Conversations: What Makes a Serial Killer, Mythological or Otherwise? w/ Debbie Felton

Liv speaks with Dr Debbie Felton about serial killers of the ancient world, both mythological and otherwise. Plus, monsters and monstrosity... Find more from Debbie here https://www.umass.edu/classics/about/directory/debbie-felton, including links to the books mentioned, and the Ancient Monsters Blog here https://websites.umass.edu/felton/author/felton/. 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?

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• 2:08Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Miss Baby and I am your host, as always, Liv. And today I'm here with a conversation episode. It's the first conversation that I have recorded since moving and we started with a bang. I spoke with Dr. Debbie Felton, who studies, you know, boring things like monsters and serial killers in both the ancient world and the mythology. So, you know, this conversation was a real slog. I hope the sarcasm is clear. I realize I probably shouldn't do that when I'm talking about guests who

• 2:49Liv Albert?

  don't necessarily know me, but for real, this was so much fun. We talked about mythological serial killers, what it means to categorize someone ancient, mythological, or otherwise as a serial killer, how that ties in with the modern studies around that. But we also talked about monsters more broadly, Medusa, surprise, surprise, a lot about polyphemus. You might recognize some thoughts from the conversation or the episode, the Battle of the Bastards episode that Michaela and I recorded earlier this week because that

• 3:30Liv Albert?

  was coming shortly after I recorded this with Debbie. And so you could, there's a lot of overlap. It was absolutely utterly fascinating and I'm just very excited that you all get to hear.

• 4:00Liv Albert?

  Conversations. What makes a serial killer, mythological or otherwise, with Dr. Debbie Felton?

• 4:23Liv Albert?

  Well, I mean, as, as Michaela shouted into the chat, why don't I, I, we are both utterly consumed by the idea of, of ancient and/or mythological. I'll confess, I don't know quite which you're, that you look at, but I would like to hear about any form of serial killer in the ancient world.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So, I mean, and what we, we'll talk lots more too, but, but what, yeah, what, what about serial killers in that realm have you looked at?

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Okay. Um, well, the easiest way to explain that might be how I ended up getting started with it. Which is that I just, I read a story in Pausanias, an ancient sort of geographer, travel writer.

• 5:05Liv Albert?

  We love Pausanias.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it, uh, it was a story, it was a very, very weird story that a lot of people have been trying to figure like, what, what even is this talking about? But what struck me was that it was about a series of killings in a small town over a period of time.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  And the person who was committing them was, um, originally described as, you know, sort of a dissatisfied, you know, soldier, uh, tending towards alcohol. And ultimately after sort of experimenting with a bunch of killing, uh, regularly seemed to go after women. Now that is a way reductionist view of this particular story because it's a lot more complicated than that. The guy was one of a disuse's crew members who was a bit, you know, they sailed off without him, which is something a disuse apparently did on a fairly regular basis. Um, and the townspeople actually stoned the guy to death because he had attacked a local woman. And then it was his like ghost or revenant that kept coming back, killing people until they

• 6:12Speaker 03

  uh, got advice from the Delphic Oracle, which said, oh, build the thing a temple and, and offer a woman to it every year. So, you know, and then it gets weirder because, you know, the guy, this whatever apparition revenant, you know, supposedly originated in the time of a disuse, that mythological time, but was actually disposed of by a historical figure named Euthymus, who was a boxer who we have, like, we have actual historical records for this guy because he participated in several Olympic contests and won. So the story is like hundreds of years after this, whatever it was started, you know, in mythological times.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Hundreds of years later, an actual person comes and fights the apparition revenant, whatever it's physical. It's a physical things and he drives into the ocean and that's that. And then the woman who was supposed to be offered to the thing, uh, marries him.

• 7:10Liv Albert?

  So. That's, that's, yeah, amazing. And but then is, would that have been like more classical and then Pausanias is too, also like writing about it another few hundred years later or?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Well, yes, that's the thing. So the, you know, a disuse would be in mythological times, you know, 13th century legend, if even, um, and then Euthymus was a boxer and I, I think it was the fifth century, fifth. I, I, I would have to check the exact date and then Pausanias is writing about the second century C.

• 7:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  So this, you know, and this is a local legend that he heard in a small town in southern Italy. So, you know, it's not that this like screamed serial killer as opposed to ritual sacrifice or ritual offering of women into a sort of bridal priestesshood for a while or whatever the heck was going on in this town. Uh, but certain aspects of it jumped out at me, which made me wonder whether there was uh, such a thing as a serial killer in antiquity and, um. Part of that is just because when you read about modern serial killers, and there have been quite a few. The tendency has been to describe serial killing as a modern phenomenon due to like the

• 8:24Speaker 03

  the decadence of Western society, as if it only happens in Western society, as it turns out, it happens everywhere. Uh, you know, the decadence of modern society, or the release of mental patients when mental hospitals were closed down in the uh, was it nineteen sixties or seventies, uh, you know, in parts of the US, or poor medical care, or whatever. So people have talked about it for a very long time. It was talked about as a modern thing. A modern phenomenon. But then you go look at something like Jack the Ripper, uh, who was really the first widely publicized serial killer, because he sort of you know, his killings occurred at the same time as a rise in the sort of cheap, you know, newspaper.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Uh, and then you look back in history and it's like, oh, well, wait a minute. There were people like Countess Bathory, uh, you know, hundreds of years ago in Europe who killed young women so she could bathe in their blood. And then there were these guys in France and Germany who thought they were werewolves and went out and tore people to pieces. So the farther back you look, the more examples you find, um. It's just they're more well-publicized, you know, since say the nineteen sixty seventies and eighties. And it was, you know, in the eighties that the phrase serial killer first came into common usage, because before that it was like multiple murderer or various other terms, but it was sort of canonized, I guess, by the FBI in the nineteen eighties. And, uh,

• 9:50Speaker 03

  partially because of that, I think people were reluctant to say, oh, of course, this has been going on as long as there have been humans. And then there's the problem of, well, you know, it's not like you can get crime scene evidence or psychological profiles of people from two thousand years ago. But we definitely have, uh, once I started looking after reading that Posenya story. There, I found a lot of other stories that sound a lot more like serial killers than that one did.

• 10:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  So I'll pause the, I'll pause there.

• 10:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  That was, that was the big background to all of this.

• 10:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  There are certainly a lot of other stories.

• 10:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah. That's so interesting. I mean, I just generally love Pausanias for things like that. These little like, you know, he, he feels so unique in this way where we get this little taste of what the people in a certain area at that time were saying. And it's like, you know, whether or not we can get evidence out of it from, you know, and beyond Pausanias is a whole other question, but he's like, his work is just this really, really unique insight into things like that. So I'm thrilled to hear. And also like, what a bizarre story of, yeah, this like mythological crewmate of Odysseus meets revenant meets like, it, it, yeah. Ancient ghost stories broadly are such a fascination for me.

• 11:10Liv Albert?

  Um, but the idea of ancient serial killers. So I would love any and all examples that you have.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Well, I, probably the first thing I should say is like, how are we going to, uh, identify them as serial killers or at least as serial killer types in the absence of the crime scene evidence and the psychological profiles? So a big disclaimer here, I have no background in psychology or criminal profiling. So this is more of a pop culture approach to serial killing, although I did, um, you know, I did do some reading in terms of what the FBI and other, uh, you know, um, policing agencies think. So what I started looking for was the sort of typical things you might think of from TV shows, you know, about or movies about serial killers. Um, how many victims are there? The FBI I think says it has to be more than two or three.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Uh, some other agencies are fine with two because they figure, oh, we caught him before he's going to do more, you know? And, uh, the thing is sometimes serial killers kill two people at once and then another two people later and one here and one there. Like the Zodiac Killer did, uh, back in California. So two at once here and there. And that went on for a while. Anyways, so at least a couple of victims.

• 12:25Liv Albert?

  And it's not just to be like a nerd who also has like taken in a lot of true crime over the years. I know there's also like that differentiation between like a spree killer versus a serial. Like it has to happen over a period of time, too.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that was the, yeah, that was the next thing I was gonna say is that unlike say a spree killer mass murderer, like somebody who shoots up a movie theater or a school. The serial killer is partially identified by having there be periods of time in between the killings. Although, I mean, that can be like just a matter of hours. And I mean, there's, there's still, you know, again, depending on what criminal, you know, agency you look at. That didn't come out right, criminal agency.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  You know, some of them think, well, if it's all in one day, it is more of a spree killing as opposed to a serial killing. Certainly if it's a huge number of people at once at a concert or whatever, it's mass murder. And that applies to genocide. I mean, it applies to a whole bunch of other things. So it can be hours, but more usually it would be days or weeks or months or even years in between killings. And it could go on for a very long time. And then another aspect besides the number of victims and, you know, timeframe. The timeframe indicating, among other things, that this is someone who's fairly methodical and in control of themselves as opposed to getting out of control. So there are those two things, but there's also a lot of serial killers use, like they'll kill by the same method.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Not, not always. You might have one who like strangles somebody, poisons somebody else, knifes somebody else. But I think the larger proportion of serial killers seem to use the same method most of the time. Not always, but usually or often. And then, so that is they'll have like a modus operandi. That's similar and they might have a signature that characterizes their murders. So say somebody is like a serial strangler, maybe they also leave a playing card, you know, at the scene of the crime or something so that they they want people, the the law enforcement to, that's the word I was looking for, law enforcement.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Uh, you don't have to edit out any of that, you can just go ahead with that.

• 14:42Liv Albert?

  Anyway, this is how I speak too, so I'm.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, like it'll come to me later, it'll come to me later. Uh, you know, so there may be some sort of like what the um, like what John Douglas of the FBI would call a signature that lets uh, crime and law enforcement know that it was this killer who did that, or you know, possibly it's a copycat, but basically there's some little thing, some little token or indication uh, that uh, is unrelated to the method of killing, but that says, hi, it's me.

• 15:11Liv Albert?

  Zodiac is such a good, just since you mentioned him earlier, like that's such a good example of like that very explicit part of of that. I mean, it's so hard, so interesting. And I'm like, it's terrible, but it's so interesting.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, writing, writing the letters, wanting to bring, you know, police attention to it. And then another thing is, uh, a lot of the times, but again, not always, there's a specific victim type. So like Ted Bundy going after, you know, undergraduate women or the uh, uh, you know, uh, serial killers going after women who remind them of their mothers. Uh, the women, uh, female serial killers are more rare, but you know, they might all go after a type of man that reminds them of an abusive father, you know, or abusive husband or something. So, um, you know, there are serial killers who go after children. Um, and uh, there are serial killers who go after prostitutes or, I mean, the Atlanta

• 16:05Speaker 03

  child killing murders was a big one that did not get enough attention at the time because of the demographic that was targeted. Uh, so there are just, uh, again, a lot of the time, there's a similarity among the victims, but not, not always. So sometimes it's opportunity more than uh, specifically seeking out a certain, you know, type of person or a certain person. So there, there are a bunch of these things that, um. Sort of can indicate that they're, well, I guess they're characteristic of serial killing in modern terms. And so then the question is, do we see that in antiquity at all, given the relative dearth of information?

• 16:43Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  So to give an example from myth that finally in the last few years has become more popular or obvious, maybe, is Procrustes. And well, in fact, you know, all six of the criminals that Theseus encounters. So this is from, this is from myth, but there is a historical aspect to it.

• 17:01Liv Albert?

