The Oh So Disjointed Life of Helen of Sparta, and Hekate in the Haida Gwaii (Q&A)

Liv answers listener questions about Helen, the trouble with translations, pesky personification deities, and more. The episodes referenced were with guest Maciej Paprocki. Submit a question for a future Q&A here mythsbaby.com/questions. CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Liv Albert?

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

• 0:35Speaker 01

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• 2:09Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv, who is trying to get back into the swing of this after... Oh, what a wild... It turns out that moving your entire life a seven-days' drive away just really disrupts kind of everything, particularly when you have ADHD. But I am back, and also a cold. I missed Friday's episode. I really wanted to continue reading more of these Q&As last week. I mean, I'm back doing it this week, but I really wanted to do it last week. And I've had a cold that just will not go away.

• 2:49Liv Albert?

  But it is marginally better now, and I no longer sound like I am ridiculously stuffed up. So, here we are, we are back. I am answering more of your very wonderful questions. I absolutely love these episodes. I love hearing what you guys want to know and just like allowing my brain to wander into the realm of other people's questions. It results in so many interesting moments. There is almost certainly loads more that I could update about, but I'm drawing a blank on everything right now, so we're going to jump straight into your questions.

• 3:41Liv Albert?

  The oh-so-disjointed life of Helen of Sparta and Hekate in the Hydagaui. Your questions, my answers.

• 4:04Liv Albert?

  Well, that title gave away the first two questions, but I couldn't resist. So, the very first question that I am looking at today comes from Sonia, who says, "Love the show so much. I live on Haidegwa in B.C. and the Hekate Strait is right beside the island. I love knowing her history. Fits the windy strait well." Adding to your list of Greek mythological names in B.C. too. My question, "Do you have any idea or thoughts on how Zeus is the king of the gods, even though his powers are somewhat limited? Apollo is the god of so many important day-to-day things. It makes me wonder why Zeus does not control more." This is a great question, but first I have to say that I only found out that the strait

• 4:47Liv Albert?

  between Haidegwa and the mainland, I assume it's the mainland, but regardless, the strait by Haidegwa is named Hekate. I only learned that recently and it was from a TikTok video of like, the wildest ferry ride they'd ever seen in that strait. And I just thought, "Oh my gods, like, is that not absolutely perfect?" I will tell you that historically it is named for a colonizing ship that was also named for Hekate. The same applies to Thetis, has her, given her name to a number of places on Vancouver Island, both a lake and an island. And again, it was like, named for a British navy ship whose name, who was named for the Greek goddesses. So,

• 5:31Liv Albert?

  we can still appreciate them. But what I will also tell you, and I think I did this with Michaela, we did, sometimes Michaela and I chat and we try to be reasonable and professional and get through our work, or we end up with me telling her that the strait by Haidegwa is named Hekate, and then both of us going on to a map of our own province at the time and, and basically finding out that there are just so many mythological names in B.C. I highly recommend you go look at, like, the mountains nearby. Like, there are literally so many. I mean, there's a Sisyphus mountain that I'm remembering. There's a Tantalus, which I know about because it's got wine. Named for it. There are really so many, like really niche mythological names um for

• 6:15Liv Albert?

  the, you know, many of the thousands of of mountains in the province. Um but thank you. And that was a good like goodbye to B C for a little while too. Um because spoilers, I moved to Ontario. As a province, highly meh compared to B C, but as a city, Toronto wins everything in my mind.

• 6:37Liv Albert?

  Now to your actual question. Uh, so it's absolutely interesting that Zeus is the king of the gods, even though his powers are somewhat limited. And I have answers slash thoughts, but what you've really done is remind me of an episode, uh, or I think it was ended up being two conversation episodes that I recorded um with, and I'm hoping I'm still pronouncing his name correctly, um, Machi Praproski. And we had so much fun and I was fucking fascinated by all of the stuff he had to share with me. But he really looked at the the gods as um, as like these lineages that kind of, you know, one after the other,

• 7:19Liv Albert?

  and how it kind of stops with Zeus in that way, where, you know, it starts with Uranus, then Cronos overthrows Uranus, and then Zeus overthrows Cronos. But Apollo never overthrows Zeus, even though, like you said, like objectively, you know, we would imagine that his powers are a little broader, a little more like wide ranging than Zeus's are. But I think it just, I mean, there's a lot going on in terms of the development of of these deities and their stories. But the god of the sky being the divine god is wide ranging across the Mediterranean and beyond. Um, it's a very common notion in ancient mythologies broadly.

