like you can imagine that these moments or references, uh, similes, asides, whatever, like you can imagine them being put in at some point when I, you know, a city-state was particularly relevant, or when like a certain thing might be more like,

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:34Liv Albert?

  People might connect more to these moments or these stories, like these myths, like, because there's so many similes and there's so many like myths within the myth.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:43Liv Albert?

  And it, it's so interesting to imagine like where those were coming from, whether they were like inserted later. And if so, why? Like, I just, yeah, I love that, that level of speculation.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, it's awesome. Um, I love it. But um, moving beyond Homer, so.

• 33:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  That was, or like moving back to Virgil, I should say. Um, so I wrote that um, paper. It's now, if anyone wants to read an article form of it, um, it's in Ancient World Magazine, um, where I get into like the nitty gritty.

• 33:17Liv Albert?

  I can link to it. Amazing.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

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• 34:54Speaker 03

  So I had basically this paper and all this, you know, symposium gayness, military stuff in mind than going into my last semester at college, where I took a seminar on specifically 5th century Athens, so classical Athens. And while I was in the course, I did, we all do like research and presentations on specific topics. I Didn't mind, I think on like the judicial system and also on the military. And while I was doing it on the military, I knew in the back of my head about the Sacred Band of Thieves, which.

• 35:35Liv Albert?

  I've been waiting. I've been waiting.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  I know. I don't, because I know you've had people who talked about the.

• 35:42Liv Albert?

  No, I haven't. I need to.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:45Liv Albert?

  I like, I've had thieves, but I've been like aching for a specific, I need to have somebody come on, talk about the sacred band specifically, but feel free.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  We can do that now.

• 35:54Liv Albert?

  I mean, God, ever, however much you want, because it's definitely been like on my list.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  So I guess like what, just as like a prelude before I talk, because I, I use the sacred band of thieves a lot in my fiction writing.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  And.

• 36:08Liv Albert?

  Not even more.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  But so like, I guess it's like a prelude. So I know, I knew honestly, probably from like tumblr.com, like.

• 36:18Liv Albert?

  Respect.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  There was. Like the sacred band of thieves, which is an army made up of 150 same-sex couples, you know, of an Erasus and a Romanus. And that they were badasses pretty much. They won not every battle, but pretty much almost every battle that we have with them recorded.

• 36:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like Alex the OK, as my producer Michaela would require me to call him.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:44Liv Albert?

  He like, he had to really like work to defeat them. And I just love that they were like what made them famous for beings, like what made them, everyone knew that what made them so good was that they were all in. These like romantic relationships.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. And like it has, so all right, we're gonna put thieves or not, not thieves, Athens to the side. Let's talk about thieves.

• 37:11Liv Albert?

  Happily.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  So in the fourth century, so the sacred band thieves came about in the fourth century. Yep. When I say in the three seventy-nine, it was Form three seventy-eight, easy.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  After the Peloponnesian War, you know, Athens loses, Spartans then they're the big dogs in Greece. Um, and they set up in three eighty-two, a military regime um in Thebes. Um, they're basically let in by um oligarchic supporters in Thebes.

• 37:49Liv Albert?

  And Spartans?

• 37:51Speaker 03

  I know.

• 37:51Liv Albert?

  Involved in oligarchy? It's not relatable at all today.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Not at all. But that, so all, all the um democratic faction leaders, they actually fled to Athens, which is interesting because Thebes and Athens have, you know, a, a, let's say, less than harmonious history with one another.

• 38:13Liv Albert?

  Very longstanding beef.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:15Liv Albert?

  Very longstanding.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Exactly. Um, and so then in three seventy-nine, um, the democratic partisan, democratic partisans um of Thebes came, they snuck back into the city. And during the Aphrodite, uh, festival in honor of Aphrodite, um, they dressed up as uh women, as prostitutes essentially. And while the Spartan um commander at the time in charge of the city was, you know, feast and, you know, like, you know, it's a festival.

• 38:58Liv Albert?

  He was getting drunk.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, he was getting drunk and he was having sex. Let's be perfectly honest.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. So he's like, bring the ladies in, the ladies come in, they rip off their clothes, they got knives and they're not ladies. Um, and they're able to retake the city. Um, and the uh democratic faction was led by these awesome guys, Polopetus and Apaminondus. And we know the most about the sacred band from Plutarch's life of Polopetus. Very sadly, Plutarch's life of Apaminondus has been lost. I'm like.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's been over 2000 years and I'm still not over it.

• 39:40Liv Albert?

  It's okay, Ovid wrote a Medea and I'll never get over that being lost.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. We have, we have, there's too much lost, too much lost.

• 39:48Liv Albert?

  Truly.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  Honestly.

• 39:50Liv Albert?

  Everything women ever wrote, other than the stuff Sappho got survive, that survived randomly.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Truly, truly. Hey, shout out to those Egyptian garbage pits. They.

• 40:01Liv Albert?

  Damn right. They give us everything.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  They give us everything.

• 40:05Liv Albert?

  Women were trash and I'll take it.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  So the, um, the, they kick the Spartans out. They know, Pelopitus and Epithamondas know, okay, they're not gonna be happy about this. They're, they're gonna come back and try to whip our ass. And, um, another, um, Theban Gorgidus. It, I, I can't remember off the top of my head if it's like explicitly linked to being his idea. Um, but he is the one that's credited to creating the sacred band. And basically he's like, okay, if we have an army of, you know, people who are boyfriends, then they'll be unstoppable. Yeah. Again, going off of, um, ideas that, uh, are discussed in Plato's Symposium, which was being composed.

• 40:56Liv Albert?

  Basically that same sex relationships make you more virtuous, which I think is like, just to spell it out.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you.

• 41:03Liv Albert?

  That's what Plato said.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Exactly. And, um.

• 41:08Liv Albert?

  I mean, it was used to also like bring women down a peg, but still it's interesting and valuable.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  No, literally, that was another thing I remember saying to a friend's friend once, like, who asked me like, oh, why was Angelina so gay? I'm like, honestly, like, when you're that misogynistic, it just goes.

• 41:27Liv Albert?

  Truly.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Like they misogynize themselves into being gay. Like I have no other way of describing it.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  Like really sad, but like really absurd.

