Roll Out the Red Carpet, King Agamemnon’s Home (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon Part 2)

Agamemnon is home, Clytemnestra is... plotting. Pre-order Liv's Odyssey adaptation (!!!), The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook 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. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Sources: Agamemnon by Aeschylus, primarily using translations by Anne Carson (from An Oresteia) and Sarah Ruden (from The Greek Plays); translation and original Greek from Perseus Project https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0004%3Acard%3D1; Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz; Topostext. 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.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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• 0:56Speaker 02

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• 1:13Speaker 03

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• 2:10Liv Albert?

  Hi, hello there. Welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I am your host, Liv, here with another scripted episode. And I'm really excited to be back doing that. And honestly, other than, I mean, the episode itself, but in this introduction, I'm just gonna kind of, we're just gonna just, we're just gonna kind of float past all the horrors, because if I wanted to make sure I addressed them all, I would be here forever. And instead, I'm just going to tell you all that I am celebrating a fun moment, which is that in just a few hours from when I am recording this, Jen and Jenny of Ancient History Fangirl are coming to visit me. And I have been lucky enough to see Jenny,

• 2:55Liv Albert?

  but I haven't seen Jen in ages, and I'm so excited. And, you know, I'm just holding on to that good moment. We're going to see Florence and the Machine, queen feminist witch of all feminist witches. And, you know, those are my, those are my happy moments. And maybe, I don't know, maybe you guys wanna, this is so not me, to be like, oh, consider your own, like, thing that you're grateful for. But that's what I'm doing in this moment. And that's essentially my introduction to this, because I'm just excited to be getting back into the Agamemnon. It's been so nice, not only like, getting back into writing scripts for the show, because it's actually like, it's really helping me, just because of, oh, my God,

• 3:37Liv Albert?

  motivations and things. But also specifically having, I'm gonna just talk through that yawn. Specifically having, you know, a play to go through, and one where I think it's like, it's particularly interesting, because we know the story, and I'm not, you know, I'm not going over this play as though we don't know the story, because this is something that, obviously, I've talked about in so many different forms over the years, like, this is one of the most famous stories from Surviving Myth. And instead, you know, we get to focus on like, what the play's message really is beyond the story, right? And its characters, and the Clytemnestra of it all, the Cassandra of it all. I'm absolutely

• 4:22Liv Albert?

  obsessed with how little Agamemnon Seems to actually speak. I mean, certainly up to this point. Um, and I, that's just so interesting. And just the way, the way this play navigates femininity and also the like, the masculinity that it sees in Clytemnestra and the way those things are like warring together is so interesting. And then of course, we're next week going to get deeper into the Cassandra of it all this, you know, apparent barbarian priestess princess who speaks Greek, but also is sort of living in her own reality. There's just so much going

• 5:05Liv Albert?

  on and it's just been a really fun way of, of looking at this story. And so without further ado, as they say, let's get into it.

• 5:29Liv Albert?

  Roll out the red carpet. King Agamemnon is home. Aeschylus's Agamemnon, part two.

• 5:52Liv Albert?

  The queen of Argos waits for the return of her husband. She waits at the edge of the palace walls. From there she can see visitors coming from all directions. She's been waiting for this moment for 10 very long years. But finally, the signal fires have appeared in the distance. This sign all the way from Troy itself. It had fallen. The Greeks have taken the city and burned it to the ground, killing or enslaving nearly all of its people. Now, not only had Clytemnestra seen the signal fires that she'd had set up, but her husband's messenger had arrived to

• 6:35Liv Albert?

  confirm it for all of the people who hadn't believed Clytemnestra.

• 6:40Liv Albert?

  The chorus of Argive elders are speaking with this messenger still. They want to hear news of the king's brother, Menelaus. The whole war had been started for him, and now, as the messenger explains, there had been a terrible storm and Menelaus's ships hadn't been seen since. But, he says, he doesn't want to talk about that. It is such a good day now that Agamemnon is nearly home. The messenger doesn't want to ruin this beautiful day with bad news. Still, he tells the story of this storm, the ships that were smashed, the bodies strewn around the Aegean Sea.

• 7:22Liv Albert?

  There's still hope for Menelaus, though, so long as Zeus hasn't already decided to wipe out his entire family.

• 7:31Liv Albert?