• 8:00Liv Albert?

  And I think that's just because of the nature of the sky itself. So while we might consider, you know, Apollo's uh divine powers to be, you know, less limited, to be, you know, bigger, to be more important to us today, but

• 8:18Liv Albert?

  Conceptually, the sky surrounds everything. And so as the god of the sky, he was always going to be the king of the gods. That's why Oranus was first and Cronos was next and then Zeus. So I think that that's where that's coming in, where Apollo definitely, you know, I think story wise and based on the sources, like there's definitely this kind of tension that Apollo had the the potential to be as big as Zeus, to maybe even be a sky god and that, you know, it just, it it didn't happen in the quote unquote lifetime of the divinities as we have them. But I do still think it definitely comes down to the nature of what makes, what is

• 9:02Liv Albert?

  all encompassing in that realm would be the sky. There is nothing else, right? It's wrapped around the earth itself. And so he was kind of always going to be the biggest, even if we today are like, oh, Apollo's the god of like all of these different things and they're so important on the day to day and blah, blah, blah. Like, it just still comes down to the the general nature of mythology, the time it was developed and the function that it served. But thank you for asking that. Just generally, I would recommend listening to to those episodes I did back then. I will try to link to them in the episode's description, but either way, I'm now you make me want to reach out to Machiageddon and hopefully you have another episode because it was really good and just like so deep in the mythology.

• 9:45Liv Albert?

  Thank you, Sonia. And also, I mean, hi in the high DeGua. Next, I have a question from Cole and they said, I'm thinking about writing a biography of sorts about Helen of Sparta slash Troy. Other than the Iliad, what are good sources for learning about the life of Helen, birth to death? Does Helen die? I seem to recall that she's supposed to be immortal, along with one of her brothers. Also, what translation of the Iliad do you most recommend? Okay, first, the easy question. It's been a long time since I read the Iliad. I desperately, desperately want to read Emily Wilson's translation because I just know that I will love it. So I will recommend Emily Wilson's newest translation of the Iliad, even without having read it.

• 10:27Liv Albert?

  Because her translation of the Odyssey was so great and I know, I mean, I read so much about her mentality at the time. I'm really, I really need to finally just reach out and try to get her on the show. But I will happily recommend it, even not having read it. As to your earlier questions. No, and by no, I just mean unfortunately, what you want doesn't exist, but that is part of why Helen is so interesting, right? But it's also broadly part of why Greek mythology is so interesting. There are no sources for any character that gives them, you know, a story from birth to death. That wasn't the function of mythology, and so it just simply doesn't exist.

• 11:07Liv Albert?

  There are, I don't know if there are really even much in the way of text sources that describe Helen's birth. Um, I believe we, it mostly comes to us in the form of visual representations. And then people have developed, you know, a theoretical understanding of the story based on those visuals. Um, but you know, the Iliad is what we have for Helen in terms of those earliest forms. And then from there, you're really gonna have to look at like, I mean, honestly, a comfortable zillion other, um, sources. So I would recommend things like theoi.com or topostext, um, both of which allow you to, to really peruse like a very, very long list of the ancient sources.

• 11:50Liv Albert?

  Because when it comes to any character like her, I mean, any character broadly, but Helen so specifically is an example of, you know, this, this character that was so important in so many ways and for so many hundreds of years that you're looking at mentions of her, you know, across the board, these little bits and pieces that might say something about her, her life. Um, Bethany Hughes has written a good nonfiction source on her. Um, if you're looking at, you know, contemporary sources, but otherwise it's just the nature of mythology, right? Um, in terms of her death, like, yes, you're right that she's immortal, but also she does die.

• 12:33Liv Albert?

  And again, that's because we're talking about so many sources over so many hundreds of years. So like she is immortal in terms of her divine parentage and like the general idea of her being this daughter of Zeus. But she also, you know, eventually there, there's not no real, there's not really such a thing as.