  Great. This is the first one I thought of, but from a different angle that I'll bring up later. So that I'm, I'm, I would love. Oh, yes. I'm in.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Well, no, I get it. So I'll just, I'll just talk about Procrustes briefly and then, or well, I'll talk about Procrustes in a little more detail and then maybe mention one or two of the other ones briefly.

• 17:19Liv Albert?

  They're the best.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  Yes, but.

• 17:20Liv Albert?

  Fascinating.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  What we've got here with Theseus is, you know, he decides, you know, he's, he's found out that his heritage isn't what he thought it was. He's, he's got the sandal and the sword from under the stone that his mom told him about. He's going to go to Athens to find his real father or whatever. And, or well, was his father Poseidon or the king of Athens, whatever, you know, not the main point here, not the main point. The part of the main point is that he wanted adventure and he wanted to prove himself. And that the Athenians, when they were creating the stories, wanted to have their own hero who was sort of modeled after Heracles, who in the myth is Theseus's cousin, older cousin. Anyway, so Theseus, because he wants to prove himself, instead of just taking a freaking boat across the Gulf, you know, for the.

• 18:05Liv Albert?

  He makes a big deal out of it.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  He makes a huge deal out of it. And he's, you know, and somehow he seems to know in advance, he's warned, according to, I think Plutarch, he's warned by his grandfather or someone, don't take the road. There are all these criminals. And Theseus is like, well, I'll take care of that. Right? So, so he sets off and he meets these six various sorts of highway robbers, except in the myths, not hardly anything at all is said about the, the fact that they rob people. That, that's like, not even really mentioned, right? What's mentioned is the mutilation murders that they all do. So I'll, I'll just take Procrustes as one of the examples, even though he was one of the last ones, rather than

• 18:51Speaker 03

  the, one of the earlier ones. So Theseus is working his way around the Gulf of Corinth there up the ismus. And one of the. People he meets is Procrustes and Procrustes was apparently in the habit of, you know, inviting weary travelers back to his house. And he'd say, oh, sure, you know, you need a place to rest, come to my house. And then he'd give them a bed and the next thing they know, if they're too short for the bed, Procrustes takes a mallet and pounds their bones until they're jelly and he can just stretch out their limbs to fit the bed. Or if they're too tall for his bed, he saws off their limbs, you know, to make them fit the freaking bed. So, um, what we've got here with Procrustes is, uh,

• 19:36Speaker 03

  there is, I suppose there's a victim type that we can point to, which is, you know, lone travelers, usually men, women aren't gonna tend to travel themselves anyway. So lone travelers who are weary, susceptible, he acts friendly, says, look, I've got a little hostel over here, brings them back and then kills them by a consistent method, you know, depending on if they're too short or too tall for the bed. He has a murder kit, right? So it's like, I mean, you know, again, Ted Bundy had a murder kit. He had like handcuffs and duct tape and stockings and a ski mask or whatever. Um, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, I'm referring back to a lot of famous ones from the sixties and seventies, basically. He had a kit that looked a lot like Procrustes.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  It had like a hacksaw and a bunch of hammers and knives. And, uh, you know, if you think about TV's Dexter, like the fictionalized serial killer, because we're actually in for a new series about Dexter, by the way.

• 20:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I heard about that recently, that's wild.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Well, it's gonna start with his origins, actually, like, like his upbringing and how he got started in the police, you know, with the police and everything and his dad. So, um, anyways, so Dexter, you know, fictional, uh, he had his, uh, murder kit of, you know, surgical instruments from, you know, working, you know, it's sort of a medical examiner related type field, their forensics, anyway. So Procrustes basically had a murder kit because he had these different implements and he would take the ones he needed and then use them. Uh, and then, uh, so we've got a consistent victim type. We've got what we would call a homebody serial killer in the sense of bringing people back to his house, uh, to murder them, but also finding them along the road.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  The roads are a huge place for serial murder in antiquity and in modern times. Like there was this whole. FBI, very badly named, but Highway Serial Killer Initiative, which sounds like, let's get those serial killers out there on highways. What it meant was they're gonna like, try to track them down, the ones that are killing at highway rest stops and stuff. But anyway, the roads are a good anonymous place to, you know, get people, really. Anyway, so, uh, so Procrustes shares a lot of characteristics with what we would think of as serial killers these days. So it's not like, yes, he was a serial killer, but the characterization of Procrustes and some of these other characters sounds like they knew about this type of pattern of killing,

• 22:01Speaker 03

  even if they didn't have the phrase serial killer to describe it. And so Theseus, of course, comes along and kills Procrustes by his own methods, like kills Procrustes with his own axe or whatever.

• 22:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I always wonder whether he was too tall or too short for his bed.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  I don't know, but.

• 22:17Liv Albert?

  I don't think we get the answer, yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  No, we, I don't think he got to the point of even being on the bed, because he knew what he was getting into somehow. There was no police force in antiquity. This sort of vigilanteism is, you know, neighborhood watch kind of thing was really the only way anything would, like, that would get done. But, uh, Theseus runs into several other characters like this, like Sinis, the pine bender.

• 22:38Liv Albert?

  I love him. Sinis is my favorite.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, he ties, I mean.

• 22:43Liv Albert?

  It's so creative.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Oh my god. Um, which version do you like better? The one where he ties people in between two trees and then let's go, so they're torn in half? Or the version where he ties them like to one side and then just let's go, so that they're flung over?

• 22:58Liv Albert?

  I like the two. I like the two because it seems like the least practical way of doing anything. I don't, I don't understand how he would get the trees down to the point where he could do it. And it's just so creative. It's truly, it's one of my favorite stories.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Well, and you know, there are actually, you know, there are the ancient Greek, you know, vase paintings that illustrate some of this and they just sort of show Sinis and Theseus reaching down for these branches to mail. But Theseus comes along and kills him by the same way also. And then he does that with Sphia and/or her, the Crummy Onion and sow, who by the way, always reminded me of Betty White in that movie Lake Placid.

• 23:39Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  You know what I'm talking?

• 23:43Liv Albert?

  I fully do. I don't know the last time I've heard another person reference Lake Placid, a movie I've seen 50 times at least.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 23:50Liv Albert?

  Thank you. Wow, they, that's, yeah, no, that's so true. But that one's always thrown me because it's like, either she's a woman or she's a cow. And you're like, well, I think you're saying something there and I don't love it.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Oh, you mean in the ancient myth?

• 24:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a, yeah, it's either she's an old woman or she's a giant pig of some sort.

• 24:08Liv Albert?

  Oh, sorry, not cow sow.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. So, and again, we have these, you know, ancient pictures of like this old woman directing the giant sow to go and kill Theseus. So it's either like a female serial killer, or it's a Betty White and the giant, you know, crocodiles or alligator, whatever it was.

• 24:27Liv Albert?

  I can't unsee that. It would have been an alligator, I think. They filmed that movie on my island, I just have to say, where I used to live in Vancouver Island. And that's a real claim to fame for me personally.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  I know, I totally get that. I think that movie, I think that movie like got a sort of bump after Betty White died. I think people were, it showed up on like streaming again and where people got to see it. But yeah, you're right. It must have been an alligator. Crocodiles are much farther south, right?

• 24:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Uh, but anyway, yeah. So, so Theseus goes around and kills all these people. And then the question is, well, hang on a sec. Is he like Dexter? Is he like this vigilante serial killer?

• 25:05Liv Albert?

  That was my argument in an episode years ago, which is why I'm thrilled to hear that.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  So I guess, uh, I guess the difference there is that Theseus, um, you know, on the one hand, he does have intent. He's like, I'm gonna go get these guys. So that's premeditation right there. On the other hand, uh, you know, as far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, he was making the roads safe for society, the way that Heracles does. And the big difference for the Greeks is that at the end of this run of like killing the six people, um, on his way to Athens, at the end of that, he has himself purified by a formal ritual. So he has himself purified of the bloodshed and the guilt and the miasma and all those things that the Greeks would have objected to.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  So that before he actually sets foot in Athens, he's been cleansed of all of this as far as the ancient Greeks are concerned and everyone's very grateful. And then the other aspect to that whole Theseus and those, you know, killing all those people is that they all represented like rulers of local, you know, neighboring regions like Alasis that Athens was sort of rivals with and this and that. So there's this, you know, political propaganda aspect to it too. Like, oh, the Athenians are better than the Alasthenians, you know.

• 26:19Liv Albert?

  That's all most of Theseus's mythology.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so he's, I, I think that's, you know, the, one of the strongest mythological examples comes from the Theseus myth and Procytus is an especially neat example. Oh, because the other thing I didn't mention with Procytus was just the, the bed being there. It kind of is like, we've got in the background, this, you know, potentially sexual subtext that's also present in a lot of modern serial killer, um, issues in terms of, you know, is it their mothers who told them, you know, stay away from women, you know, whatever, women are bad or, you know, whatever, like little issues they, they might've had. A lot of the times, the, the sort of sexual repression or

• 27:04Speaker 03

  issues are in the background or subtext there, which might be the case with Procytus and the bed. We don't know. There's no way to know. There's, I mean, it, you know, could just be a frequent coincidence, but.

• 27:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, the, the argument I made, and, and this comes from the, there's a very long running sort of. Theme in my show, which is just that I think Theseus is the loserist of all of the heroes. I mean, for many reasons, primarily that he like is just Athenian propaganda, but also that like I I find it so funny that that that whole story has the the walk, you know, from treason to Athens and and everyone that he kills along the way. Like, I find that so interesting that that is so it's meant to to mirror, you know, Heracles's labors. And the difference to me is so, it it's so poignant. It's like Heracles is said to have defeated

• 27:54Liv Albert?

  all of these, like, you know, these like supernatural kind of beasts and and and like forces like and then Theseus is just like, he took out a bunch of guys along the road who like we we're just meant to, we're supposed to just like believe Theseus that that's what they were doing. And so my my silly argument in my like sort of running joke of hating on Theseus is that like, you know, well, I I think that he went and just like told all these stories and really he was just killing guys all along the way and it come and like, or even if they were doing it, he still went and like, killed them all with their own same methods. And I have to ask before we like, go anywhere from this story, what is the name of the the one other guy who's

• 28:35Liv Albert?

  whose MO was to like kick people off the cliff and into like the gaping jaws of a tortoise?

• 28:41Speaker 03

  I think that was uh, Skiron?

• 28:43Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, that that sounds right. Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it was either a giant turtle, or I think in some of the versions, a giant crab.

• 28:50Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's great, too.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  But the turtle is the main one.

• 28:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Liv Albert?

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• 29:41Liv Albert?

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• 30:27Liv Albert?

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• 32:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's personally, I think it's kind of a tie between Theseus and Jason.

• 32:13Liv Albert?

  Oh, no, a thousand percent. Yes. The thing is for me, my argument, and I've had this discussion and argument with a lot of people many times because it's a very valid debate between the two of them. But my argument is that Theseus's death count and like women he assaulted and did various other terrible things to along the way is considerably higher than Jason's. And so Jason, to me, is just like a bummer. Like he's, he's not a good guy, but he's just kind of like, he's like bad at being not a good guy. Whereas Theseus is like really talented at being not a good guy.

• 32:49Liv Albert?

  Anyway, I've thought about this a handful of times, if you can't tell.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, clearly. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I think you're right. If you look at both of these guys, they had way more help from women, right? I mean, because Theseus had Ariane and Jason had Medea. And it's, you know, they really didn't do as much on their own. Although I suppose you could argue that somebody like Odysseus had the help of Athena.