  Gods, it was a terrible war. The chorus reminisces now in response to this messenger's harrowing story of that destructive genocidal war. A war where the Greeks advanced on Troy, battered it for decades, and then finally wiped it off the map in some desperate attempt at proving superiority. It's a bit of my own interpretation coming in. It's tough to hear about a terrible king who genocided an entire civilization and then attempted to return home to fame and fanfare.

• 8:00Liv Albert?

  It's a little too relatable. The chorus, meanwhile, doesn't blame Agamemnon or even the Greeks as a whole, like I do. When the messenger has finished his story of survival, the chorus replies, quote, "Who could have named her so perfectly? What prophetic mind! Who was it gave that bride of blood, that wife of strife, the name Helen? For the woman is hell to ships, hell to men, hell to cities. She vanished out the veils of her bedroom on a western wind, and in her wake came men with shields, tracking her all the way to the shore of Troy. They beached in blood."

• 8:43Liv Albert?

  Anne Carson, forgive me, I have to keep reading from this. Quote, "Trouble came to Troy. It had the name wedding. It had the name funeral. It began with dishonoring Zeus, god of the feast where his wedding song was sung, wrongfully sung. Then Troy grew old overnight. Troy changed its tune to one of sorrow. Paris became the bridegroom of doom, and Helen made misery and death for her people just by living among them." Oh, it's so good. But of course, it's impossible to talk about the Trojan War without bringing up its direct cause: the woman, Helen. Gods, they've found creative ways to demonize that

• 9:27Liv Albert?

  woman. One has to appreciate the continuity, though, because it turns out the patriarchal Western leaders have always been using women to manufacture consent for their wars of aggression and supremacy. Surprise, surprise, 3,000 years later, men will still use the notion of "rescuing women" as a means of destroying an entire group of people, including the women.

• 9:52Liv Albert?

  You'd think they'd have gotten more creative by now. "Boys, if you want us to believe you care about women's rights, then you shouldn't immediately bomb an all-girls school, killing tens of young girls who just wanted to get an education in a country that you'll have us believe they don't get an education in. Boys, if you want us to believe you care about women's rights, you have to care about them in your home country, too, not just when you can use your perception of oppression as a reason to bomb the fuck out of brown people." Obviously, I'm still talking about Troy, though. What do you mean?

• 10:23Liv Albert?

  At least the chorus here is creative. They're laying the blame squarely on Helen's blameless shoulders. You can't make women into property and then blame the property for being stolen. Not how it works. But gods, they did it poetically. Bride of blood, wife of strife, hell to ships, hell to men, hell to cities, Helen.

• 10:47Liv Albert?

  Now, okay, if you're becoming anything like me, then you're really fucking curious about this wordplay here. Like, how accurate a translation is this idea of so-called "hell to things," when the notion of hell is so distinctly not Greek, and yet it's playing Helen?

• 11:03Liv Albert?

  I'll find an answer to this, but tragically not at this moment because my go-to website for cross-referencing Ancient Greek is down and it hurts. But I can say that I've gone through many translations out of my curiosity for this, including ridiculously old ones, and they all appear to use this wordplay, which means it is explicit in the Greek and a beautiful reminder that tragedy is always so much more than it seems. And how fascinating is translation?

• 11:31Liv Albert?

  Okay, I'm done. The chorus isn't finished. They turn now to a story of a man who brought a lion cub home with him, who raised it and cared for it like a pet. When it was little, it was, quote, "a young, gentle thing, tumbling and playing with children, delighting the old." But then they go on. Time passed and the lion cub began to show its true nature. It was a lion cub. It, quote, "made an uninvited feast of slaughtered sheep, spilling blood and havoc from room to room. That thing was a priest of ruin, bred in the house, sent by God."

• 12:08Liv Albert?

  Honestly, sometimes I wish women were as dreadful as men love to say that we are. Like, how cool would that be? But the chorus is not finished with their assault on womankind. They say, "she, Helen, or fate, or both, quote, swerved aside to a marriage of murder and tears. She harmed the place, she harmed the people. She was sent by Zeus to the city of Priam, bride as disaster, bride as fury."

• 12:40Liv Albert?

  "Old hubris," they say, "makes new hubris. It's irresistible," they say, "quote, "an utter unholy recklessness will take you and curse you and ruin your house, like mother, like child."

• 12:59Liv Albert?

  "Justice," the chorus says, "shines on the poor and virtuous. Justice turns away from, quote, "gold-drenched halls and unclean hands. She turns away toward holiness. Not wealth, not pomp, not praise. Justice guides us all."