• 41:41Liv Albert?

  But also really gay.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  But also really gay at the end of the day.

• 41:44Liv Albert?

  And that's nice now.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  But, um. Thebes in particular, they had a very unique relationship with like homosexuality and that it didn't, it doesn't seem to be the way that it was, let's just go with Athens, but also with Sparta, where you had like, with Athens in particular, it was usually between men who were in their twenties who were soldiers and then like guys in their teens. And then when the Oromenos, the younger guy, turned, you know, twenty, entered his twenties, then the relationship would end and he would turn into an Erastus and, you know, court.

• 42:26Liv Albert?

  Twenty is the line.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, interesting. I'm like, yeah.

• 42:33Liv Albert?

  I'm like, the idea, sorry, as a woman nearing her late thirties, the idea of a twenty year old being an adult, let alone like on the older side.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:46Liv Albert?

  I mean, all right.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  No, it's crazy. And what's interesting is that the argument for Athenian, like, men, like the Erastus being in their twenties is because then when they turn thirty, when they enter their thirties, that's then when they would be, you know, getting their child brides, pretty much.

• 43:02Liv Albert?

  Oh, pretty.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. So the argument's like, oh, like these guys, let's say they want a romantic relationship. Well, they can't have a relationship, a romantic relationship with a girl. So that's what they'll do with other guys. I'm like, okay, like, cool, whatever. Whatever you say.

• 43:22Liv Albert?

  I just have to say this because it's this, there's a line I've been running through my head, I mean, a lot lately, generally, well, not lately, but just mostly in this conversation. I'm talking around in circles. I've been rewatching Parks and Recreation and there is just this incredible line and it's so funny and true and relevant where there's like a, basically like a, what's meant to be a bigoted Christian woman is talking about something and somebody says the, what about the Romans? And she just says, perverts. And then they say the Greeks and she says, gay perverts. And that's a very poor rendition. The clip is is generally hilarious, but like it's just so true.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just really, really gross stuff at the end of the day.

• 44:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  The that's why. Hey, this is why, though, I love Thebes because they were a little less gross. They didn't. It doesn't seem that they had this sort of like, oh, the young guy's got to be a teenager. Like, no, they would have. Honestly, it seems to be lifelong for lifelong monogamous relationships. And there doesn't also seem to have been an emphasis on like this age differential.

• 44:36Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  It very much like there. It could have been, you know, like, like a year, maybe two years.

• 44:42Liv Albert?

  Sure, like a regular relationship today. Like, that's fine. Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Exactly. But it wasn't this like strict, you know, you turn 20, you gotta be an Erastes now.

• 44:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and that's what makes it. It's funny that it's the Athenians being grosser because like, of course, it would be the Athenians.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Well, wait until I talk about Spartans.

• 45:03Liv Albert?

  Oh, you mean they're worse? Oh, my God. Or different. But it's it's so interesting because, yeah, like, that's what that line, those like strict quote unquote rules, that's what makes it so gross and predatory. I mean, obviously, also like the general age issues, but like, you know, as you mentioned that Yentl said in a past episode, like, it's not that the girls that they were then marrying later, like, were older. So it wasn't that necessarily that the boys were like younger than the girls in these situations. But the fact that there are these like strict rules around it really make it so that it's just like, it's like a weird cultural practice versus an actual like, like romantic

• 45:46Liv Albert?

  relationship, which it sounds like the Thebans were like, no, no, like, we're just like life partners, not some weird like, it's supposed to be mentorship, but also there's sex. Like, yeah, that's so interesting.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah, I agree. And the

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Xenophon, the Athenian Spartan, I don't know what he would prefer me to call him, probably Spartan, but like, writer at the time, so he's the main source, or main contemporary source that we have for this period of history, the fourth century. And he is notably silent on the sacred band of Thebes. He says that Thebes had a select men, so like, they had some special fighters. And he says in his symposium that the Thebans would put lovers next to their beloveds in battle, because that was the only way to get them to fight. Because if, like, they would be too, if they didn't have someone next to that, like their

• 46:49Speaker 03

  boyfriend next to them, pretty much, they would just run away. Which is like, sure.

• 46:56Liv Albert?

  So just anti-Theban propaganda?

• 46:58Speaker 03

  Oh, 100% like-

• 46:59Liv Albert?

  From an Athenian or a Spartan?

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:02Liv Albert?

  I would have guessed.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  I would have thought. But he wrote in, I want to say it's, yeah, in his Laconian, Laconian constitution about the Spartans, he says how in Thebes, when he's comparing Spartan pederasty versus Thebans' pederasty, and is like, well, in Thebes, the men live with each other, susogentis. So, also, totally pronounced that wrong, but, basically-

• 47:33Liv Albert?

  I wouldn't know.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Yoked together, is the translation, which is actually a word that is used to describe heterosexual marriages.

• 47:42Liv Albert?

  I was gonna say, yeah, it sounds like it would be, yeah, the same.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, it really does, like, the picture that emerges, and he's saying it, obviously, as a slight, so like, you know, when, like, my critical historian hat's like, well, he could be like, being dramatic, you know? But at the same time, you know, we can also maybe take it at face value, like-

• 48:05Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, and we, when we have the, the material evidence for the sacred band, and then also, things like that, like, it makes sense that, yeah, like, sure, he could be meaning it as like, a slight-

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:17Liv Albert?

  But it also lines up with archaeological evidence.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  Right. No, it's true. And- Whereas his, so that's Theban pederasty or, you know, same-sex relationships, I think would be a better way of just describing them. Um, whereas Spartan was like really gross. Um, and the like.

• 48:41Liv Albert?

  I want to keep making jokes about how like I like, ha, ha, oh, my God, you believe the Spartans are gross. And then I'm like, it's, it's old because obviously they're just fucking terrible.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  And so bad.

• 48:51Liv Albert?

  Now more than ever.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 48:53Liv Albert?

  The relevancy of their terribleness.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 48:55Liv Albert?