• 33:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah, he also, he's in there too.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I mean, like, are any of them any good?

• 33:15Liv Albert?

  Like, if we're talking death, like body count, that Odysseus wins for sure.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, if we're talking mass murder, we've definitely got that slaughter of the suitors there. Which, by the way, what's that new movie, The Return?

• 33:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  With Ralph Fiennes? It's not playing here yet.

• 33:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, I know. I was just, I was just looking at, I actually got to read ads for it. It was like the, one of the first times in ages where I was excited to read an ad for the show. I was like, oh, I get to talk about this movie. Great. Yeah. No, I'm excited for that one. Mostly because I'm curious how they'll handle the killing of the suitors, but more so the, the killing of the, the women of the palace. So.

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that'll be very interesting. Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 33:55Liv Albert?

  Well, I, I, I mean, I'm thrilled that that, that's your first kind of go to example because I absolutely have, have made such similar arguments in the past about like the serial killer nature of those guys, not least because they're just, their MOs are hilariously, it like, I mean absurd in this way where you just like, it's just so mythological, you know, where it's like, none of that could have happened. Where's this, what turtle, what, mixing the word turtle and tortoise, but what turtle? Like Greece is mostly tortoises. So it really throws me that suddenly there's a sea turtle involved. Um, but yeah, you know, what kind of-

• 34:30Speaker 03

  What are we dealing with, your gamora, you know?

• 34:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, what, introduce me to the turtle that is going to be down at the bottom of this cliff, ready to like devour a guy. Um, or, or the, you know, somebody who can bend trees like that and let you spring back. Uh, but it is just so bizarre. Um, but yeah, so I mean, are there, are there more beyond Theseus? Are we getting, is there any kind of evidence for, for historical serial killers?

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Um, I think that there is. And before I segue to that, I just want to briefly mention Heracles since he came up before. So he's got those 12 labors, which are like these amazing monsters, you know, Hydra-

• 35:09Liv Albert?

  For the most part. And one time he had to clean the stables. Who was to say what's going on there?

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, diverting a river to do it. But, um, I just, uh, you know, I feel like we ought to at least, uh, give a nod to his pareroga, his side adventures, because those seem to be what Theseus is modeled more after because of Antaeus, for example. So Heracles has to wrestle Antaeus, who is sort of his own serial killer in terms of wrestling everybody who comes into his kingdom and winning. And so Theseus has a similar one. I think it's, uh, it's Chirkyon, maybe I might have to double check, but, uh, but so those side, uh, you know, and this is interesting to your, to your point, because it really does make Theseus seem a lot less of a hero when he's emulating

• 35:54Speaker 03

  these side adventures of Heracles instead of the 12 labors. And even with the Minotaur, you know, he has a lot of help. He has to kill it himself.

• 36:03Liv Albert?

  Like the only big feat of like a real, like a threatening, like actual supernatural kind of monster. Cause even, you know, like, yeah, he, he defeats the marathonian bull. But it's, at that point, it's just a bull who's like, kind of already been handled, you know?

• 36:18Speaker 03

  And I mean, Jason's got those fire breathing bronze footed bulls, but he couldn't have done anything without Medea.

• 36:25Liv Albert?

  Useless without her.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Right, right. Kind of pathetic, yeah. And I mean, I, you know, it depends on, there are so many different ways to interpret these things. I don't want to, you know, digress too far. But before he got to Colchis, Jason, you know, he had all these companions and they all had their talents. So like when they, um, what was it? I think the adventure with Phineas and the Harpies came before they got to Colchis. But it was a couple of the Argonauts that handled that, the ones that could fly.

• 36:51Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah. He does like nothing, like.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  No, he doesn't do anything.

• 36:56Liv Albert?

  His ship is full of other people to help him.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Including Heracles.

• 37:00Liv Albert?

  Yes, including Heracles and Orpheus sometimes and Atalanta sometimes. And like this long list of people who've done more than him. Now, Jason being a hero, like one of the, you know, typical, typically labeled as heroes has always been hilarious to me. Because you can't be really like, sure, if, if heroism is, is like supposedly captaining a ship that seems to have been perfectly capable of running without you, then like, sure.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Right, exactly, exactly. What, what did he even do, right? Um, so, and it's, I'm, I'm trying to think like which of the Greek heroes is really, I mean, is, is Percy's a better example? He gets some help from Athena and Hermes, but, um, he has, he rescues women. He has better relationships with women, his mother and.

• 37:47Liv Albert?

  But the Medusa of it all.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  That's highly problematic.

• 37:51Liv Albert?

  Yes, the, like, cause the thing to, to me. I mean, I think Heracles just has to win for lots of reasons. I mean, he does a lot of really bad stuff, too. But like, I think, you know, he just at least has like a handful of things that are kind of objectively beneficial to humanity.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:07Liv Albert?

  And but yeah, Perseus is my my entire pet obsession slash like life source is just the story of Medusa and it being that like she literally was not a threat. Like, he didn't defeat some monster that was going to hurt anybody. And so it's like, no, he just took a woman's head and then used it as a weapon. And so like, yeah, he saved Andromeda and his mother, and that's lovely. But like, at what cost, Perseus?

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Right. And I mean, it's like, you know, she was, according to most versions, she's off on an island with her Gorgon sisters. It's sort of like intruding on Circe. You get you set foot on that island, you get what you deserve.

• 38:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they're literally off in the middle of nowhere where they can't hurt anybody. And he's like, I'm gonna go get her because this guy told me to.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. So there's just like not enough critical thinking and questioning of authority going on in those myths. Like, yeah.

• 38:57Liv Albert?

  I would I do say Cadmus is one of the safer heroes, but he also got so little chance to do anything that I don't think he gets to like win any kind of contest. He just doesn't have a ton of problematic moments.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And these foundation myths are, you know, a little, a little more positive and a lot. Well, I mean, depending on the point of view of the people who are conquered for the foundation. The guard, the local guardian serpents may not be too happy about it. But I'm sorry, you asked about historical examples.

• 39:29Liv Albert?

  To talk about all of this.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  So you asked about historical examples. And I mentioned the sort of serial killers who have issues with their mothers. So I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna talk about Nero for a little bit here. So the thing is that it's not really fair to call somebody like Nero a serial killer, because this is a much huger problem that we have with Nero. And, you know, he's, he's a public figure, he's in a position of power, he's abusing that power, nobody stops him, whatever. But I think the the helpful thing maybe to keep in mind in relation uh in relation to Nero and serial killers.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Is that, you know, people like Tacitus Swetonius, who are our main sources for, you know, pseudobiographies of Nero. They characterize Nero in terms that we would think of in relation to serial killers. Hmm. So again, it's not to say, again, I'll I'll give some details, but. I feel like I have to, you know, again, offer a disclaimer that it's not like I want to say, oh, of course Nero Nero was a serial killer. Nero, I was gonna say, do the same thing you did with the title of the. Let's combine two words here. Um, so I don't want to say that Nero was, of course, a serial killer or anything like that. It's more like. Again, the characteristics of serial killings seem to have been recognized in antiquity, even if they weren't called that. Hmm.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  And some of them are applied to Nero, uh, uh, again, not intentionally to, you know, uh, characterize him as a serial killer, because that wouldn't have been recognized so much, but. What things that sound familiar to us. So, for example, we we hear a lot about Nero's upbringing in these in these historiographical or. Uh, you know, writings. So, uh, you know, he was abandoned by his mother at a young age. She eventually came back. Uh, when he was a young teenager, like thirteen or something, twelve or thirteen, but she didn't show him any affection. And he hated his aunt who took had taken her place for a while or whatever it was. And even when he was little, he, uh, you know, he set fires, he beat people up as a teenager.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  He started brawls, he cracked people's heads over the head with bar stools or whatever. And the older he got, the worse it got. And there were no consequences for his actions, because he was just, you know, part of this important family, you know, and he was acting out. But he would supposedly, again, according to Tacitus and Swetonius, he would rape women, he would attack men. So no consistent victim type, but then uh uh what we've got is that sort of disturbed background that is often attributed to serial killers or noticed in serial killer backgrounds like the the abuse. I mean, again, it's not like every abused child grows up to be a serial killer. It is still their fault, but yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, so but the uh the starting fires, the um the torturing of people, the mutilating of of people's uh the uh when he got older, he took a mistress who looked like Agrippina. Um and then when he had more power, he sort of continued to torture and uh supposedly kill kill people in ways that uh you know, it wasn't just straight out execution. It was, you know, mutilation, torture, murder, that kind of thing. So some of the descriptions of uh what Nero is allegedly did, sounds like what we sometimes see in modern serial killers.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  And uh there's also a bit later, uh like I guess fourth century, there's a there's a rhetorical exercise, which is basically a practice law court speech called Against a Murderer. It's by Libanius, who was a rhetorician. And so this was a practice speech that he gave his students to, you know, practice prosecution against a murderer. But the descriptions of the murderer sound so much like a serial killer. So again, when when he was younger, he uh got away with all sorts of crimes that allowed him become become more bold and audacious. So when he was young, he committed robberies. He uh did he start fires? He raped women, this and that, so that he has come down to us as the murderer

• 43:36Speaker 03

  that he is. And he's basically a highway robber. So he lays the weight outside the city, but instead of just robbing people, and here's where it sounds a lot like these two stories, instead of just robbing people, this uh sort of fictional murder, practice murderer in this in this speech, practice speech, he attacks people, robs them, but then tortures and murders them and mutilates their bodies by chopping them up into pieces. So you know, the families can't even find them for proper burial and everybody's terrified in the city. And there's part of the speech that says. You know, he has two different personalities. When he's among us, he seems calm and rational and it's basically the, but he was such a good neighbor. I never thought he could possibly be a serial killer.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Whereas outside the city walls, he's bold and he's murder and he, he, he flouts the laws, you know, he makes up his own laws and doesn't consider himself bound by the rules of society. So this dichotomy that's drawn in this speech, which is basically a historical setting, but fictionalized characters, but so that the students of the rhetoric who are going to go into law courts will know how to argue such a case. Implies that there were people like that, that they needed to, you know, that, so the characteristics again are, are there of a serial emulation murderer. Uh, so that's, that's a bit more on the historical side. There are some people, uh, like if you look in encyclopedias of serial killers by like pop culture,

• 45:02Speaker 03

  encyclopedias of serial killers by people like Harold, Harold Schefter, whoever, um, they will sometimes include a character named La Custa of Gaul. Oh, yeah. Um, so she was, she's put in there and characterized as a serial poisoner. Except that she's basically an assassin for hire. So sure, she poisons a bunch of people or provides the poison for other people to do so. Uh, but eh, what's her motivation? Her motivation is money. And again, she doesn't always poison the people herself, but she might provide it. But it shows that, you know, even without def- definitive evidence from antiquity, people are looking into ancient history to try to find the closest possible thing.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Assassins are kind of another story. I mean, maybe they get jobs as assassins eh, because if they didn't, they would be what we consider serial killers. Um, so like the Sicarii, for example, um, who carried out, you know, political assassinations, that sort of thing. So that's, that's kind of a whole separate bit as well. And there were certainly mass murders in an, in his- in historical antiquity, you know, I'm not talking about auditions in this. Which is a whole other thing in terms of blood feud also. Um, but you know, there are mass murders, mass poison, uh, examples of mass poisoning, especially in ancient Rome. That, you know, when important people were killed, uh,

• 46:28Speaker 03

  It would come to the attention, like tha- that's when the Roman government would give a crap. Is when important people were killed. So another-

• 46:34Liv Albert?