• 12:57Liv Albert?

  Immortality among characters like hers. It's really hard to explain even where that might be coming from because she's not a god and so she doesn't just, you know, exist in the broad swath of mythology. There is a story of her marrying Achilles in the afterlife, but it's just like one little reference somewhere. I don't even know where it is offhand. And so like, we have this idea that like, according to at least one person, you know, she did end up in the Elysian fields. In that kind of more stylized, like happier, quote unquote, like, you know, the, the sort of, the heroic afterlife kind of region, she said to marry Achilles, but of course that

• 13:38Liv Albert?

  contradicts all of this other stuff, you know, that we know of both Helen and of Achilles and all of these things. So that's all to say, I mean, I think that's a, it's a very worthwhile endeavor. You're going to have to look at a bazillion different sources and I wish you all of the luck in the world, but it's a tough one with, with any kind of ancient character, any kind of mythological figure, because there is no concept of an entire lifetime. There is no concept even of like a set version of her as a person, as a character, like there is no, you know, canon, there is no confirmed anything. And so you're just really looking at like a thousand years worth of people

• 14:19Liv Albert?

  who all had different ideas and envisioned her in different ways and for different reasons and with different results. It's not a very helpful answer, but it was honest.

• 14:30Liv Albert?

  All right. This next one comes from Crystal, who says, I was curious if you know anything about the goddess Aklis. She is only mentioned in a few epic poems. One was Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, and I haven't been able to find too much information on her outside of that and a few sources online that all lead back to each other. Professor of Greek mythology at Boston, didn't have any additional information either. And the library in my area did not have anything either. I'm curious to hear what you know, and if you've done an episode on her. I drew portraits of Aklis and I'm quite honestly obsessed with the few things I've discovered. Feel free to check it out. My IG is sluglord.art for any listeners who want to check that out. So, thank you, Crystal.

• 15:14Liv Albert?

  Uh, no. So here's the thing. You have stumbled upon, um, you know, a, a question that I get variations of with every Q and A episode, and I'm always happy to respond to questions like this because I know that so many people encounter this and I encountered it myself ver- you know, like a decade ago, oh gosh, longer than that, 15 years ago, when I was trying to, to write my first novel of, of Greek mythology, you know, this, this idea that like you fall for this character that you read about once and then you're like, I need to know everything, but it just turns out there is no everything. Um, I will say like, I don't, I don't know Aklis offhand. I went to my go-to

• 15:57Liv Albert?

  source, um, for, for questions like this and, and characters like this, which is theoi.com. I'm sure you've gone there, um, because I imagine it's showing me the two epic poems that you've heard of. So, um, you know, according to, to Theoi, which is, is a pretty, pretty accurate place to look, um, you know, she was this personification spirit of the quote, "Death mist, the clouding of the eyes preceding death." And so, yes, she is exactly what I imagined she would be in that she is a personification deity, like again, the hundreds of others that exist, um, that are, seem so interesting because they're this goddess of this very specific thing. And you think, oh God, like the death mist, the clouding of the eyes preceding death. Like, that's

• 16:40Liv Albert?

  so interesting. I want to know everything about her. But the thing about these deities is that, that is everything about her. And that's the point, right? Like, she is, she is the death mist, the clouding of the eyes preceding death. Like, that is what she is. And so she, you know, isn't going to be in stories as this like, physical being, because she is just the death mist, right? She is just this concept. Um, and so, you know, that, that really applies to just so many, you know, Nike, the goddess of victory, uh, Nyx, the goddess of night, uh, you know, all of these, like I, they're, they come up in every single Q and A episode I do because they are, there are

• 17:25Liv Albert?

  literally hundreds. And it doesn't make them any less interesting. It just means that like, they serve this very specific purpose. And what you need to remember too, is that like, These, these characters are personifications, like they are characters, but they are not characters like we know them. And, and simultaneously while being characters, you have to remember that actually that's just the word. Right? So it's simply the word. Um, you know, according to Theoi, it says that Achilles means misted eyes. So it's, it's a character, but it is also just a word. It is the, the word they had to describe this