• 13:21Liv Albert?

  "But justice for whom?" one asks.

• 13:36Liv Albert?

  The king has finally arrived. Agamemnon enters the stage to the joyous greetings of his chorus of elder Argive men. But he's not alone. Agamemnon enters first, the head of the party. A short ways behind him follows a chariot carrying the captive Trojan princess, the king's human prize of war, Cassandra. She stands tall and silent in the chariot, eyes gazing ahead. She can see things no one else can. It keeps her quiet and cautious. After all, her prophecies are rarely, if ever, believed.

• 14:18Liv Albert?

  And really quickly, I have Florence and the Machine playing in my head because of the song Cassandra, so we just have to quickly quote, "I used to see the future, but now I see nothing. They tore out my eyes and sent me home packing." To pay around the kitchen for scraps of inspiration, crying like Cassandra I. Okay, anyway, sorry. It's what I need right now. For now, no one really notices Cassandra, but she is there, watching and waiting. And Clytemnestra, though she may not say anything just yet. Oh, Clytemnestra notices the princess. It's hard not to notice the princess. Her husband is carrying around a woman dressed as a priestess of Apollo.

• 15:02Liv Albert?

  He's placed her at the front of a royal chariot. It's quite a bit of reverence for a woman who is there against her will and has just witnessed the genocide of her people. The chorus of Argive elders stumble over themselves in their attempts to please their newly returned king Agamemnon, to show him the proper deference after so, so long. But they aren't entirely under their king's thumb. The chorus adds, quote, "Now I have to admit, when you sent an army after Helen, I wrote you off as a loose cannon. But I also admit, you did it. You won, and you'll learn in time if you ask the right questions,

• 15:45Liv Albert?

  who kept your city safe for you and who did not." Who kept your city safe for you and who did not?

• 15:57Liv Albert?

  Agamemnon greets his city just as one might expect from a warlord returning victorious. "The smoke is still rising from the ashes of Troy," he says proudly. Proud to have destroyed such a powerful, wealthy people. Hubris, that's what it sounds like to me. He tells the chorus, quote, "We threw a noose around Troy's arrogance and, for a woman's sake, ground the city to powder. We are the wild beast of Argos, descended from horses sheathed in shields, that overleapt the towers of Troy, a raw flesh-eating lion to lap the blood of kings."

• 16:37Liv Albert?

  Agamemnon's booming voice still echoes around the stage, the palace of Argos. "I hear your warning," he tells the chorus. There was, naturally, jealousy of his success. He understands that much, and he has plans to deal with any pests that may have taken up residence in Argos while he's been gone. "There will be an assembly," he suggests. "Things that are going well, we'll ensure they keep going well. Things that aren't, well, they'll be cut out, like the bits of a rotting wound. Whatever disease has emerged in Argos," he says, "we'll take care of it." Quote, "So now into my house, my hearth, and greet the gods. They sent me forth, they bring me back.

• 17:21Liv Albert?

  May victory, who came with me, abide and stay." The king is strong, confident, and victorious. He's never been prouder to be home, to have accomplished so much. He imagines the legacy that he's amassed for himself, the songs that will be sung of his epic victory over Troy. Now he's home, it's time to take back whatever small aspects of control he might have lost. Surely it can't be much at all. A blip here or there. He knows his importance, his lineage, his bloodline. He, Agamemnon is certain, is nearly unstoppable now.

• 18:04Liv Albert?

  But up to now he hasn't greeted his wife yet. For all we know, he didn't even notice Queen Clytemnestra there, waiting and watching.

• 18:13Liv Albert?

  "Gentlemen, elder men of Argos," she says, "I am not ashamed to tell you of my husband's loving ways." She looks to her husband affectionately. "It was terrible being left here all by myself. I could only sit and wait for whatever stories or rumors would reach me. I heard so many tales of disaster." She says, "Why, had this man sustained as many wounds as people told me, he'd be fuller of holes than a net."

• 18:47Liv Albert?

  Clytemnestra sighs. "Oh, I was told of your death so many times and by so many people. So often did nasty rumors reach me. I hung up a noose for my neck more than once. Other people had to cut me down." The queen of Argos has missed her husband terribly. Life was so hard without him. She was heartbroken so many times, so many terrible stories and rumors. It's been so hard, she tells Agamemnon in the chorus, "So, so hard."

• 19:22Liv Albert?