  It's not familiar today at all.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Yes, I was, you know, again, the Atlanta child murders come to mind, but I think, um, one of the things to think about, uh, is that if there was, say, the ancient equivalent of Jack the Ripper, like, in the slums of Rome, we wouldn't know because no one's gonna write about it the way they did with like the, you know, the east, what was it, the east side of, um, London, I should know the specific area. And I'm, I'm for some reason not forgetting, I'm in terms of Jack the Ripper. But if somebody were, were like murdering prostitutes in ancient Rome, or, you know, poor people or homeless people or whatever.

• 47:12Liv Albert?

  Michaela's Whitechapel, just to-

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Whitechapel, thank you, yes. Yes, example, e- e- exactly, thank you, did it again. Uh, thank you, I can't believe I like blanked out on that because it's so famous. But, uh, you know, that sort of thing may well have been going on and we wouldn't know about it, so, you know, um, again, the sort of what, what is the, the saying, you know, uh, absence of evidence is an evidence of absence.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Uh, so it's, it is something to think about when we do have these, you know, bits and pieces of evidence that seem to indicate awareness of the ti- this type of crime. Like that's, there are serial killings described. We just don't necessarily have them attached to specific historical figures in the way that we wa- want them to be.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  So that's another, another aspect to it.

• 48:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, I think about that all the time about, you know, the, people wouldn't have written it down for things like that, you know, if it was in, like you were saying, the slums of Rome or, or something equivalent. But at the same time too, like even if someone had, probably wouldn't, you know, remain for us today too. So it's like you, you can only, I mean, I think about this a lot in terms of the treatment of women and, and, I mean, I would think crimes against women would be a really similar thing where we can say with almost certainty, like that that type of stuff was happening, like humans are going to human, and by that I mean, often men. Are going to men. But we don't, just because we don't have evidence of it, doesn't mean that, you know, that it wasn't happening.

• 48:45Liv Albert?

  But to see it sort of specifically with serial killers and things like that, to see it mirrored a little in things like mythology. Or, you know, what, what little we do have that kind of, it, it suggests that people were still, you know, paying attention to an extent. Or, or at least like, you know, noticing and, and kind of, you know, putting, putting an event like that into kind of their own, the, the way that is easiest for them to, to understand. You know, say with the, the myth of, myth of Theseus and his little travels, you know, there's, they're seeing something. And then that's ending up in a myth. And so it's interesting to, to think about what, what they could be seeing. And that just brought me back, my little mind back to Pausanias too. And like, what was happening there?

• 49:30Liv Albert?

  You know, that, that he wrote something like that, you know, there's just so many questions.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Well, and there are a lot of little stories like that one. Um, and there's one in Apuleius's Metamorphosis, which unlike Pausanias, is not like a local legend necessarily. But, uh, in Apuleius's Metamorphosis, there's, uh, I think it's a later book, like book eight or something.

• 49:53Liv Albert?

  I think Michaela's just been re- translating that in her Latin class. So I'm kind of like slowly waiting for her to jump in.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's, I think it's in book eight, but it's a very small episode. And at this point, um, Lucius has been turned into the, the ass. And he's, I guess he's at this point, you're doing Cupid and say, I'm going to be teaching that next fall again. But, um, so he's, I guess he's with a group of runaway slaves.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  And, uh, they've been, I don't know, chased out of one town and they're, you know, they, they stopped somewhere to rest, like just afternoon or around lunchtime, which is, you know, uh, I, I don't know. I don't think the word is used specifically midday or anything like that, but it is, it seems to be the time of day when creepy things tend to happen in myths a lot. And like in, in Ovid and other authors' mid-days. Dangerous time. There's no shadows or whatever. But anyways, so, so they're stopping to rest and uh they see a nearby shepherd sort of hurrying by and they ask him, you know, a question and he's like, you know, don't you know where you are? This, don't stay here, you know?

• 51:02Speaker 03

  And he just like keeps going and he did like they're trying to get food and drink and he doesn't have, he's just like, no, I'm getting out of here. And the next thing they know, an old man who's like walking with a crutch comes up to them and says, my grandson fell into a ditch by the side of the road and I can't get him out. Could any of you help me? So one of the, you know, strapping him then goes with the old man to help and, you know, they're waiting and waiting. He doesn't come back. So a second guy goes after him and then rushes back like completely terrified. You're not going to believe what I just saw. The guy's dead and there's this giant snake eating him. And then the rest of the group is like, everyone's terrified. They just like run to the next town.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  Okay. And they're like, oh, that's what the guy was talking about, the shepherd. So um, so this has the appearance of, you know, a type of local legend where people know to avoid a certain area, there's a man who lures victims, like he separates somebody from the group. Um, the, him really being a giant serpent in disguise is a whole other problem.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  But um, what was interesting about that particular episode, aside from the fact that this does seem to be a regular occurrence, which is why people avoid the area. So maybe mutilated bodies were found or whatever. The thing there to maybe uh cull out is the trick that the creature uses. So an old man who is walking with a crutch, well, this is something that Ted Bundy did. Like he would, he would have his arm in a sling or he'd have a crutch and he'd get some pretty young, you know, uh, college student to help him carry his books or his briefcase to his car. And if you think of um Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill does the same thing. It's in the book and the film. You know, he's got this cast on his arm and he's pretending to have trouble getting his chair into his van and the,

• 52:57Speaker 03

  you know, the girl comes out to help him and he whacks her over the head, knocks her unconscious, shoves her in the van, takes her off, throws her in a pit. Uh, she's one of the lucky, lucky ones who doesn't get away after being, you know, the tormented and terrified, but uh, this uh. This tactic of a killer pretending to be disabled and then luring a victim that way is, I think, one of the interesting things about the story.

• 53:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  So again, it's not, and I'm not saying this is, oh, this must have been a local serial killer that was then told in a form that people could deal with, which I think you had said something like that, that the stories come down to us in a form that people can deal with. Um, but, you know, the tactic there. Uh, but just, I guess, just to sort of run with that idea of stories being told in a form that is more palatable. This is where John Douglas, the FBI, uh, former FBI guy who wrote Mindhunter, which there has also been a, a TV show.

• 53:51Liv Albert?

  Great show. Too bad.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  It was. I was so.

• 53:54Liv Albert?

  Good show.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  After two seasons, right? I was like, oh, come on.

• 53:58Liv Albert?

  Oh, it had so much more.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Uh, great cast too, and they had a ton of material they could work with. But anyway, so John Douglas, actually, in his book, Mindhunter, wrote a bit about how, you know, he was speculating, well, maybe some of those killings in early modern Europe that were attributed to werewolves and vampires, maybe those were serial killers. You know, and, and it was just like, people didn't want to believe that other human beings could do something so horrible, like mutilation murder. So maybe, you know, those were stories that sort of became, uh, legends about types of monsters, because otherwise people couldn't deal with it. Um, I mean, obviously, there, there are other possibilities there. I mean, the force of Europe did tend to have wolves in them, you know, axolotls.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  And, uh, then we, there were those stories, uh, from, from Germany and France of men who, who did have these so-called werewolf delusions. And, um, so whether there are rational explanations or not, the point is that this FBI guy actually said, well, maybe these stories about monsters, these creatures of folklore, creatures of lore, maybe those are originally based in serial killing stories. And from there, we can say that, uh, you know, even something like the Thee and Sphinx, you know, I mean, look, she's got a particular victim type, she's got a particular method of killing. I don't, I, this is not my own theory. There was actually like, um, I don't know if it was

• 55:25Speaker 03

  an article or a chapter in, in a book, but somebody wrote about, well, maybe the Theban Sphinx was, you know, a story that grew up around, um, serial killing. And even in antiquity, there were rationalizing mythographers like Palephatus, who would say, well, of, of course, a, a hybrid creature is ridiculous. It's just physiologically impossible. The Theban Sphinx was really a female robber with a band of robbers who would come down from her cave in the mountains and kill people and rob them. So, so they were rationalizing, you know, versions in antiquity as, as well.

• 55:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Um, so they weren't that far from saying, oh, it's just, it's just killers. You know, it's just human killers who are doing this sort of stuff. So even 2,000 years ago or more, they were speculating about how, where these stories about certain types of killers came from.

• 56:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 01

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• 57:17Liv Albert?

  I'm so glad you brought that up. Um, cause I mean, it, all of this leads me to also want to ask about, you know, your, your work with monsters in mythology more broadly.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 57:28Liv Albert?

  But, cause I mean, and it, it's funny you mentioned Palephatus, because I had, I had not really heard of him a while, you know, before I, I recently wrote. A big piece on Medusa for, for a book that's come out recently and I, that's where I first encountered him. Cause I went through and I dug into like any possible reference to Medusa and the Gorgons that I could find anywhere. And finding these, yeah, these rationalizing stories, I'm gonna, I.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  What's the book, by the way?

• 57:58Liv Albert?

  What's? Oh, it's called Medusa. Um, and then what is the subtitle? It's just like ancient and modern Greek tales, I think. Um, it's a book of, uh, of short stories primarily, but, uh, the publisher asked me to write a big introductory piece on her. So I got to write like 27,000 words on Medusa and whatever I wanted. It was like the greatest thing I've ever gotten to do. Um, and.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  I'll look, I'll look for it. No kidding.

• 58:22Liv Albert?

  Thank you. Yeah. I'm very proud of my piece. I haven't read the short stories yet, but I'm sure they're, that they're really great as well. Um, but I, I got to go into some of those rationalizing stories and my favorite one and I, um, it, this one's not Polyphatus, if I recall, but it's, um, Diodorus Siculus, who, who talks about, uh, you know, the, the Gorgons actually being like really similar to the Amazons. And how like there was this whole race of warrior women, but then, you know, essentially like it comes down to Heracles just like couldn't allow that to happen. Because he was the leader of men and like, he couldn't have women ruling. So he killed them all. And here we are. And you know, and there's like, there's so many kind of like notions of this and, and these, this way of like understanding monsters.

• 59:07Liv Albert?

  And I mean, when it came to Medusa, for me, I sort of ended up getting down to a point of just like, okay, to me, I think, I think it's pretty clear that she really just like, what is the word I want represented? Jesus. I was, she really just represented male fear of, of women who could fight back against like an assault. And it's so interesting to me, the way that that can kind of like mold and change and grow. And you know, I mean, ultimately the Gorgons, I think, represent a lot else, but to me, the, the story of Medusa's defeat so specifically is just like that. And, and then the way that it turns on its head and someone like, I, Polyphatus, do you know offhand what his rationalization of Medusa was? There was a few that I wrote about, so I've forgotten, but.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  Honestly, I have the book right on my shelf. I can literally just go check.

• 59:56Liv Albert?

  Great.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, so I've just picked up my Polysphatus book.

• 1:00:00Liv Albert?