  It's just hard to check.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Um, the, and like with Xenophon, it's like the Olympic gold medal Simone Biles level, like gymnastics routine, mental gymnastics routine that he does. To talk about how like, yeah, Spartans had same-sex relationships, but they weren't sexual at all. Like they weren't doing anything. Like he, um, basically when, when a Spartan youth turned 12, the state would then give him, um, what they called an inspirer.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  He was supposed to inspire the younger Spartan, you know, into being a better soldier, virtuous man, et cetera. Um, and again, Xenophon's like, this was totally educational, you guys. Like there was nothing else going on. Meanwhile, you know, it, it, everyone else is like, no, like this is like Spartans in particular were seen to be extremely into homosexual relation, like same-sex relationships.

• 50:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  And such that, um, the, like a by phrase for anal sex was Laconian ass. Like, because they liked it so much.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  So it's like, you know, Xenophon, you can do all, all the like, you know, mental gymnastics you want, but at the end of the day, like we can see through this. Um.

• 50:29Liv Albert?

  We also, just from the mythological side, I'm trying to think of if there's more, but like Apollo and Hyacinth is explicitly like Hyacinthus is Spartan.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:37Liv Albert?

  He's meant to be like, yeah. And I feel like there might be more. Yeah, anyway, it's interesting. That's funny.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  No, and the um, the um, sanctuary Athira that I mentioned earlier was um, Spartan.

• 50:52Liv Albert?

  Oh.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  So it's like, okay.

• 50:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah, okay.

• 50:58Liv Albert?

  Apollo loved it. You guys love it. Like, let's be honest.

• 51:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  But so the Thebans, they had a more, you know, uh, not to be anachronistic, but they had a more modern sort of understanding of male homosexuality um, and treatment of it. And they then formed this army, um, were able to beat the Spartan, like a Spartan force at the Battle of Tagira. Um, shortly after they uh, retook the, retook Thebes. Um, and then in three seventy-one B.C., um, Sparta marched back into uh, Bayosha to basically reassert their dominance in the region. Um, Thebes at the time had formed um, a the Bayocean League, which was just like an alliance of cities in the region.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  And Sparta was like, oh, we don't like that. Like, what are you doing? And so they marched back into Bayosha and clashed with Thebes at this very famous battle, um, Luttra, which is actually the subject of a short story that I wrote coming out next month. Uh, and um,

• 52:12Speaker 03

  this was a really significant battle because it broke essentially the Spartan mirage that had like prevailed up until that point. Uh, so you know, like, the Spartans were able to win so many battles up until that point because literally people were so scared that they just wouldn't even fight. Um, and at Paimonandis. Came up with this unique stratagem, which was normally how ancient Greek armies fought was you put your best soldiers on your right flank against the opposite army's left flank, which is where their weakest soldiers were. So.

• 52:48Liv Albert?

  I feel like that would be very quickly circumvented as soon as the others realized they could just swap.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's what it took hundreds of years, but a Paimon just came up.

• 52:59Liv Albert?

  Guys.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Was like, no, what we're gonna do is put our best soldiers on our left flank and put best against best. And so he puts.

• 53:10Liv Albert?

  Sorry, I'm not to be screaming duh at the ancient people, but okay.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  No, I know. I don't disagree. But this is also where the phrase cutting off the snake's head comes from. Because Paimon is apparently like took a snake, took its head off, cut its head off. And was like, this is what we gotta do to the Spartan army, you guys. We gotta put the sacred band up against the Hephaest, the Spartan royal guard.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  And their soldiers, the other Spartiates. And this works like basically the Thebans charge and right at the Spartan, like best Spartan line, killed the Spartan king Cleopartist like right away. And then it just turns into an absolute rout. So many Spartans die and it breaks the Spartan mirage. It is such a devastating battle or defeat, I should say, that Thebes is now seen as like they're the big dogs pretty much in Greece. And they're able to then march into the Peloponnese, like actually into Spartan territory and

• 54:18Speaker 03

  build, rebuild, I should say. So they free a bunch of Helots and are able to rebuild the city of Messina. And that's seen as like another death blow because all these Helots are, you know, they have a city now essentially.

• 54:34Liv Albert?

  Sorry, I gotta stop you here because really? So do they, do we have evidence they like freed? So just to the listeners who need the reminder that Spartan Helots were like, they're very, very, I mean, a very Spartan slave class.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 54:48Liv Albert?

  That were like unique to Sparta in their terrible situation. But also a lot of them were originally from Messenia. So. The Thebans just like let them have it again?

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, Apaminatus rebuilt the city because he knew that the only reason why the Helots were able to, not the only reason, but like a big reason why they were able to stay in bondage was because they didn't have a city to,

• 55:13Speaker 03

  you know, lo- build, build around.

• 55:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they didn't.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  They didn't have a home.

• 55:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they, sorry, I need to, um, phrase a point here that's not at all related to current events. Not even a little bit, but it's, it's almost like a strategy for dehumanization and breaking down the wills of a particular group of people would be to strip them of their ancestral homeland and basically revoke their rights to any kind of citizenship or, you know, ability to move or regain any kind of official countryhood that they might have had originally. It's almost like that's a good, that's what empires do to break people.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, precisely. And that Apaminatus understood this well. Ed was like, all right, I'm going to like then rebuild the city. And I have to be honest, I can't remember off the top of my head. From what I remember, it's that a lot of Helots after Lucio just ran away. Like when they learned that this city was being rebuilt, they were like, all right, we're just gonna get out, um, if we can.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  And it, that was like, again, another like death blow to Spartan supremacy was

• 56:40Speaker 03

  this loss of like,

• 56:43Speaker 03

  I, now I need to like figure out how I want to phrase this, but like slaver legitimacy, I don't know how you want to phrase it, but like with Messini now as a city for the Helots, they couldn't, as you said, you know,

• 56:58Speaker 03

  psychologically enslave them as well.

• 57:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well.

• 57:04Liv Albert?

  Every time I have a conversation these days, it inevitably descends into not at all relevant

• 57:09Speaker 03

  I know.

• 57:09Liv Albert?

  topics. And it's not because I bring it there ever, never. Um, but that's really so, that's so interesting. And I think maybe, um, really, really powerful proof that, uh, freedom, real, actual freedom to people and return, um, to their, I mean, or rather like, it's almost like, and you know, pushback against me if I'm wrong, but it's almost like Sparta had set up what we might call an apartheid situation, um, where some people had more rights than others because the Spartans, of course, had full citizenship rights. But if you weren't Spartan, you weren't considered a, a full citizen.