  "That's the only reason why our son, Orestes, isn't here now," she adds. "Don't worry, though, he's somewhere safe, staying with an ally in Phocis who, 'warned me of problems. Your danger beneath Troy, but also anarchy at home.'" She pauses a moment for dramatic effect before finishing. "The people throwing off your government."

• 19:46Liv Albert?

  Clytemnestra continues telling her husband of just how hard it's been for her with him gone so long. She tells him all the tears she's cried, how many times she feared that he died. She tells him just how closely she watched for the signal fires that might show he was still living. "Oh, it's been so, so hard, and they've had their share of evils in his absence." Then, she says, gazing into her husband's eyes, "And now, dear one, as a special favor to me, I pray you descend from your car without setting foot on the ground. Oh, king, this foot that wasted Troy."

• 20:25Liv Albert?

  She turns to the palace servants, "What are you waiting for? Your king is home, you know your orders." Quote, "Strew the ground with fabrics now. Make his path crimson-colored, purple-paved, red-saturated, so justice may lead him to the home he never hoped to see." With that, the palace servants do exactly as their queen has ordered, just as she'd prepared far, far in advance. For whenever their king finally did return to his kingdom, they rolled out the red carpet, the red-purple carpet, the crimson-colored, purple-paved, red-saturated carpet

• 21:06Liv Albert?

  for their great king, Agamemnon.

• 21:11Liv Albert?

  When Clytemnestra has finished her speech, her devoted speech detailing just how much she missed her husband, just how grateful she is to have him safe and home, and... His response is, quote, "You've made a speech to match my absence long."

• 21:31Liv Albert?

  He's not done. He doesn't need her praise. "He'd rather it come from others," he says. Quote, "Don't pamper me with female ways. Don't fuss like some grovelling barbarian. Don't strew my path with anything at all. Such costly, luxurious things are for the gods," he says. Quote, "Anyhow, who needs red carpets? My fame shouts aloud." "No man can be considered truly happy," Agamemnon continues, "until he dies happy."

• 22:17Liv Albert?

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• 22:59Liv Albert?

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• 23:44Liv Albert?

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• 24:10Speaker 03

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• 24:57Liv Albert?

  The deep red-purple carpet has been rolled out for the king Agamemnon. His wife has had these luxurious rugs strewn across the threshold as a loving, longing welcome to her long-lost husband. But the king is cautious of displaying such excessive wealth and excess. "That's something the Trojans would do," he says. "Are you worried that your common subjects would blame you?" Clytemnestra asks, raising an eyebrow. "That's awfully silly," she's implying. He is, after all, the king, who is there to question what he walks on.

• 25:37Liv Albert?

  "It's not very feminine," Agamemnon tells his wife, "how eager you are to debate me." "Do you wish I think Clytemnestra would just laugh a little with a clever smile? It's not my fault I'm the winner," she quips back. Agamemnon grumbles, but he concedes. "Fine," he says, "but, quote, 'As I tread upon these crimson cloths, let no evil eye of envy from the gods strike down on me.'" So, finally, Agamemnon strides across the red-purple carpets that his wife has lain out for his celebrated return.

• 26:22Liv Albert?

  Then, almost as an afterthought, he turns to his wife and adds, quote, "Take this foreign girl into the house. Treat her kindly. God looks graciously upon a gentle master, and no one wants to be a slave." She, Cassandra, is, he continues, quote, "choice plunder, picked out for me by the army, my companion on the way."

• 26:53Liv Albert?

  The woman is choice plunder.

• 26:59Liv Albert?

  So just to recap, ten years ago Agamemnon sailed to war because his brother was embarrassed at the loss of his wife, the theft of his property. He sacrificed their own daughter as a means of reaching Troy to wage that war, spent ten years fighting, and then in the end brought home a beautiful Trojan princess as a war prize, aka sex slave. Then he just casually asks his wife to take good care of that woman, because after all, no one likes being a slave.

• 27:36Liv Albert?

  And with that, Agamemnon enters the palace. He leaves Clytemnestra outside with Cassandra, announcing, quote, "And now, since I am compelled to do your will, I shall proceed into the house, walking on red carpets."

• 27:55Liv Albert?

  Clytemnestra watches her husband, the king, enter the palace after ten long years away, strolling down that red-purple carpet.

• 28:07Liv Albert?

  As she watches, she speaks, mostly to herself, quote, "There is the sea, and who shall drain it dry? It breeds the purple stain, the dark-red dye we use to color our garments, costly as silver. This house has an abundance. Thanks be to gods, no poverty here."