  Oh, I love it. Well, feel free to share any as well, because I'm fascinated by the idea of the rationalization of monsters more broadly. I only got to read Medusa for the book.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Let me see, well, what does he have to say about Scylla? Well, here's what he says, for example. What is said about Scylla is that she was a beast who lived in Tyrrhenia, a woman down to her navel from where dogs' heads grew and the rest of her body was the snakes. But to imagine such a shape is really quite foolish. Here is the truth. The Tyrrhenians had ships which made piratical raids in the waters around Sicily and the Ionian Gulf. But particularly swift in those days was a trireme by the name of Scylla, which had a figure on its prow. It was this trireme which often seized the other boats and made a meal of them. There was indeed much talk about it. On one occasion, Odysseus escaped from this ship with the aid of a strong favorable wind. Later in Corcyra, he narrated to Alcinoas how he was pursued and how he escaped and what the boat looked

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  like. From this, the myth was formed. So I read that one because it's super short.

• 1:00:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, no, but it's so, it is such, it's a good example of the work he was doing.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  I don't know. Let's see, there's a Medea, there's one on Medea, but I'm still looking for Medusa in Polysphatus. But, um, uh, there's one about Pandora that's nice and short, too.

• 1:01:17Liv Albert?

  Yes, please, I would love it.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Okay, this is even shorter than the other one I read. So the story about Pandora is intolerable, that she was fashioned out of the earth and imparted her shape to others, that is, women. It hardly seems likely to me. No, Pandora was a wealthy Greek woman. Whenever she went out in public, she would dress up in her finest and rub her face with a cosmetic made of earth. It was she who first discovered how to apply such cosmetics to her skin. Nowadays, of course, many women do so, and none of them gains any special renown because the practice is so common. This is what happened, but the story was twisted in an impossible direction.

• 1:01:54Liv Albert?

  It's just, it's so interesting. And I love how certain the, the text is. It's like, no, this one is the truth. Oh, here, the daughters of Phorkos. I've found, oh, it's very, this one's long, so we won't try to go into it. But it, oh, yes, there's something about there, these three women of the kingdom and they had, uh, they had an eye, but he was just like their, you know, he, he, this guy who worked with them. And so they, they're pulling in the, the story of the, uh, the, the gray eye and Perseus having to steal their eye. Oh, and it was,

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  It's a, it's a ship again, right?

• 1:02:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  The ship is called the Gorgon.

• 1:02:32Liv Albert?

  The ship is called the Gorgon. And then he, he steals this, this statue, cuts it up, names his ship that puts it on. And then when he arrives back in, in Seraphos, or he goes there, they say he's a pirate, actually. And he goes there and demands money. And then he leaves while they collect it. And when he goes back, the Seraphians have, have like, put human sized rocks in a place. And he's like, oh, I guess they turned to stone.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, let's see, it ends like thereafter, whenever any of the other island people would not pay their tribute, Perseus would say, be careful that you too do not suffer what the people of Seraphos did who saw the Gorgon sad and were turned to stone. Yeah, that's why I didn't find it. It was listed under the daughters of Phorkos.

• 1:03:15Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Under Medusa. But yeah, no, that's a great one. It's just, yes, um, this, uh, these rationalizing mythographers from 2000 years ago are wonderful.

• 1:03:26Liv Albert?

  Well, and particularly, you know, I'm fascinated by the volume of female monsters. And you know what that meant. And so to, to then read these men writing this, like, you know, equally absurd, but in a more realistic way, the, these rationalizations, which of course, never address any kind of gender dynamics that would have been at play, you know. And so it's interesting to see the way an ancient man would rationalize it. And I'm just always curious, like, how did the women see it, I wonder?

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Well, I always thought it was interesting that some of them um would in fact say there are these female bandits with groups of men following them. So that's sort of attributing attributing an interesting kind of an ancient state to women that you would normally have thought of necessarily.

• 1:04:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  I mean, they're made out as they're made out as villains, of course, but in terms of the sort of pow- like pow- power dynamics.

• 1:04:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  You know, in a group like that, it's pretty interesting.

• 1:04:22Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, I mean, in the ancient world, I will take a villain woman if it means I get to, you know, look at a woman actually getting to do things that she wants, even if they're terrible, Medea being a great example.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. And oh, but speaking of Medusa, I thought one of the great, the one of the great reinterpretations was that sculpture a few years back of of Medusa with Perseus's head, which was really sort of, you know, inverted the or subverted the entire, the entire myth. I mean, that was great. That was an amazing statue.

• 1:04:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Which I guess got a little bit of criticism for idealizing Medusa's body. But it was still just, I mean, it was, you know, it was just an inversion of um, oh, whose sculpture? Canova?

• 1:05:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  I can't remember.

• 1:05:06Liv Albert?

  It might be Canova's, yeah, in Florence, yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, and it is, it is so interesting, and I think the problem, I I think that that statue is really interesting. It was done by a man, which makes me go like, I don't know how I, you know, it just makes me wonder, but it it is just, Medusa to me is my endless obsession purely because of the way that she has been like reinterpreted in recent years in all of these different ways. That, you know, I think a lot hold value and a lot are absurd and, you know, it's such an interesting, she is just so unique in that way. I think she's been kind of manipulated by the modern world in a way that's particularly interesting.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I if I'm remembering right, I think the sculptor had said that he was inspired by the Me Too movement, actually, because it was several years ago.

• 1:05:54Liv Albert?

  I believe that it, if if I recall correctly, the sculpture is considerably older than the Me Too movement, but then it came, it but it got renewed appreciation during that time, I believe. I know a friend of mine wrote a piece on it a while back, but yeah, no, it's it's it was an interesting thing. I know it definitely was like very big around the Me Too movement um, in an interesting way.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  That that must have been what it was.

• 1:06:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was very striking.

• 1:06:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, it's, yeah, I mean, I could talk about Medusa forever, but I will try not to. Um, but I'm, I'm so interested in monsters broadly. You know, I was looking into your work and I see that you have a new, like Oxford handbook of monsters that you've edited.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Liv Albert?

  Is there anything, um, you know, well, I mean, I'm also happy to keep hearing about some, some serial killers as well, but I'm always, I'm always down to, to hear about monsters or, or just, yeah, I, I don't, this is not forming into a question. So I apologize. Do you have a favorite monster? Maybe?

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  Well, no, I actually, I actually thought of something in relation to the book that, that maybe would make a good topic for discussion. But yeah, I have, I have it right here. It was, it came out on Halloween.

• 1:07:03Liv Albert?

  Oh, amazing.

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  Um, but it was, it was actually delayed by something like seven months because of problems on the production end. So it was supposed to be out a lot sooner. But I think, um, what I noticed when I was, this is like, there were like 40 essays in here, right? So one of the things I noticed was the, like, I, I, I think the Cyclops Polyphemus is probably the best example of this. But what I noticed was that, you know, a lot of the essays would approach the same monster from these different perspectives. And Polyphemus really stood out in that respect because he got, uh, you know, uh, interpreted from, uh, you know, disability studies perspective and a colonialism perspective. And a few others that were just so interesting in terms of, I mean,

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  he's, he was, you know, obviously reinterpreted, you know, before this decade in terms of, well, wait a minute, Odysseus was the one intruding on his home. As was so often the case with Odysseus.

• 1:07:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, story of Odysseus' life.

• 1:08:01Speaker 03

  Right. So Odysseus was a crap leader. Let's just know it.

• 1:08:06Liv Albert?

  Truly.

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  But, uh, uh, you know, so, uh, so we had already seen, you know, some sympathy for Polyphemus, uh, you know, from a modern point of view, long before this volume came out, but just like, there was a lot of it in there at once. Just showing how, uh, why these ancient myths or these ancient monsters, monsters in particular are very adaptable to the modern world. So for example, um, And a silver blanket in Chella Ward wrote a chapter on disability that talked about the cyclops at length and how, um, you know, we really need to sort of consider the physical environment and how it was disadvantageous for a disuse. Because, uh, you know, what was, what worked for this very large cyclops

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  was not going to work for a disuse. And so the perspective there of, oh, wait a minute, you know, this isn't built for everyone. Uh, and what happens when, when it isn't, I mean, our disuse isn't a huge disadvantage. He cannot move that rock, right? Um, and he even puts it in, in terms that, you know, are useful to him, like, oh, even if we had like a cart drawn by, I don't remember exactly what it was, but you know, this many horses or whatever, they still wouldn't be able to pull that rock away. So, uh, so the focus on the physical environment and, uh, you know, within the context of disability studies, I thought was really interesting. Yeah. And, uh, put, put the whole story in a kind of a different perspective for me. And then,

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  you know, from colonialism studies, and, and this is, this is maybe a good thing to bring up too, because Nikki Giovanni recently died. And, um, poet. And, um, the, uh, Justine McConnell did a, a chapter on, uh, you know, colonialism and used, uh, uh, there was a lot of focus on polyphemous cyclops in that one too. And how he's been reinterpreted from this, this point of view of not just a disuse as intruder, but a disuse as colonial, uh, colonializer, colonizer, sorry, colonizers is what I'm looking for, colonizer. And, um, you know, he just sort of waltzes in, decides what's best is horrified by the savagery of, of the local.

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  Um, you know, uh, there's a side question there of, is it cannibalism or anthropophagy? Because is the cyclops really a different creature altogether? Or is he just a giant man? Because Odysseus in his narrative does refer to him as oner more than once. I mean, maybe on, on your palorius, like a hor- horrible man or monstrous man, but still on, on air. So, uh, you know, so if Odysseus thinks of him as just a larger type of man, then that makes the crunching on Odysseus's companions, uh, as a snack, uh, even more horrifying, I suppose, than if it were a mon- you know, somebody more monstrous or less humanoid or whatever. But, um, the colonializing, colonializing aspect of this is, um,

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  Taken up by reception in reception studies. And so um the point of view of native peoples as more childlike and savage and less sophisticated. It turns into something highly problematic in the case of Odysseus where what kind of behavior is he expecting? From someone that he's called less sophisticated already, not Greek enough, whatever. Uh, so there are all sorts of judgments from Odysseus's point of view, of course. But um the Nikki Giovanni, I mean, uh, what I was gonna say is um, yeah, but polyphemus in the poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Again, she just died, was it earlier this week or last week?

• 1:11:32Liv Albert?

  I'm not familiar with her, I have to say, but that's.

• 1:11:34Speaker 03

  That's okay, I mean, she's a, you know, she's, she's a poet and um. What Justine McCall says is, uh, if it's okay, I'll just read a little bit here of it, but. You know, she talks about how Giovanni's um, polyphemus is unmistakably a small child in the poem, crying out in pain for his father. Giovanni's cyclops doesn't understand the humanity of others or the irreversibility of his actions. Um, so the part of the poem is, I didn't mean for the men to go, they were fun, but they broke and they cried. And then later on, um, I mean, well, I'm sorry, I should say part of what that uh seems to say, you know, as, as uh. Justine McCall points out is that polyphemus is seeing Odysseus as men as toys, they're small, they're cute, they're something to play with and.

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  Children, we like bite their toys all the time. Um, so polyphemus dehumanizes them as inanimate objects in a way that parallels Odysseus's dehumanizing of polyphemus. And if the cyclops is sort of viewed from this, you know, as a sort of toddler, his inability to understand what he's doing, you know, kind of. Changes the power balance. So later in the poem Giovanni um. A- after uh Odysseus's, you know, take of the cyclops's eye, uh, Giovanni's poem says, why did no man take my eye? I only wanted to play with him, is he broken too? Make him give it back, daddy, make him give it back. Uh, so it's a really, you know, just a, you know, touching take on um.