• 57:51Liv Albert?

  And that is designed to break people's will. But when they are given agency and freedom and access to community, uh, the, the imperial boot isn't so strong.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Yep. It kinda just turns into a weak flimsy sandal.

• 58:09Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Yep. And that, you know, and that was Thebes again. Um, that's why I love Epaminondas so much. He's one of my favorite historical figures.

• 58:20Liv Albert?

  Thebes, I have to say, and I also didn't know any of this. So you've just given me so many more reasons to love Thebes.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no, they're, they're awesome. And for any, you know, listeners who want to learn more, um, James Rahm recently wrote a book called The Sacred Band about this period in history that is absolutely unreal. I wish it had come out when I was doing research for some other writing, but like, um, I'm just really happy that we have it now. Um, it really covers, um, Epaminondas and just this period super duper well. And, um, unfortunately for Thebes, you know, they had Epaminondas, they had Polopetus. Um, but once they both died, it was, they didn't really have any replacements like of the same caliber. Um, and so you then had like, kind of like a multipolar system in Greece, um, in terms of like state powers,

• 59:10Speaker 03

  really up until, uh, the Battle of Karina in the three thirties, which is when Philip of Macedon came in and was like, all right, I'm just gonna. Conquer Greece now.

• 59:23Liv Albert?

  Oh, right. His dad did it. Alex the OK didn't even go down.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  Yes, I, yeah.

• 59:28Liv Albert?

  Michaela would have been screaming at me. I'm glad you corrected.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  No, no, Alexander was there. So like this is very. Here, I'm like, this is like the great irony of like gay queer history is that Alexander, the great, you know, infamous bisexual warlord.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  Of antiquity.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  What led the cavalry that, again, this is, you know, everything's scholarly, it's contentious.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  I personally subscribe to the theory that the Theban Sacred Band, so during the Battle of Carinnea, Thebes was fighting with Athens. Athens broke apart. Like they went, they almost say detached, but basically like there was an opening in their flanks for the Macedonian cavalry to basically come in and attack the Theban Sacred Band. And the cavalry was led by Alexander. And they killed every member of the Sacred Band to a man. And the reason why I believe that this is how the battle went down is because we have the archaeological remains of the Theban Sacred Band at this battle.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  And we can tell from their skulls that they were, some of these soldiers were struck by like blows from above. So it would have made sense for like, okay, like a horseman's coming down, throwing down his sword and, you know, killing them.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  And

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  what, so Alexander is the one that ultimately destroys them. But there's a quote in Plutarch that I, you know, still find very memorable, which is that Philip, when he looks at the destruction, you know, all these dead, you know, couples goes, let any man who thinks what they did shameful, you know, not think that essentially, I'm paraphrasing now, but uh, well, which is to say that, you know, like there, again, this sort of more modern conception of even homosexuality was seen as by contemporary, contemporaries, um, not, you know, normal. Or preferred. Which, you know.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  I disagree with those opponents and it seems that Philip is on my side.

• 1:01:56Liv Albert?

  No, it's, it is so interesting though to like, to look back at how those things are viewed. I don't know. It's so interesting the way a lot of bigots try to like erase gay history and say that like didn't exist at all. And, and it's like, but what's more interesting is to look at the complexities. And like the, I mean, the, like, obviously there, there, there hasn't really been a period where it was ever like, this is great. You should get married and everyone should live happily ever after. And like, that sucks. But we do have such periods of like, or, or such evidence for like the real respect and value that people have given to same-sex relationships like over

• 1:02:37Liv Albert?

  for, since the beginning of time. And I think it's so interesting to like, hold on to those ideas and revisit them and just, I don't know. Just, I mean, I love all of the evidence because I like to shove it down people's throats.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  Same.

• 1:02:50Liv Albert?

  But yeah, it's, but it's, it's fucking interesting. And like, yeah, I don't know. Any kind of a, a, attempt to like erase that stuff from history is so nonsensical for lots of reasons. I mean, the, it's obviously horrifying at its absolute core, but it's also like, it's just dumb. And I think that that's where I'll just like never agree with those people. Cause it's like, it's stupid. This stuff is just fucking fascinating. Like, why are you so insecure that you need to pretend it doesn't exist instead of just being like, this is interesting and different.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, a hundred percent. And like, again, it's interesting to me how, you know, a lot of what these,

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  I'm thinking like specifically about like, you know, far-right appropriations of ancient culture. Like, again, you know, going back to those horrible Spartans, like they're put on such a pedestal by these, you know, hate groups. And it's like, they.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  Were, you know, banging each other in the barracks. Like it's, it's, um, and they had, um, a lot of views on things that, you know, don't really fit, you know, the current appropriations.

• 1:04:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  And also, I mean, again, I always get hung up, hung up on Sparta because like, they really do suck on like.

• 1:04:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Like I be that in like a level, on like a military level, like I'm thinking like I, they don't, like it was a mirage, like, um, and I, I know you did like a, a series on Sparta. So like.

• 1:04:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And the mirage specifically because that's what's so interesting.

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Like they, like when you pull that back, they were just like, you know, another city state.

• 1:04:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they were good at propaganda.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:04:46Liv Albert?

  There are modern parallels.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. And like oligarchs running propaganda? Who would have thought?

• 1:04:55Liv Albert?

  Who would have thought?

• 1:04:57Speaker 03

  But so, um, it, that's why when I, I was so drawn to Thebes because they, they like are the ones who single-handedly broke this barrage during this period of history. And like using a, an army of, um, you know, gay guys.

• 1:05:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  Or, or queer guys. I don't know what they liked, but, uh.

• 1:05:23Liv Albert?

  Fair.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  But, um, it's, yeah, it, it's very, um, like fascinating to me, um, in all the, all that respect.

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• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  What I was fascinated by and like really wanted to explore was sort of it's how it tied into masculinity, which again is something that these groups today are so hung up upon. And how, in the Athenian context, basically what I wanted to explore was, so I knew about the sacred band, why didn't Athens ever form a sacred band? Or something like that. Because we have so much evidence from that city-state that, you know, they were really into same-sex relationships. And basically, what I ended up doing kind of like in-depth research on was tying the...