• 18:10Liv Albert?

  concept. And that was personified because basically all concepts like this were personified. Like it is, it's coming from this early means of understanding the world. Right? It's coming from this need. They had to understand life and death and everything in between. And so they, you know, they personified these things. It helps to to, to understand. It helps to like fully realize reality and humanity. It's just giving these concepts personifications, just this idea that they are also this divine

• 18:52Liv Albert?

  thing. Like there is a divine thing for, or divine name, divine character for like everything. Sleep, dreams, um, really specific acts, uh, aspects of sleep and dreams, like each of the winds, um, the seasons, the hours, the like everything, right? There, there are personifications for everything. And that's purely coming from the very nature of mythology. What it means is you're never going to find a source that actually tells you about Achilles as a, as a physical character who can really, you know, interact in a story. Or if you do, um,

• 19:33Liv Albert?

  you're coming from, from a, a, a different place. And so I'm looking at this Theoi and it, the only two that it lists. Um, and again, it's pretty accurate, but at the same time, like especially with a personification deity like this, where like the word is also just the word. Um, you know, you're probably going to be able to find the word elsewhere, but that's because it's. The word. Um, but yeah, so that list Hesiod, the shield of Heracles, which I'll say like, it's speculated and probably not, you know, Shield of Heracles is not as attributed to Hesiod as some of the other works. It's very fragmentary. Um, you know, there's, there's not a lot going on. It doesn't really have a story. It's literally just the description of the Shield of Heracles. So there's not a lot happening there in terms of like fleshing out a character. And then the

• 20:17Liv Albert?

  other reference it has here is Nonus's Dionysia ca, which also doesn't really seem to give Aklis much of a character. Um, it just literally is like a, a person that did like, it says, um, I believe it's referring to Hera. She procured from Thessalian Aklis treacherous flowers of the field. Like, you know, it's this concept again. Um, she got this from the death mist.

• 20:47Liv Albert?

  And so like, it still doesn't provide this anything extra, but also one of the things you have to keep in mind if you're looking at a source like Nonus's Dionysia ca, like very specifically this one, because it comes up a lot, because it has, it references a lot of characters that people are often really interested in, and it gives them more of a story than, than most other sources. But what you have to remember about this is this is, Nonus's Dionysia ca cannot be really fully described as mythology. Um, it, it is referencing mythology. It is a reception of mythology. It is interpreting mythology, but it is not reasonably a mythological source. And that's because it's from the fifth century CE.

• 21:31Liv Albert?

  It's well into the Christian period. It is like, it is very late. Nonus is writing 900 or so years after Euripides, let alone Hesiod, you know, if Hesiod was real, but like regardless of the time period, Nonus is well over a thousand years after the works of Hesiod and, and the Homeric texts. A thousand years. So it is like, you know, a word being introduced by Shakespeare, and then, God, it hasn't even been a thousand years since Shakespeare. So like, it's not even a good example. Like, that's how much time had passed, right? So Nonus is not giving us mythology that we can fully understand to have been ancient Greek. What Nonus is doing,

• 22:16Liv Albert?

  which also it's like the longest surviving Greek epic. It is so fucking long. But what he's doing is rewriting the life and tales of Dionysus into this big epic. And so while it is valid, it's an interesting source and it can tell us lots of interesting things, it can't reasonably be defined as mythology because it's about, it's over a thousand years after the mythology was being developed as a concept, as like this core creation of the Greek world. Like, by the time that Nonus was writing, you know, the Greeks had already been conquered by the Romans, you know, and then the, and then the became the Christian empire. All of these different things have happened that really

• 23:00Liv Albert?

  affects, like, him writing in the Christian period means that, like, he is intentionally writing about, like, basically almost heretical stuff, like, this, these gods that are so pagan and like a threat, kind of. And so he is, you know, I don't know enough about him as a person, as a writer, but like, him as a source, like, you're not, it's not really, it's not really ancient in the same way, very late antiquity, just lots going on there. That doesn't make him not an interesting source, it just means that you have to, like, contextualize what you're getting. And all of that is a ridiculously long way of saying that Aklis seems like a very incredible and interesting concept, but there is, I don't believe that there is any source that you're going to find that actually tells you about

• 23:42Liv Albert?

  her as a character with any kind of characteristics or personality. I don't think that that exists, I can't say for sure, but if it exists, yeah, I just, I don't think it does. But it doesn't make her any less interesting. It's, again, like, this thing that people find to be incredibly frustrating about the ancient Greek world, and I don't blame them, but it's one of those things that I love most. I think it's so interesting to look at these, not as characters with personality, but as these concepts and what they as concepts and personifications, like, said about the ancient world. I could go on forever.