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  The story in this this different point of view. And I know this won't be visible to, you know, people. But there's a painting that Justine McConnell talks about also, which is Romer Bearden's painting, or collage, rather, of the Cyclops, which also makes him rather childlike, sort of peeking out from his cave, maybe waving. There's a bird standing nearby who obviously isn't afraid of the Cyclops. And the ship is approaching and the Cyclops isn't afraid. And I'll just, I don't know if you've seen it.

• 1:13:30Liv Albert?

  No, I love it.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  But it's maybe a little hard to see. But so, so those those two chapters alone, the one on disability studies by Hannah Silverblank and Chilla Ward, and then Justine McConnell's, you know, on post-colonial takes on some of these monsters, has just been fascinating for me. I mean, this is one of the things I like about editing, you know, collections like this, is I get to see a lot of different points of view on, you know, the same sorts of things.

• 1:13:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  And then, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:14:02Liv Albert?

  Oh, just it's interesting the way you phrased, or the way you retold the disability studies aspect. Because even as you were talking about it that way, my mind was going to colonialism even in in that kind of form, that way that it's, you know, the the space was not made for Odysseus because it was not for Odysseus. And and the way that that colonizing forces never know what to do with the land that they've colonized because it was not, it it they are not the stewards of that land. They are not experienced in its in its care and stewardship and such. And so it's an interesting, you know, it like it it ties to disability studies in in that accessible kind of way.

• 1:14:46Liv Albert?

  And then similarly into the colonial as well, where it's just like, this is not for you. And that is why you don't fit in with it. Because it it is another person's world that that you're, you know, just coming in and saying that this is yours now. And it's, yeah, it's it's interesting the way that those those can sort of overlap. I mean, disability studies and colonialism overlap in many, many, many ways.

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's why I think I can't remember if those two chapters were right next to each other in the book or not. But they certainly were, you know, let me just check quickly. Um, no, I guess there's um, they're separated slightly in terms of reception section versus theory section. But uh, but yeah, no, and I think, I mean, Richard Buxton, you know, has pointed out, well, Odysseus isn't trying to colonize the island of the Cyclops necessarily, but the imagery is still there, right? I mean, you know, Odysseus' end goal is to get back to Ithaca.

• 1:15:43Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  He's stop, he's stopping every place on the way and interfering. It's like, we're the prime directive.

• 1:15:47Liv Albert?

  That is still colonialism in its way. Like, if you, if you stop in a place, destroy it for its native inhabitants and then leave, like, you have still done all of the colonial, the, the, the damage of colonialism. And, and without even, you know, hanging on to it. So, yeah, it's, it's interesting.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, especially, you know, when you consider the description that Odysseus himself gives of how, you know, the, the Cyclops' land is, like, it produces, I mean, it's, it's almost like Golden Age imagery. If you look back at, I guess, is it Ovid and Hesiod have these, you know, ages of, of man? So it's this little, you know, sort of Edenic state before they are invaded, basically, by outsiders. Um, and uh, so, you know, he's, yeah, Odysseus is criticizing their way of life when they were doing just fine before he got there, right? Yeah.

• 1:16:40Liv Albert?

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:16:41Speaker 03

  So uh, this way, you know, so again, that's why I think one of the main points of a collection like this, uh, Oxford handbook is to uh, show how adaptable these ancient monsters are to a lot of, you know, other modern, modern contexts while still, you know, maybe retaining some of that, um, uh, you know, some of these views were also present in antiquity, they just weren't prevalent.

• 1:17:04Liv Albert?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  You know, of Odysseus being sort of a, wait, why did he go to the land of the Cyclops? Kind of, you know, um. Yeah, I mean, he, yeah, and uh, you know, especially when his men are like, why do we need to keep, uh, you know, doing this sort of thing? Although I guess they got more, you know, more vocal about it a little later.

• 1:17:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Liv Albert?

  I mean, there's so many instances of him doing it, you know?

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, but the Lycraconians, the Kekonians, you know, starting off with the, with the Kekonians, I think, and then just getting worse and worse. As they go on until all his crew are gone and, um.

• 1:17:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Speaker 03

  You know, and anyway, but.

• 1:17:39Liv Albert?

  Oh, now I can't stop thinking about the colonialism in the Odyssey. So, thank you. I'm like, you're giving me ideas.

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'm I'm sure there's more been written about it in in general. And I mean, I think, um, who was I reading that was talking about how, I mean, it might have been Justine McConnell's essay where she does mention previous, you know, takes on a disuse as a colonizer. And, uh, you know, there's also a chapter in there about Latin American, uh, monsters and how they, you know, some of them came over from Greece via Spain and and all and all of that. Um, so they're like the like there's some the equivalent of sirens and, uh, and so forth. Uh, so that was a lot of fun also.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  And, um, and yeah, I mean, there's certainly, uh, chapters discussing, you know, why so many of these monsters are female. For example, and even even a lot of the male ones, uh, were produced by females, like produced by Gaia or, you know, Hera or whatever. So.

• 1:18:42Liv Albert?

  The women make the monsters, definitely.

• 1:18:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then with something like polyphemus, well, isn't it really a disuse to make them into a monster? I mean, you know, so.

• 1:18:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  A lot of different ways of of looking at them, which makes which is what makes it a lot of a lot of fun to continually, you know, to keep re re, uh, uh, reinventing them and to, uh, just keep reinterpreting them in new in new ways.

• 1:19:09Liv Albert?

  Well, and I mean, it it's why I think mythology is so lasting in in so many different ways is that it is still that it is such a human thing for for all that the stories have these fantastical elements, these these absurd monsters and moments and and all of this, you know, that that seems so unrealistic, like ultimately it is so based in humanity that we can keep looking for relevance and re like reinterpreting it and and finding new ways to understand this stuff because it is utterly timeless. Um, this just reminded me that I recently had someone ask me about the use of AI in in the field like that. And I just.

• 1:19:48Liv Albert?

  I can't get over the idea of AI trying to to understand mythology and how it it would never and will never and should never try because these things are, they are so human that any attempt by AI to to interpret anything like will just will never actually pan out to anything. It'll never mean anything because you absolutely have to have that that human understanding in order in order to to appreciate anything from, I mean mythology specifically, but the ancient world broadly. I'm not a fan of AI if that hasn't become clear.

• 1:20:24Speaker 03

  I mean, I absolutely, I, yeah, it's, it's interesting that you mentioned it because just just the other day I had checked something on, I guess it was Google because I teach a medical terms class and the student had come up with something strange for one of the roots. So I I look up the thing on, you know, in in Google and the AI says, like the combining form NOM, N O M, is Latin for name and that's where we get nomenclature. And I'm like, no, it's Greek for law and Nomen is what you're thinking of. And now I know why the student had a wrong answer. Cause he just assumed that the AI was right despite all of our warnings on the syllabus and in class that if you use the internet and you get it wrong.

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  It's still, you know, the internet gets wrong sometimes. So yeah, not not a huge fan. You know, I know there are more sophisticated AIs out there like, you know, I mean, if the student had, you know, had a subscription to one of the more sophisticated AIs. You know, but I don't, I certainly don't encourage that. I would rather have them think for themselves.

• 1:21:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, and and this I need to say in every episode that I mention AI, but also aside from all of that being absolutely relevant. AI is one of the biggest producers of carbon today and is making climate change of just so much worse than it already is from everything else. And thus, AI bad, but that is not the point um of this conversation.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  Well, no, it's it's.

• 1:21:49Liv Albert?

  Not mad I got there.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  Well, no, I'm I'm gonna say it's interesting that you mentioned it because my husband actually uh researches AI and he's he's published uh he's published about it. He published a book about the singularity, the technological uh singularity that's expected and this and that. So, yeah, so are you know, it's very much a topic of conversation in my household and has been for twenty years.

• 1:22:10Liv Albert?

  I bet.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  I mean, he was talking about the singularity before it was more more mainstream, not that it's super mainstream now, but it's definitely more in

• 1:22:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 03

  public awareness than it was twenty years ago.

• 1:22:21Liv Albert?

  Then it was just Terminator.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, and uh my son also uh was uh he got a degree in computer science and he was very interested in AI. I think I don't know that he's going into that necessarily, but he was, you know, he certainly is has done some work in that area also. And so we sort of are brainstorming about how is there a good way to use it in our classes or can we just tell our students to try to think for themselves? I mean, shouldn't they have to make their own outlines instead of using AI to help them make an outline? You know, shouldn't they write their own cover letters? I mean, I get why they might want a little help, but I'm telling you, the people reading those cover letters are gonna recognize the same patterns if they keep seeing them. I don't know, I don't know, um.

• 1:22:58Liv Albert?

  No, that's it's so interesting. I mean, when I was in university, which, you know, was still very much, I mean, we didn't have the level of internet, but like, we were just being told not to use Wikipedia ever. So the idea that the change now is from like, don't trust Wikipedia to don't trust a robot, like what a difference, you know, that it's taken in just like fifteen years.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  Well, and I mean, you know, at least Wikipedia was put together by people, but they didn't always they didn't always check their facts.

• 1:23:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but they were human.

• 1:23:28Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, and you know, the thing with the students is like, you know, you should check more than one source to make sure you're getting consistent information. You have to be careful about whether this source got it from the first one you looked at, like the Google definition of, you know, combining from number or whatever. But uh but yeah, it's it's made teaching a bit tougher, a lot tougher, actually, uh in various ways, so so I'm, you know.

• 1:23:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  Well, you know, and then, of course, like you say, there's the whole environmental issue and the whole, I mean, you know, artists, I mean, the the the kind of art that's being produced by AI. I mean, some of it looks amazing, a lot of it looks like crap and, you know.

• 1:24:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah, no, exactly, as a as a creative, I think that's the, yeah, that's where I get the biggest threat out of it between art and writing. It's like, keep me away.

• 1:24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that's a different kind of monster.

• 1:24:17Liv Albert?

  We're gonna make that one a male monster if we have to give it a gender. I'm just gonna say that now. It does not have feminine qualities.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  I mean, I think I even mentioned AI in one of the chapters in this Oxford Handbook of Monsters and Classical Mythology. The last chapter is about, well, it's about ancient monsters in modern science and how, I guess what I was talking about. And the thing is, I wrote this like two years ago. It was just delayed in production for such a long time. But I actually have a section on computer science in there. You know, with computer scientists have proven adept at adopting classical mythology too. So, you know, you've got the Trojan Horse, Malware, you've got Malware, you've got some different softwares named after things like, Python or Basilisk. And then, you know, AI is in here with the,

• 1:25:06Speaker 03

  Rocco's Basilisk thought experiment. I mean, don't even worry about it, but there's Centaur AI. There's, yeah, there's, it's in there. You know, so it wasn't bad to bring up AI because again, really, it is like this monstrous creation that, is even being acknowledged with monstrous names a lot of the time too. Although, you know what? I was wrong about Python though, because as I said in the chapter, I think that particular computer language was named by someone who's a fan of Monty Python.

• 1:25:34Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God, really? That's so funny.

• 1:25:37Speaker 03

  I think that, I think that's what it was. Again, it was like a while ago that I wrote this. I think that that was the deal with that particular thing.

• 1:25:45Liv Albert?

  That's funny. I like that. Makes it more entertaining.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  I know. I should just double check. Um, let's see. Right. Regarding the Python programming language itself, its creator Guido van Rossum took the name not from the giant serpent of Greek myth, but from Monty Python's flying circus, the 1970s British comedy sketch show, of which he was a huge fan. Monty Python themselves also did not have Greek myth in mind. So even though Python's, you know, symbol is two snakes, it doesn't have anything to do with the name's origin.