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  These pteras relationships, you know, as discussed in like the symposium and elsewhere to the Athenian ephibae, which was a military training system that I, again, this is another like area of scholarly dispute, but um, we don't know when it really began, but it seems to be the late fourth century. We have, we know about it from Aristotle's writing, pretty much.

• 1:08:29Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  And but there were-

• 1:08:33Liv Albert?

  So after Athens is, had already kind of fallen.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:08:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, but you had, um, certain, what I like to call like precursors, um, to basically where like men of the same age range, so eighteen to twenty, was when, um, Athenians would become, Athenian young men would become Ephibes. And basically when the Ephib was, is, um, a, like, like an unarmed hoplite, or a light armed hoplite. That's, yeah, that's a better way of phrasing it. Um, they would-

• 1:09:10Liv Albert?

  Can you, sorry, this is how much my show never talks about the military.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  But no worries.

• 1:09:15Liv Albert?

  I know the word hoplite very well, but could I fully define it as compared to anyone else in the military? No. Could you give us a little, just like an overview, hoplite? What does that mean?

• 1:09:25Speaker 03

  So, of course, um, the hoplite was the, um, basically like when you think of a stereotypical Greek soldier, like with the big horse crest helmet, had a big shield, the appus, um, and a big old spear, um, and bronze armor. They would fight, um, in phalanxes. So, um, now I'm like, how do I describe a phalanx? But basically like the big blocks of soldiers.

• 1:09:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, they were like, they would lock their shields together in certain, or rather like arrange them in certain ways.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58Liv Albert?

  To provide like a larger shield.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah. And-

• 1:10:03Liv Albert?

  You got a military historian over here, for sure.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  No, I mean, hey, that's better than how I could describe it.

• 1:10:08Liv Albert?

  My dude a phalanx, so, great.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  They were the, um, basically they were the aristocratic, um, land infantry.

• 1:10:16Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  Um, and specifically aristocratic because you had to supply your own armor. So you could only, like-

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  You know, get this armor if you were wealthy, pretty much.

• 1:10:29Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  You could afford it. And then, of course, the wealthiest would be cavalry, because they could afford horses. Um, and the hoplite was then like, even though it was for, even though really only aristocrats could be hoplites. Um, it it seems to be that most people, most citizens who were in the Athenian military were rowers in the navy.

• 1:10:55Liv Albert?

  Hmm. They did have a good navy.

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  They had a really good navy. Um, and all you needed to do to become a rower was, I think, by, um, like, the pad that you would sit on in the ship, in the ship.

• 1:11:06Liv Albert?

  This is crazy, the amount that they expected people to bring to their military positions, like.

• 1:11:14Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:11:14Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  No, I agree. Of the, so the hoplites were these heavily armed soldiers. And the, um, Ephid was a, basically the opposite of this. So he wouldn't have armor. Um, he would be just like a light armed soldier. Um, and what was interesting, there's a French scholar, Vidal Nocquet. Uh, he wrote really like the fee book, I think, about this, um, called The Black Hunter. And it is about how the Ephabea, the system of military training, was, um, reflective of kind of like

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  the transition for Athenian males from, you know, young men to full citizen hoplite adults. Um, and that being said, even people in the navy would go through the Ephabea, um, which I found interesting. Um, but so it was seen as like a, a training system for both the military and for, you know, being a citizen. And.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  What they would do, what that means is that the young men, so the Ephibes would have to go from a state of, I believe what he calls uncooked, to cooked. So in order to become a full hoplite, you have to first become the opposite. And what this meant is that, okay, like, the hoplite lives in Athens and he's heavily armored. The Ephib lives his first year, he's in a fort or a couple of forts on the Piraeus. And then in his second year, he's on the fringes of Attica in these other forts. So he's at the fringes, like the physical fringes of Athenian society.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  And then, in addition, during the Osphoria festival, which I believe was a festival for Demeter, Ephibes would dress up as women. So again, go into this idea of, you know, in order for a man, we're just gonna have to be a woman. And basically what I found with this, you know, formal military institution was like, oh, this is kind of how they treated pederast relationships as well. And what I argued in my paper was essentially that the pederast relationship, because it was usually like, I don't know, when, let's say a guy was in his mid-teens, so right before

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  the Ephesus started. If you're going off of Plato, he should be learning from his Erastes basically the same virtues that the, he will then learn in the Ephesus. So it's a, it's kind of like a primer for the more formal civic military training he gets later on. And it'll be, you know, through this non-institutional, like romantic relationship. That being said, like, the way that Athenian same-sex relationships worked were so wackadoodle-doo.

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  I have a quote written down that I just need to say, because I'm like, this perfectly encapsulates. How like masculinity was.

• 1:14:43Liv Albert?

  Oh, God, I'm excited and horrified.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. During this period, it's from the historian John Winkler. In Athens, male life is warfare. Masculinity is a duty and hard-won achievement. And the temptation to desert one's side is very great. So these young men had like, they were expected to be in these same sexual relationships. But at the same time, you couldn't like enjoy it at all. Like you couldn't, and that's reflected in, A, the courtship process. So usually what would happen is like the lover who, again,

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  to build out the dynamics, it's like the Erastes would usually be like a freshly minted soldier, fresh off of their military training, like in their early mid twenties, whatever. And they would then try to court the Aromenos by giving them, I don't know, like hairs, like singing them songs, like kind of crazy, you know, romantic gestures, let's say.

• 1:15:48Liv Albert?

  I love that. Can I just, this is also coming from my knowledge of like, you know, Victorian Edwardian literature and everything, but like the, the length of time that humans determined that like giving somebody else some of your hair was like a romantic gesture, like that went on.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sorry. I meant, I meant like rabbits.

• 1:16:07Liv Albert?

  You meant, oh, my literal rabbits. Okay. Well, then the, then the fucking, in the Victorian period, they were like cutting off actual hair and being like, here's a lock of my hair. I love you. But that is so much funnier that it's a rabbit. All right. Well, then just broadly, different, different forms of the same homonym. They're giving off hairs.

• 1:16:29Liv Albert?

  My God, K, sorry. That's even, that's funnier too. I got you a rabbit.

• 1:16:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, no.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  And like you could see that in, like the evidence on behalf of this is from like base pages.

• 1:16:41Liv Albert?