• 28:31Liv Albert?

  Clytemnestra is the one in control. It's more and more clear with every word that she speaks. She would have been happy to trample however many rich fabrics were needed if an oracle had prophesied it for her as ransom for her husband's life.

• 28:51Liv Albert?

  Having him home, she says, is like finding warmth in winter. Quote, "Righteous, perfect. Zeus, god of things perfect, accomplish my prayers. Concern yourself here, perfect this."

• 29:12Liv Albert?

  And the chorus sings of uncertainty, hesitancy. The chorus sings of fear. Something feels off, but they can't quite place what it could be. The king is home, the Greeks were victorious. Surely there's nothing left to fear. They sing, quote, "Still at the edge of my heart, the song of the furies keeps nagging. No one taught me this song, and it has no music. All the same, it shakes me." They can't stop worrying. They sing, quote, "I know it all means something real, but I hope not, I pray not."

• 29:59Liv Albert?

  The chorus of Argive elders are restrained. They explain, if they weren't, quote, "My heart would race past my tongue to pour out everything." But instead, they keep their fear inside. It tears at them. It gnaws. They're losing hope.

• 30:19Liv Albert?

  "Get inside the house, Cassandra," Clytemnestra announces, finally turning her gaze to this captive Trojan priestess princess. "Don't be proud now," she goes on. "Even Heracles was made a slave once. And besides, you're lucky. Your new masters have old money. They treat their slaves better than new."

• 30:40Liv Albert?

  Cassandra doesn't reply. She stands silent, unspeaking, even as the chorus prods her, tells her it's her turn to speak. It's almost like she can't hear them at all. Clytemnestra sneers, quote, "Does she talk only barbarian, those weird bird sounds? Does she have a brain?" The chorus nudges Cassandra to respond. Again, she gives nothing.

• 31:07Liv Albert?

  "This is frustrating. I can't wait here all day," Clytemnestra growls, quote, "Already the animals stand at the hearth, ready for slaughter, a joy we never hoped to see. So you get a move on, or you'll miss the whole ceremony."

• 31:23Liv Albert?

  Ready for slaughter, just waiting for Clytemnestra to return.

• 31:29Liv Albert?

  Maybe she needs an interpreter, the chorus suggests. Clytemnestra rolls her eyes. The girl is mad, clearly. I won't put up with this any longer. She has priorities, things to do, people to see. With a final, frustrated, pitiful look to Cassandra, Clytemnestra leaves the foreign priestess princess with the chorus and enters the palace in search of her long-awaited husband. The chorus keeps trying to speak with Cassandra, and now that the queen has gone, returned to the palace, Cassandra finally breaks her silence.

• 32:08Liv Albert?

  And begins to scream. And scream, part gibberish, part wail, part furious, painful pleas to Apollo.

• 32:36Liv Albert?

  Oh nerds, I'm having so much fun with this. Oh, it's been so dramatic. I hope it's as good as it feels because I'm actually... This has renewed my will to write scripts in a way that I was so desperate for, and I'm just, I'm thrilled. I hope you're all loving it. I certainly am, so you better be. And I have to say, okay, so thank all of the gods. I went back to my favorite Ancient Greek reference site after writing the first half of this episode, and thank God, thank God, it's working. My life is no longer quite so in jeopardy at missing all of my ability to understand Ancient Greek. So I want to just return to the wordplay that the translators have used with Helen's name and just kind of explain a little bit of that before I leave you, before the next part, uh, next week.

• 33:21Liv Albert?

  Because spoilers, like, it's fascinating, and I'm, um, you know, I'm a sucker for picking apart Ancient and translated wordplay, and when wordplay...

• 33:31Liv Albert?

  Can cross languages and like millennia? That is when you can really understand not only like the depth of the ancient writing, but also the value and art that is translation. So just as a reminder, this is the line that I'm obsessed with in the Anne Carson translation that I read earlier. Quote, "Who can have named her so perfectly? What prophetic mind? Who was it gave to that bride of blood, that wife of strife, the name Helen? For the woman is hell to ships, hell to men, hell to cities." So this is what really stood out to me, right?

• 34:13Liv Albert?