• 1:26:15Liv Albert?

  That's, I like that. It's a good reminder, because I mean, I obviously, as someone in this realm, you know, I notice any kind of classical reception name that I've seen anywhere. And so it's, yeah, it's a good reminder. Like, sometimes these things are coming from somewhere else entirely in a funny or more entertaining kind of way.

• 1:26:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's I was surprised to learn that myself.

• 1:26:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  Because when I when I saw the symbol for Python, which was the snakes. And then found out that well, that wasn't the original intent behind the name at all. I was really surprised.

• 1:26:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just assume because it seems like it must be that like, you know, kind of. They they always want to pull from Greek mythology in those ways because it seems very, you know, very intellectual kind of thing. So it's fun to have it be like, no, it's Monty Python.

• 1:27:00Speaker 03

  It's like a certain status to it if it's from Greek myth.

• 1:27:03Liv Albert?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:27:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's a, yeah, that whole chapter just sort of, I mean, besides the computer science section, there's like bits from biology and just sort of other areas of of science, but.

• 1:27:15Liv Albert?

  Interesting.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  But I think it gets, you know, some of it gets out of date pretty quickly. I think half of the computer science stuff I mentioned, you know, when I wrote it two years ago, isn't super relevant anymore.

• 1:27:24Liv Albert?

  That's the problem with like.

• 1:27:25Speaker 03

  What can you do?

• 1:27:27Liv Albert?

  All of that.

• 1:27:28Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:27:29Liv Albert?

  Just, yeah, to to kind of close things out on something fun. To the listeners, Debbie mentioned this off. Mike, but also it has been living in my head since you first talked about the Revenant in Pausanias. So I'm thrilled. You you mentioned that you enjoy Pliny's haunted house story, which is a favorite as mine as well. I've I've shared it on the show a couple of times.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  So it it came up in the context of like, do I have a favorite monster or maybe a favorite monster story from antiquity? And it's it's kind of hard for me to choose and I I like Cerberus as as a monster for various reasons. But my probably all time favorite story from antiquity. It is is Pliny's haunted house story from his letter to a friend named Sura. And in that letter, he tells three ghost stories. He actually starts off that letter by saying, do you believe in ghosts? I'm I'm wondering if there is such a thing and I've heard some stories and tell me what you think of them. And so he tells, you know, a short story and then he tells this long.

• 1:28:30Speaker 03

  For antiquity, long haunted house story, which I said by long, I mean, like, you know, two or three paragraphs.

• 1:28:36Liv Albert?

  Not long enough, but it's better than nothing.

• 1:28:38Speaker 03

  Well, what part of what I love about it is that it is so short, but it's still so atmospheric and descriptive. And so I don't know how, you know, how much you're. Audience would have heard about this story, but basically, there's this, you know, house in Athens that's, uh, it's big, but it has a bad reputation and an unhealthy pestilential air. And, uh, this is because there's a spectre that shows up at night rattling chains and terrifying everybody who lives there. And they, they eventually die from lack of sleep and fear. Anyway, I shouldn't laugh. It's a very serious, it's a surprisingly serious story, actually. And, uh, so the house, uh, sort of falls into disrepair, like your typical haunted house.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  And the owner sort of puts a "To let" sign on it in case anybody wants to rent or buy it, like anybody who hasn't heard the story. So apparently there are no disclosure laws in ancient Athens where the story is set. Um, and so along comes this philosopher, Athenodorus, who is very skeptical. Uh, he sees the low price. He's like, wait a sec, what's wrong with the house? You're like, it doesn't have mold or whatever? That's not actually in the story, but that's what I would have guessed.

• 1:29:46Liv Albert?

  That's what I would think too, yeah.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  And, you know, anyway, so he's told the whole story, and that makes him all the more interested in staying in the place and checking it out, as opposed to saying, oh, forget it, I'm out of here. So he goes to the house, um, he sends his, uh, his servants to the back room, and he stays, you know, he stays up writing, uh, trying to make sure he's being rational and distracting himself with a task, so that he's not starting to imagine things. And just like everybody else who was in the house, he starts hearing the clanking of chains moving closer and closer in the middle of the night. And then he sees this phantom of the, of this old man, you know, with chains on his wrists and li- ankles. And, and basically Athenodorus kind of looks at the guy, uh, the spectre, like he holds up his hand, like, "Talk of

• 1:30:30Speaker 03

  the hand." Kind of thing, like, hang on a sec, you know?

• 1:30:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, he's like, "I have something to do."

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  Right! He's like, "Yeah, sure, sure, you're a ghost, whatever." So he, uh, he turns back to his writing. And then the ghost moves closer and rattles its chains right over Athenodorus' head, at which point he's like, "Okay, I guess I'm not imagining this." This is a very modern paraphrase, by the way. This is not Clint, please, tone of voice. Um, he follows the apparition, and it goes, at least it went to the courtyard of the house, like the open space. The owl and it goes to a certain spot, it disappears. So Athenodorus marks the spot with some grass, you know, leaves, plucked grass, so that he'll know where the ghost disappeared. He goes to the town magistrates in the morning and says, you might want to dig up that spot because I think there's something happening there. And they do, they listen to him because he's a respected figure.

• 1:31:18Speaker 03

  They dig up the spot, they find a skeleton entwined with chains. And then when they give the body a proper burial, the house isn't haunted anymore. So um. The things I like about it are, well, the writing itself, which is much better than my paraphrase and much less facetious than my paraphrase. It's very atmospheric, it's very descriptive, it uses a whole bunch of different words for the emotional effect that the story has on the inhabitants of the house. And then Doris. And it turns from having this like terrifying specter to a sympathetic figure that was just trying to communicate. With the living to so that, you know, somebody would finally pay attention and find the body and have it buried.

• 1:32:00Speaker 03

  So there's the whole like method and and way the story is written, even for just two or three paragraphs, it's kind of an amazing piece of literature. In the original Latin. And then there's the fact about how like. Basic it sounds in terms of every haunted house story ever written. If you take out just a couple of words, like Athenodorus is the name of the character. And the fact that he's writing with like a stylus, you know, and tablets instead of, you know. Pen and ink or, you know, well, paper, whatever. If you just take out a couple of words, you couldn't tell where it was taking place, if it wasn't in Latin, I guess. Yeah. To mention the big thing there, right?

• 1:32:39Speaker 03

  But, you know, you translate the story, you take out a couple of words and it could have been anywhere in the world, you know, and. Any time in the last, you know, several thousand years. So it's kind of, it has this timeless quality, I guess, too, in addition to being eerie. And also still kind of mysterious because it doesn't tell us. How the spot it came to be buried there, why it was in chains. The implication based on um analogues from antiquity is that this is one of those stories where. Host had a guest and killed him for his money and then just got rid of the body. Um, like the polydorus story for, for example, or the story be uh made up in Platus's Maestularia on the spur of the moment by.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  Trani, it's a comic setting, but the story is basically the same. I'm a guest from overseas. Uh. The hu- the owner of this house killed me for my money and just buried me here. So it's my house. Go away. You know, so that's that's the one from the Maestularia, but it's this, this, it's so in the background of plenty of story, maybe. A trope like that, you know, a host killed a guest buried in the air, but we don't know and he doesn't say, and it's not the main point of the story. Um, but that sort of eeriness and like bit of mystery and the sympathy for the apparition at the end and. And Ethenodorus's behavior just really all make a really nice little story and just so amazingly well told. Told for its very short length.

• 1:34:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 03

  I think that, I think that's why it's one of my favorites. Plus I grew up really just interested in ghost stories.

• 1:34:06Liv Albert?

  You're not alone. You're not alone. I.

• 1:34:10Liv Albert?

  I absolutely, yeah, was absolutely the same. I mean, even just listening while ghost stories and and everything had a macabre, like. That listening to you, you talk about the serial killers too. I was just constantly reminded like, oh yeah. There is still so much of this that lives in my brain despite I haven't looked into modern serial killers in a long time. Um, but like everyone you talk about is go right now. You know a lot more. Um, but like it's it, when it comes to to Pliny, that story, you're, you're right. It's so timeless. It's like. A quintessential ghost story in so many ways and I.

• 1:34:43Speaker 03

  That's a good word for it.

• 1:34:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, it, it fits everything and that, that's what really stood out to me too, when I first read it a couple of years ago. Just that it, it does sound like it could be any other, even the, yeah, that end of like, oh, the ghost is gone. Once he's been properly buried, like that's. Yeah, it's so, it is just so absolutely timeless. It's such a good story. Oh.

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's such a, um, you know, that particular type of apparition with the clanking chains, which became so popular late, you know, in later Victorian. Ghost story literature, um, you're like the candle ghost or a Christmas Carol.

• 1:35:19Liv Albert?

  Uh, yeah, I was just gonna say, yeah, it's like straight out of Scrooge. Yeah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, that, that it was so, uh, well drawn, you know, two thousand years ago. It's just, it's just amazing and, yeah.

• 1:35:32Liv Albert?

  Well, you can tell that Pliny had that scientific interest too, right? In that story of that, that sort of interest in sympathy.

• 1:35:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, to close off on Cerberus real quick, do you like, because you said his name and I also love him, particularly because, and I think that this is just not mentioned enough in references to Cerberus, but that according to a great many sources, his mane was made of snakes. And I think that that's just been lost in a way that it shouldn't be. Uh, do you have anything else you particularly love about Cerberus?

• 1:36:08Speaker 03

  Well, I was gonna say about the snakes, you can actually see those in some of the Greek vase paintings. Like they'll have little snakes on him, you know, to represent his kathonic nature that he's like an underworld creature. But it's, you know, some of the fun things about him is how many heads he's, you know, had over the centuries. Because I think Hesiod describes him as having 50 heads, but that's kind of impossible to paint. So, you know, he started being, uh, you know, depicted with, with three or even two heads. One of my favorite Greek vase paintings of Cerberus is Heracles' Last Labor, where he's, he's got the chain on him and he's basically petting one of the two heads.

• 1:36:49Liv Albert?

  Like a snake curl, right?

• 1:36:50Speaker 03

  And it's like, I want to put a caption on that, like, nice doggy, nice two-headed doggy, you know? And then there are just these sort of adorable, modern adaptations. Like what was that show recently with Jeff Goldblum, Chaos?

• 1:37:03Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:04Speaker 03

  Also not renewed. I can't believe they didn't renew that. But the Cerberuses or Cerberai or whatever, they had multiple ones as like, you know, like, like the equivalent of drug sniffing dogs at the entrance of Hades. It's like, wait, let me sniff them and make sure they're really dead, you know, that kind of thing. Making sure that no living people get into Hades. So it's not just the figure of Cerberus, uh, it, it himself, which, you know, because he is a little terrifying in antiquity, but he gets muted over the. The the centuries and like by the time Psyche gets down there and throws him some meat to put him to sleep or Orpheus puts him to sleep, you know, with music. Uh, Cerberus is just like, you know, you can sort of picture him as as a as Hades pet dog and then the the the incarnations, the modern ones like Fluffy in Harry Potter.

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  Or again, my favorite recent one is is gotta be the one in Chaos.