  Nice. Okay. Yeah. Now I can picture it. Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 03

  And the idea was that the Aromenos would be like, no, no, no. Like basically playing hard to get until he deems the Erastes like, oh, he's someone who's going to teach me how to be a good man, pretty much.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  And then, so this is important because later on in life, when the young Athenian like is now an adult, he is like a full citizen, charges could be brought against them for how they behaved as teenagers. That would then invalidate their laws, essentially. So we have like a case called against Tomaros, which is basically arguing that this guy, Tomaros, when he was a teenager, was like prostituting himself and was basically behaving, you know, unmanly. And the threat of this was even though this was happening while he was a teenager, while he was like expected to

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  be in these same-sex relationships, by, you know, not playing it cool, I guess, for lack of a better word, he could then be charged and his current, like whatever laws he, you know, brought forward and passed as an adult would then be invalidated because of how he was potentially perceived as behaving when he was a teenager.

• 1:18:14Liv Albert?

  And when he was in the arominos position.

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:18:17Liv Albert?

  Gross.

• 1:18:17Speaker 03

  So it's like on top of it, you have the society like pressuring these men, these young guys, to be in these relationships. But at the same time, it was like, no, no, no, like, you can't act like you like it at all.

• 1:18:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Uh, which, you know, I'm sure many of them did not. And, um, and then, so like they would have to behave a very specific way. And then when they, so that when they became men.

• 1:18:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  Um, they could not then be faulted years later as being like, you enjoy being arominos too much. Um.

• 1:18:52Liv Albert?

  See, okay.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  Nightmare, nightmare. Honestly, I'm like, I remember reading about this and being like, this is horrible. And I don't. I remember talking to my brother about it when I was doing this research. He was like, Harrison, this just sounds like really aggressive hazing. And I'm like, you're not wrong.

• 1:19:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but I, I think that that's, like, I think that looking at this is so important because it's such a great reminder that the idea of toxic masculinity is just as impactful on men as it is on women. Like, this is toxic masculinity. This is the belief that like, if you are not a certain way, that you're like, quote unquote, not a man, and it is terrible for everyone involved. And so like, yeah, this desire some people have to fight against the idea that, that toxic masculinity exists, like, it's hurting men just as much, really is. Like, that's so damaging and terrible.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  No, a hundred percent. And that, amazing segue, is what a lot of my historical fiction writing is about.

• 1:19:54Liv Albert?

  Great.

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  Um, that's what my poetry love is. So I write, um, um, short and also longer prose, usually historical fiction, a little bit of fantasy, but you know, set in antiquity or Middle Ages. And a lot of my stories, namely this one that's actually coming out next month, focuses on how like, really ancient masculinity, like ancient masculinity was so aggressively toxic. And like, we, like, if you didn't buy in to that system, and like, you were a dude, and even if you did buy in, like, it still sucked to go through it.

• 1:20:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  But if you didn't buy in, then you were especially like ostracized.

• 1:20:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  And it's, you know, horrible, horrible.

• 1:20:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, okay. And I've been thinking about, I've been thinking about this myth since you started, since we started talking about this, and kind of waiting for the right time to bring it up. And this is it. Because I think that, like, yes, everything you've just said, yes. And then I also think that there's, there's this level of propaganda put in place on the ancient men.

• 1:21:09Liv Albert?

  And and to basically like emphasize what you've just gone through, which is that like, you're not allowed to like it, you're but also you have to go through it and it's good for you.

• 1:21:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Liv Albert?

  But you're not allowed to like it. And to me, that is like, i- it is basically written into their mythos through the story of Zeus and Ganymede, right? Like,

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:21:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like that that story is about an older man and a younger man and Zeus abducts him. It's meant to be bad and traumatic. And then this kid is ser- quote unquote, serving Zeus. For like, I mean mythologically for eternity, like now, given this kind of like, it's not obviously spelled out that he's given this eternal youth. But like, essentially, that's what happens is he's like this permanent Aromenos. And yet, but thi- this is meant to be like a nice story, like his dad was given some fancy horses in compensation. Like, it's horrifying and and it's written into the mythos as this kind of like origin story.

• 1:22:13Liv Albert?

  That's meant to be nice and good and not terrible, even though on its face it's terrible. But I mean, that's most of Greek mythology, let's be honest.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like spun is romantic, like,

• 1:22:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, yes, but it's like i- it the way they use words like beloved in that way, right? Like, i- it, yeah, i- it's it's propaganda. It's, it reminds me of how um they use the word rape and then to mean abduction and obviously sexual assault. But I've had the number of people I've had criticize my work on the show by being like rape just meant kidnapped. Like it, as if it like, because I would be like, yeah, that's that's rape, rape, like, and they do well, rape just meant kidnapped. And I'm just want to scream into the void, like, why do you think that is?

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Liv Albert?

  It's not because there wasn't rape, it's because they weren't acknowledging it as a bad thing. They just weren't because it was the the the crime was taking someone's property. That property was human, like,

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Liv Albert?

  That's just how, this is just how language and words evolve and things. So I don't know. It's, yeah, I don't even know how it got on there because I just were rambling about toxic masculinity. But this is, it's, it's so dark and so interesting.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  It is. It's, so that's the thing. It's like, I, it's fascinating because again,

• 1:23:29Speaker 03

  we live obviously now in a patriarchal world, like with

• 1:23:34Liv Albert?

  Do we ever?

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  With just like severe toxic masculinity, like now more than ever, just like really pervading. And I was talking to my friend the other day about how I'm like, looking at like, people my age, younger, and I'm like, like guys, and I'm like, I just want to like grab them by the shoulders and be like, how can I get you to stop being, you know, interested in fascism? For lack of a better word.

• 1:24:14Liv Albert?

  You have to laugh because otherwise you want to cry.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  It's true. It's like, like it's so, it's interesting because like I've, like, mostly because like I, again, you know, I love ancient history. I love military history. So, you know, the algorithm on all these apps, it's trying to hook me in. And like I, I can see just how easy it is for young men to just like totally be swept up in this disgusting system. And I'm just like,

• 1:24:48Speaker 03

  ah, like, gosh, what, what is it? What will it take till I catch you to realize like, no, this isn't good stuff?