  Conflating the name Helen and the word hell. Because well, obviously hell is distinctly not Greek. Like I looked it up on, I looked up the etymology of it because I am me. And hell comes from Old English, which comes from a slew of other ancient languages, but none of them remotely Mediterranean. That's not to say none, any of Old English, but like, I'm pretty sure Old English is like its own whole, literally it doesn't resemble English. If anyone has an English lit degree and has witnessed it, you know what I mean? It's hot nonsense. Um, so how is it that when I went looking into this delightful wordplay with Helen's name and the word hell, how did I find that, you know, every single translation made

• 34:57Liv Albert?

  the same overall wordplay? This, this idea of connecting the name Helen with the word hell. Anne Carson, Sarah Ruden, and the old ones too. I went back to a 1926 version by Herbert Weir Smith and an 1889 version by Robert Browning. And every translation uses this wordplay of hell and Helen. So it's clearly so natural in the Greek that it comes to every translator. So the next step was looking into the Greek, obviously. And yeah, like I tried to do that at the beginning, but I couldn't, which is why you're getting this tacked on nerdery, but honestly it works better in the outro anyway.

• 35:40Liv Albert?

  So here's a Greek phrase pronounced by me primarily self-taught. It's probably bad, but.

• 35:46Liv Albert?

  Que Helenan, epe prepontos Helenas, gelandros, gele, pitoles. So you can hear it in the Greek, right? Helenan, Helen. Helenas, gelandros. These are words that sound like Helen. Helenas, Helena, that's the ancient, the Greek Helen. But they mean something else. So Helenas as an adjective can mean ship destroying. Or, and gelandros, man destroying.

• 36:27Liv Albert?

  Which means that this prefix of gele can mean forms of destruction. And so, isn't it absolutely perfect to translate this identical wordplay through the English word hell? Like, it's so cool. We get, we get exactly the sort of alliterative.

• 36:54Liv Albert?

  There's probably like a grammatical term for what they're doing. This, the kind of half homonyms, I don't know. You know, when this, when this like prefix matches the name. And then of course, our English hell does that with Helen so perfectly and conveys the same overarching destructive quality of this destroying prefix. And so it's just, oh, it's so beautiful and so cool. And I just love seeing the ways that something is so explicit in the Greek and then other ways where translators can continue that explicit connection in English. I think that those are such like artful moments. And anyway, I won't keep going on, but it's so interesting.

• 37:36Liv Albert?

  And I am really glad I was able to look into it because these are the type of nerd shit that I want to bring you all, whether you want it or not. But I imagine some of you do and thank you for that. Let's talk about this baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pango, which is the Hermes to my Olympians, better known as the producer. Select music was. By Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network. Check out our newest shows, Ancient History 101 and You Are Odysseus. We're gonna be doing lots more with that soon and one of these days I'll get my shit together and like, open that store on, on, on my website that's been sitting there for a year and various other things. We'll get there, but in the meantime, have you pre-ordered my Odyssey book?

• 38:20Liv Albert?

  Cause you probably should. It comes out in June and you want to get me on lists, don't you? Did you know that every pre-order for a book counts as a first day sale? Which is why they're so important. So if you get like 10,000, I would, that's a lot. If you get like 10,000 pre-orders before your book comes out, that, that means your day one sales are 10,000. And then that's how you get on lists and stuff. So like, I don't know about you guys, but my almost certain autism means that I would like to understand why things are important. So that's me explaining it to you. In case you want to preorder my Odyssey, find the link in the episode description. Um, do you want to hope and pray that the world will be a calmer and better place by October?

• 39:03Liv Albert?

  Cool. If, let's hope and pray for that together. Not like real prayer, because I don't fuck with that shit, but you know, like maybe to the universe. Um, and maybe consider trying to join me on that Ariadne's Escape group tour. I've already had six people sign up, which is so exciting, which means we are getting close to being able to do it, provided the world is amenable to that by October. Um, so if you're in that position to throw around some money, check it out, check it out. Everything's in the links in the episode's description and, um, you're all very cool and lovely. I am Liv and I love this shit very much. Oh, also real quick, just, oh, I meant to,

• 39:44Liv Albert?

  it'll be heavier in the next episode, but just a reminder that Israel is currently bombing the, uh, 4,000 year old city that basically invented the richest purple dye of human history. That's to your Lebanon. Oh, I'm thinking of Lebanon.

• 40:08Liv Albert?

  Oh, I'm Liv and I love this shit and I would like to go to a very free Lebanon very soon and I hope that for all of you wonderful Lebanese people. Eat the rich, this is all white patriarchal capitalism's fault.

• 41:13Speaker 04

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• 41:44Speaker 04

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