• 1:37:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Speaker 03

  Multiple versions and it just, the the CGI was so good. I mean, instead of like some giant, you know, body with three heads, it was like a normal proportion body with three heads. It seemed physically possible possible somehow, which was incredible. Anyway, it's just um, it's just a very fun sort of concept of a creature with three heads, probably because of wanting to be able to look in all directions like a a typical sort of guardian.

• 1:38:16Liv Albert?

  Um.

• 1:38:17Speaker 03

  Who was very bad at his job because how many living people got down there?

• 1:38:22Liv Albert?

  I mean, yeah, there's a good collection and not all of them even had to encounter him.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 1:38:28Liv Albert?

  Like, where's the dog?

• 1:38:30Speaker 03

  Exactly. So I just, you know, and I just happen to like, you know, dogs and cats. So it's just for some reason.

• 1:38:36Liv Albert?

  So do I, which is why I wanted to bring him up. Yep.

• 1:38:39Speaker 03

  Excuse me. Yeah, so he just sort of really appeals to me as a sort of monster with um, for whom there's, you know, I have a lot of sympathy as well.

• 1:38:48Liv Albert?

  He's a good dog. He is absolutely a good dog.

• 1:38:50Speaker 03

  He's a good boy.

• 1:38:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah, a good, I mean, good boys. I think we should address the three heads.

• 1:38:58Speaker 03

  What was the other iteration? Oh, the the Lightning Thief, like he's the Lightning Thief too, where he's like throwing a ball and Cerberus is chasing him. If I'm remembering right, it's been a while.

• 1:39:07Liv Albert?

  I don't know, so I will agree with you completely. My listeners all know Percy Jackson and I don't, so they're probably screaming right now, but.

• 1:39:15Speaker 03

  Well, I haven't read it in like fifteen, like since my kid was five or whatever, you know, so.

• 1:39:20Liv Albert?

  See, and I was like seventeen when it came out, so I didn't read it and then now I just haven't. So here we are. So now it's a running thing in the show, but I'm glad it exists and I don't know much about it.

• 1:39:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the thing is it keeps getting updated, right? Like with Chaos, which was, I'm still so upset that that, I mean, you know, I'm not furious, but it's like very disappointing. It was such a great show.

• 1:39:41Liv Albert?

  Well, and we, there are so few like i- iterations of like reception of Greek myth that does actually really look at the myth in in detail and in like a level of accuracy. Yeah, that it's, yeah.

• 1:39:55Speaker 03

  And just the way that show wove together so many of the characters in appropriate ways too.

• 1:40:00Liv Albert?

  Admittedly, I haven't seen it all. I really need to because I keep hearing such great things. So you've made me more keen. I gotta go back.

• 1:40:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, don't get too attached to the cat. That's all.

• 1:40:09Liv Albert?

  Oh, I see. I do. I knew enough. I learned enough.

• 1:40:13Speaker 03

  I actually looked it up ahead of time because you know, I didn't wanna get too attached, so.

• 1:40:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like cats are, yeah. Oh, it's trouble. Um, it's just, there's, I have a, my kitten, just because now we're talking about cats. But my kitten got neutered the other day, so I have a cat running around with a cone outside of this door. He's been just the he, oh my gosh, but he does not know how to calm down with it. So he is like full of all of the energy in the world, but knocking everything over. Yeah. In any case, oh, pets are great, uh, whether or not they have three heads and guard the entrance to the underworld.

• 1:40:50Speaker 03

  Or, yeah, or impenetrable skin because like the Nemean lion is one of the few I think that we can point to. A cat, one of the few felines. I mean, in, in, um, yes, other than the attendance of Dionysus and the papers or whatever.

• 1:41:04Liv Albert?

  They love a big cat. Yeah. Well, that came up recently. I did a Q and A episode that came out just today, actually, where people asked me about cats in ancient Greece and I had to say like, well, they didn't, they didn't have like our version of small cats, you know, for a good long time. So they're not in the myths and that's sort of interesting in itself.

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, even though they were, they were domestic pets to a certain extent. The place you see a lot about them is Aesop's Fables, actually. I, uh,

• 1:41:30Liv Albert?

  I was like looking into it and I thought they weren't kind of in, or maybe it was mainland until more Hellenistic period, but now, okay, now I gotta go look back.

• 1:41:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I actually wrote, I wrote a paper recently about that and I sort of, um, so I had looked at some of the more recent studies about when did the cat make its way over there. As you know, from Egypt or, you know, around and whatnot. And I think it was early, it was generally earlier than we. You know, I might have originally thought and but they were mainly like, you know, barn cats to kill rodents and things. Sometimes they would, you know, kill all the chickens too, which wasn't awesome. But, uh, but yeah, no, they are, they're definitely around and there, there's some early takes on them and there are some, you know, paint paintings of, of, uh, girls playing with the small cats and things, so.

• 1:42:10Liv Albert?

  Oh, that makes me happy. My cat's from Naxos. I brought him back a couple of months ago, so I need to tell him these stories of Greek cats.

• 1:42:21Liv Albert?

  Well, that's a joyful way to stop and also I won't, I won't keep you any longer. This has been so much fun, clearly. I love when a conversation can go so many different places. And yeah, it's, it's was been lovely talking to you. Thank you so much.

• 1:42:34Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me. I love, you know, I just, I love subjects like this and it's just, uh, you know, this sort of stuff would have been considered fairly lowbrow, you know, twenty, thirty years ago when I, uh, was starting to write about, you know, ghosts. They were like, oh, you can't be serious. It's not a serious subject. You know, it has to be the monsters of Heracles as opposed to the ghosts and serial killers. So, you know, it's a lot of skepticism, but I think it's more acceptable now or more. You know, people are more interested in bringing this sort of material forward because, um, you know, it's a lot of, it's more accessible in a lot of ways than say like, oh, here's the scolion on this line and Virgil's Fourth Echelon or whatever, you know, but oh, look, serial killers, you know.

• 1:43:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and now that it, it is so much easier to be able to share with a broader audience too. Like, yeah, th- th- this topic is so perfect for, for broader audiences who aren't necessarily as deep into the like academia side of it, but really want to learn about the ancient world. Like, who doesn't want to hear about ghosts and serial killers from that long ago?

• 1:43:35Speaker 03

  Well, thank you for the opportunity to disseminate that information to a broader audience.

• 1:43:39Liv Albert?

  It's absolutely my pleasure. Um, is there anything you want to share with my listeners about like where they might read more from you or, or anything you might want to promote?

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  Well, um, I mean, I do, I do have books on these topics. I've got the, uh, a book called Haunted Greece and Rome, which is about the ghosts, well, specifically about the haunted house, house stories, but ghosts in general. And, uh, I have a book on serial killers in the ancient world. It's called Monsters and Monarchs, Serial Killers in Classical Myth and History. And then this Oxford Handbook of Monsters and Classical Myth, which I edited, has forty chapters on. Yeah, I'm sure there's some monsters that we missed. This is what, you know, in terms of getting people to agree to write during the pandemic.

• 1:44:20Speaker 03

  But, um, yeah, I mean, you know, they can always look me up at the University of Massachusetts on the faculty page for the Classics Department. And then there are links to all these other things. And I've also got a blog called The Ancient Monsters Blog. Which we just got that started this summer and it's been a little erratic so far in terms of the amount of time I've had to devote to it. But we've actually got a good number of posts there, starting last summer by a lot of the contributors to contributors to this handbook. But also other people like, uh, John Kudshuba, who's a not a classicist, but has written about shapeshifters and ghosts and other monsters. Contributed an essay on on werewolves, for example.

• 1:45:00Speaker 03

  And, uh, yes, we've, you know, so it's, uh, it it is focused on ancient monsters, but also their modern reception. And it's not just a question of looking at it to read it, but we are accepting contributions. So if you or any of your listeners might be interested in writing something, you know, we'd be happy to have it. We do take work from students. We, I mean, it will be vetted and will, you know, try to help people, uh, you know, uh, flesh it out if it needs to be in that sort of thing. But we wanted to sort of be like a community dedicated to specifically monsters and antiquity. Cause I mean, obviously there are a lot of, you know, blogs, podcasts, this and that on monsters in general. Um, you know, I hope we have a slightly different take or slightly different, more specific focus maybe than some. And, uh, anyway, so that's there and I can send you the links.

• 1:45:46Liv Albert?

  Oh yeah, I can find them all too. I'm, I'll, I'll link to everything in the episode's description and that sounds wonderful. I'm definitely gonna go. Also, I didn't, I'm gonna go, uh, put those, or Michaela, when you're listening to this to edit, uh, go ahead and put those two books. That Debbie mentioned on our list, cause I would like a book of Haunted Greece and Rome and Serial Killer.

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know if you've seen it, but this is, uh.

• 1:46:08Liv Albert?

  No, that's, see, I, I'm, now I know this exists and I'm getting it, so.

• 1:46:12Speaker 03

  I just, I, I li- I know that people can't see it, but I love how they sort of did like the mug shot.

• 1:46:17Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  And I think that, I don't, it's not Nero, but it, you know.

• 1:46:21Liv Albert?

  No, I.

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  It looks like it could be, but it's not.

• 1:46:25Liv Albert?

  I, I, the only reason I know that's not Nero is something I meant to bring up as a joke when you were talking about him, but that the only way I can tell Nero in statuary is that it's neck beard Nero.

• 1:46:35Speaker 03

  Right, and this is not.

• 1:46:36Liv Albert?

  No, he does not have enough of the neck beard.

• 1:46:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, I mean, there are portraits of him, and this is clearly not him, but I think that was the sort of intent was to evoke that kind of thing, but I just, I love the, the.

• 1:46:48Liv Albert?

  No, that's.

• 1:46:49Speaker 03

  That they came up with.

• 1:46:50Liv Albert?

  That's great. Just a, just an ancient mugshot. I love it.

• 1:46:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we'll just put the whole like board underneath.

• 1:46:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Might as well put his height. I love it. Well, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  Well, thanks again for having me and I'm, I'm glad I happen to have the palafetus right here.

• 1:47:07Liv Albert?

  Me too.

• 1:47:10Speaker 03

  The other stuff. And, um, yeah, no, thanks, thanks again. And, uh, you know, for all of your knowledge as well and the great questions and props to, you know, what to bring forward. It's so great, you know, obviously very good at getting people to talk about the subject matters.

• 1:47:25Liv Albert?

  Thank you. I try.

• 1:47:42Liv Albert?

  Uh, nerds, thank you all for listening. As always, uh, you can read more from Debbie at all the places that she mentioned and you can find them in the episode's description. Um, you can also look forward to an episode I recorded shortly after this one again, uh, with Ryan Denson, returning guest, who has some overlap as he's included in that Oxford handbook on monsters, uh, which Debbie edited. So there's a lot of fun monstrosity in the works because you know, I will always talk, I mean, anything in that realm. And then we can make it feminist. It's all I need in the world. So huge thank you, uh, to Debbie for being such a fun guest and a first one back. Ah, it's a real thrill. Let's Talk About

• 1:48:26Liv Albert?

  Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes to my Olympian. My producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review on Apple for the chance to have it appear in a cat review, which I recognize I'm behind on. I will return to it. Or comment on Spotify because it's fun and I get to reply. Such a thrill. Sign up for our new newsletter, which will happen sometime soon. mythsbaby.com/newsletter. I am Liv and I love this shit. Very much, very much.

• 1:49:57Speaker 04

  Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.

• 1:50:15Speaker 05

  The much awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.

• 1:50:42Speaker 05

  Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait. Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.