• 1:24:57Speaker 03

  Like not only is it not good for like other people and everyone, but it's also not good for you. And

• 1:25:03Liv Albert?

  Well, think of like the, all of the red pill bullshit of like that realm or like the, you know, incel nonsense, the what's his name? People, the what's Andrew, whatever.

• 1:25:15Liv Albert?

  Like all of that stuff, it's harmful to the men just as much, but like, and it's just like so toxic and terrible. And, but yeah, you can see how people fall into these mentalities, especially with, I mean, and, and that's, now it's still connected to ancient Rome because of the Ovid of it all. They, they literally use his work as like, uh, you know, the like pickup manual, but like, But the the the military side of it, like it's so easy to fall into it because also like Roman and Spartan propaganda worked. It worked and like it just like American propaganda works now, right? Like especially with, yeah, with with, oh, my God, the algorithms.

• 1:25:55Liv Albert?

  Like, I can't even imagine. My algorithm is so feminist that I don't think I'd ever get near that stuff, but like.

• 1:26:02Speaker 03

  I'm jealous.

• 1:26:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, I imagine. But also it's because I never look into the military. And I imagine as soon as I would start, you know, like you're getting that.

• 1:26:11Speaker 03

  No, like, I'm like, I just want to see, like, I don't know, like, how, um, it's like to me, I'm thinking about, like, Demetrius the besieger, who was a Hellenistic ruler and he was like, he's called the besieger because he built these wacky siege engines, like, just like giant towers. Crazy stuff. And I'm like, see, I just want to know about that. Like, I just want to feel like.

• 1:26:36Liv Albert?

  Because it's cool and weird, right?

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, I don't, I don't need, like, this guy, like, you know, um, doing bicep curls while, like, screaming, like, um, Spartan, like, you know, misattributed Spartan quotes.

• 1:26:51Liv Albert?

  No, I'm lobby.

• 1:26:53Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:26:55Liv Albert?

  But they probably don't know how to spell it in Greek.

• 1:26:57Speaker 03

  Oh, no. There's definitely like a sigma on there. They love the sigma.

• 1:27:00Liv Albert?

  They love a sigma.

• 1:27:07Speaker 03

  But so I guess what, um, it's disappointing to me just to see, like, you know, looking at, um, the ancient material, you know, how, um, you know, cultures like Sparta and Athens were able to, you know, propagandize this sort of like, not only propagandize, but also institutionalize these, um, um, toxic, um, systems. But then see how it like, you know, it's been a couple of thousand, couple millennia and like, we're still, still doing it. And, um, that's why I'm like, let's look at thieves.

• 1:27:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  Like, they're not perfect, but you know, like.

• 1:27:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  Other, um.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  There are other ancient pre-modern societies and just like lenses to use to

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  probably look at, if you want to admire it, you know, I'm not one to be like, we should look at the past as a template. But like, you know, if you want to think that, that doesn't mean that I think that you shouldn't look at the past and be like, whoa, that's cool.

• 1:28:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:16Speaker 03

  That's awesome, you know?

• 1:28:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, that's what's the, but that's what's the fun of being on this side of history is like that ability, which again, like seems really obvious, but isn't. But that ability to be like, I love this thing. I love learning about it. I love, you know, like just really diving into the depths of it. And simultaneously I can recognize where it's problematic and all of the reasons why it shouldn't be emulated. Like there, we, we can and should be interested in and love these things without thinking that they need to be valorized. Like it's wild that that's like a thing to be said, but I'm like, I love ancient Greek and also, or ancient Greece.

• 1:29:02Liv Albert?

  And it was also terrible. Like the, both of those things can be true.

• 1:29:06Speaker 03

  No, totally. Like, yeah, it is weird today how we have, and it almost feels like, almost like a,

• 1:29:18Speaker 03

  oh my God, what's the word? I'm thinking about like the 18th century, like, or like Victorian, you know?

• 1:29:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:23Speaker 03

  You know, like, oh, you study something because it's like, it has this

• 1:29:29Speaker 03

  quality of like worth that's, you know,

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  that, that prizes it above other things.

• 1:29:36Liv Albert?

  Superior.

• 1:29:37Speaker 03

  Superiority. Thank you. That's, that's the word I was looking for.

• 1:29:40Liv Albert?

  I know the feeling.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  Which is so just, you know, it's not necessary.

• 1:29:48Liv Albert?

  It is very Victorian though. You're right. It's very Victorian to, yeah, to be looking back, but also it's like, I mean, the Victorians did it and we're doing it now. But it's looking back on those people through the lens of today and it's, and not recognizing that you're doing that. Like I'm doing that. In my show, absolutely, but I am fully aware that I am looking at it through that lens. Whereas so many of these people who see it from the other side are looking at it through the lens of like, say Christianity, or rather, not even necessarily Christianity as a religion, but I say it as like a cultural.

• 1:30:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:30:20Liv Albert?

  Like, uh, North American slash Western cultural identity.

• 1:30:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Liv Albert?

  Like, you're looking at it through that, but it, you can't, like, it, that doesn't, it doesn't work that way, you know?

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  No, a hundred percent, like, even, like, I'm working on, um, an article right now about, um, not to pivot back to Byzantium, and I apologize in advance that I tend to do this, but about.

• 1:30:45Liv Albert?

  I have ADHD. I, I respect this.

• 1:30:48Speaker 03

  I appreciate it, but, uh, about, um, a Byzantine folk hero, uh, Digi and the Secretis, um, who, I've always found fascinating. He, and the article will look at how pretty much he embodies certain aspects of pagan, um, masculine heroes. So like, I specifically look at his parallels with Heracles. Um, and basically, the conclusion that I like kind of came to while like, reading into everything was, um, I said no decent amount about, um, Byzantine culture and like, specifically their mentalities in terms of warfare. And, um, they were very much like, no, like, war is bad.

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  Like, like, we, we, we have to do it, like, they did it, but, um, that, they still had like that Christian, you know, understanding of like, you know, not great, but so that's why I'm like, oh, with their folk heroes, with their folk stories, they could kind of like, um,

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  outsource, um, these, um, sort of like martial virtues to these not explicitly Christian, um, heroes.

• 1:31:59Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:00Speaker 03

  Um, and, um, I was reading this and I'm like, yeah, don't tell, um, the Crusaders that because they'll be like.