• 24:24Liv Albert?

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• 25:07Liv Albert?

  right now and I have my go-to woven leather bag. I seriously use it everywhere. That's why it's with me here. It's beautiful and it's practical and it's from Quince. And I actually have a parcel to pick up when I get back home, which has some goodies in there. I got this pair of corduroy high-rise pants. I'm really excited to try those out as soon as I get home. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the

• 25:46Liv Albert?

  Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Let's Talk About Myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

• 26:09Speaker 01

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• 27:34Liv Albert?

  This one comes from Liam, who asks, "How much can the different translations change the myths within them? As someone who has not yet read multiple translations of the same text, I would be very interested to know whether there are actually noticeable differences between them. If there are any, do they tend to be more in the form of personal biases peeking through different interpretations? Or simply finding more accurate ways to portray what was written in a different language? P.S. I love the show. I've been listening since late 2018, and I'm hoping to become a patron again when it's feasible. Thank you. Thank you for making the show that entertained my brain throughout all the boredom of high school, and will certainly do so throughout the rest of my life. Thank you, Liam.

• 28:13Liv Albert?

  So, yes, so translations can change a story immensely, immensely. That's not to say that they always do, but they can. So, it's difficult

• 28:27Liv Albert?

  To to find a way of explaining this in any kind of succinct way, but like the thing you have to keep in mind. Um, is that, I mean, not only are languages different in terms of the way they sound and look and all of those things that we think about when we think of a language that we either do or do not know. But they also like conceptualize things different because humans will always conceptualize things based on their environment and their their just existence as a human, right? And so like translations will always have inherent biases and it's funny, I was actually just

• 29:09Liv Albert?

  talking with someone for their dissertation about this, um, and and then jumped directly into this question, which I didn't know was there, but uh, that's all to say, like, the it's so, it's so, it's so difficult. So translators will always insert their bias into the text, not necessarily intentionally, and I don't mean to suggest it as if like that makes it bad or problematic or any way. It's just the nature of humanity, like the text themselves had the biases of the authors that wrote them, let alone anyone that might have copied it and made a change like also one thing to keep in mind and which I don't even know enough about, but like there are not, there's not just one version of even the Iliad or the Odyssey.

• 29:54Liv Albert?

  There is, there are like little variations and things that have been found or you know, might have changed over the years and like there is, you know, we now have what we consider to be one version of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but there's not, it's not like just one version came to us from the ancient world. There, there was a lot of scholarly work that went into kind of deciding on what is reasonably the most quote unquote accurate, you know, version of that story. And that's just the nature of the ancient world. But then when you get into language itself, like Words don't just automatically translate into other words in another language.

• 30:34Liv Albert?

  There is so much going on, there is intention, uh, there are, you know, the, the fact that the ancient world is inherently going to have different ways of conceptualizing things. You know, this goes right back to the question about Aklis. The ancient world conceptualized this death mist as a goddess named Aklis. Whereas like, I mean, I've never thought about a death mist cloudy in the eyes before because I, as a, you know, like, western lucky Canadian in a colonized world, like, would never have to conceptualize that. Because I live in this perfect little bubble of the West where we only protect ourselves and, um, kill brown people just for the sake of not, uh, being Judeo-Christian.

• 31:18Liv Albert?

  Anyway, um, I will never conceptualize that and aren't I lucky, you know? And so if I were to translate something, it is going to be incredibly different from the way that a Palestinian in Gaza is going to translate something because they have lived it so many times that, you know, it, it means something completely different to them. That is a really tragic, um, and, you know, depressing example, but I think it's a really good example about how, like, every single thing about a human's life defines how they interpret a story, how they interpret a word. Um, I think about this a lot because I know very basic, you know, I existed in Canada slash was born in Quebec.