• 1:32:08Liv Albert?

  And I was just like, that's all I could think of.

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  No, literally, and it's like.

• 1:32:13Liv Albert?

  And then the Crusades happened and that became different.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's like, um, but, um, no, it's very, um.

• 1:32:24Speaker 03

  Like that's an area like I definitely want to like read more into is sort of, and I think there's like really good scholarship coming out now about sort of like martial relationship. In like, in terms like psychology in, you know, medieval Roman society. Especially because it was so different from like the Crusades. Like they never developed like an idea of holy war. Meanwhile, they were fighting. You know, pagans, Islamic powers like for hundreds of years before the Crusades. And, you know, it took like one, one big campaign for the Crusaders to be like, what about holy war?

• 1:33:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Speaker 03

  I don't know, like these guys did it for hundreds of years and they never really developed that like mindset like.

• 1:33:15Liv Albert?

  It makes me think of the Greeks where like for all, well, well, less the Romans, but the Greeks specifically like for all we, you know, talk about. These problematic aspects of their history like, and even for all that they like, you know, use the word barbarian pretty fast and loose with like anyone who wasn't Greek. And even still with all of that, what they lack compared to the world powers now is.

• 1:33:40Liv Albert?

  Like even though they didn't consider themselves barbarians, like there wasn't this superiority. There wasn't this, like they were wars and atrocities, absolutely. But they didn't, they weren't based in this idea that we're helping you by committing atrocities against you because we're superior. And that's what the West does now where it's like, no, no, like, I know you're all dying, but like this is in your best interests. Because Western, what we bring is better than what you have, even though not like there's zero evidence for that fact, you know?

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that's a very Roman.

• 1:34:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and that's where the whole, yeah, exactly. The Romans did that for sure. But like, yeah, it's just, and that's where holy war come in, comes in too, right? This, this superiority, this like ours is better. And thus we deserve to live rather than at least like in the Greeks, like they were definitely doing terrible, terrible things. And, and you know, I mean, when, when Athens came along, there was, there was a level of superiority happening. But it wasn't, still wasn't in the same way of based in like, we have to spread our, like, it makes me just think of the way that the West tends to. Seek to spread our version of democracy as if there it's like an undeniable fact that everyone should have exactly this form and like people have to be mad at me. I'm not saying

• 1:35:00Liv Albert?

  that democracy is bad. I'm not saying the rule of the people is bad. I'm saying that the form that is being forced upon others or that was like the the form as it existed also was like never actually about the rule of all of the people. It was about the rule of a very small subset of people. And I'm saying we could revisit the idea because it wasn't built for us. Anyway.

• 1:35:20Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:35:23Liv Albert?

  Oh, every conversation I have turns into this. I'm sorry, but I'm not.

• 1:35:29Speaker 03

  No worries. No worries. It's yeah, no, the world has been.

• 1:35:34Liv Albert?

  The world's on fire.

• 1:35:35Speaker 03

  It literally, literally is.

• 1:35:38Liv Albert?

  But we can still talk about the ancient people doing cool and gay things. So that's nice.

• 1:35:42Speaker 03

  Yes. No, that's what matters.

• 1:35:47Liv Albert?

  Well, I I honestly feel like we could probably keep going, but I do try to keep our episodes around an hour and a half. So I would firstly, let me say, if you want to come back and talk about that Heracles thing you're working on, once you're done it, I would love to have you back.

• 1:36:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:03Liv Albert?

  But or or anything, really. But generally, um, thank you so much for doing this. And is there anything you want to share with my listeners where they can read more from you, specifically your fiction and stuff? Because I'd love to hear more about that.

• 1:36:14Speaker 03

  Yes, they so I have a website, HarrisonVoss.com. It'll have links to all of my short stories, and my poetry, and also to some like the research I discussed today.

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  You can also, I do not tweet like at all, but if people are still on my website, you can find me at HTV498. I'm now on Blue Sky, awesome, at HTVoss, I believe.

• 1:36:44Speaker 03

  And yeah, you know, hopefully, um, I'll have some more stuff coming out soon.

• 1:36:51Speaker 03

  And yeah, I would love to be back.

• 1:36:52Liv Albert?

  Amazing. I did. I did see on your website that like a key, most of the stuff you've have on there, or maybe it's just everything I saw because I am me. But it has very mythological names of your work.

• 1:37:04Speaker 03

  Yes, no, I didn't even talk. I did very short story about Hyllus.

• 1:37:08Liv Albert?

  I was gonna say, that's the one I remember most, but like also like your whole, that whole page is all like Greek and cute. So I was curious.

• 1:37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, a lot of my, um. Short fiction is set in antiquity and I'm working on a, like any writer interested in antiquity, I am working on a myth retelling, like a novel right now.

• 1:37:29Liv Albert?

  Surprise, I'm definitely not in the same boat at all.

• 1:37:32Speaker 03

  And that again touches on all the themes we discussed today, mostly toxic masculinity in antiquity and how it sucks, or sucked, hey, it sucks now and it sucked then.

• 1:37:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I'm so glad to know that you're working on this stuff and that that is like, just even speaking about it that this way is so refreshing. So I'm glad to know that that there's work like that being done because we need more of it.

• 1:38:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. I think so too. But yeah, no, thank you so much again for having me.

• 1:38:09Liv Albert?

  Thank you. This was really fun.

• 1:38:10Speaker 03

  This is great.

• 1:38:27Liv Albert?

  Well, nerds, thank you all so much for listening. Again, check out the link in the episode's description. I'm worried I meant to say more of those things here, but I don't have it in me. The conversation was recorded a few months back and I'm just really excited for you all to have heard it. Let's Talk About Myth, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangawish is the Hermes to my Olympians. She is sleeping in the hotel room next door. I'm jealous of her. Select music by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, which again, everything is still to come. A lot after this trip, let's be frank. Keep in touch via a newsletter which will come

• 1:39:12Liv Albert?

  out soon, again, mostly when the website is finished, which I hope to be soon, mythsbaby.com/newsletter. I'm gonna stop rambling now. Thank you all so fucking much for listening. As always, I absolutely love that I get to do these conversations. They fill me with such joy. I hope you liked it too. I am Liv and I love this shit.

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