• 32:01Liv Albert?

  So I should know more, but like, I have like this base level knowledge of French. And if I have, you know, I, if I'm watching something with, um, that it's in French and with subtitles, sometimes I will, I will notice a difference where I think like, oh, well, you know, the, the French really like a literal translation of the French word would be something different. Than the translation that they gave us in the English subtitles. A lot of the time, that's because like there is a literally the same word. Um, you know, in French and in English, but that doesn't mean that the word always means the same thing or has the same intention in both languages because language represents personhood and humanity and like

• 32:44Liv Albert?

  a bazillion different things. I've said bazillion a lot of times in this episode. I can't stop. Um, and so like that's all to say that translations are always going to be different. Sometimes it's really noticeable, sometimes it's not. And that's not even including the fact that we've been, you know, if you are looking up a translation, you could be finding one from anywhere in the last 200, 300 years even. And so imagine that what's happened in, in that time and, and how they conceptualize things differently and how somebody writing 300 years ago would imagine, you know, uh, the meaning behind a Greek word versus somebody now, right? Like it's always going to be so different. It's always going to have these inflections.

• 33:25Liv Albert?

  And so I personally, when I'm looking for a translation, I want something ideally, I want it recent. I want it by, I look for translations that aren't by old white men because I'm most interested in the way that people who aren't old white men take in these stories and the way they would interpret them. To, to give you just a little, just the, the slightest taste of what I mean without dragging this on too long. So, okay, this is, I believe the oldest translation of the Odyssey that I have. It's by Alexander Pope and it's so old that it doesn't obviously have even like a copyright line. The first lines of the Odyssey from this version, which is, I believe from like at least 150 years ago

• 34:11Liv Albert?

  are, "The man for wisdom's various arts renowned, long exercised in woes, O Muse, resound."

• 34:21Liv Albert?

  And then next we have the Samuel Butler translation, which is one of the other oldest. This is the one I read in, when I did the full readings. I believe it's also about 150 years old or so. And the first lines of the Samuel Butler translation of the Odyssey are, "Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy."

• 34:47Liv Albert?

  Right? That's completely different, completely different. Then we'll move on to another pretty darn old one, at least as old as 1944, by E. V. Ryu. This is a really old Penguin Classics edition. And this, as I read it, I don't even think it's reasonably a translation.

• 35:07Liv Albert?

  Oh, interesting. Well, this is me reading stuff at hand. This is a very odd version. But it still claims to be just The Odyssey, a new translation by E. V. Ryu, and it begins, "The hero of the tale, which I beg the muse to help me tell, is that resourceful man who roamed the wide world after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy."

• 35:30Liv Albert?

  Again, completely different. These are all proposing to be The Odyssey, the first line or two of The Odyssey. And I'm not saying they are not what they are, or different interpretations by different people at different time periods who have different biases that are just inherent to their being. I'm not done either. This next one is a The Loeb Classical Library version. It's by, translation by A. T. Murray. "Tell me, muse, of the man of many devices, driven far astray after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy."

• 36:09Liv Albert?

  This one, you can see, like, we're both getting, you know, the citadel of Troy kind of thing. We're getting some similarities between this and the last one, but still, very different. This man of many devices. And then next, I'm going to read the Latimore translation, which is one of the most common ones you can find, generally acknowledged to be a pretty good and very worthwhile translation to read if you really want, you know, an actual understanding of The Odyssey. This one begins, "Tell me, muse, of the man of many ways, who has driven far journeys after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel."

• 36:46Liv Albert?

  Closer in years, they're getting to be more similar, but they're still different. The words that we, people talk about this a lot when it comes to these first lines of the Odyssey. The way to describe Odysseus, right? So we have the man of many devices, the man of many ways. There's these different ways to describe him. And now I'm going to read the last one, Emily Wilson's translation. It's only a few years old. And I'm really interested in what she did. We're going to look at it. This is how Emily Wilson, you'll know, the first woman that I've read. While often she has claimed, or not she, she has not claimed this, but often people claim that she was the first woman to translate the Odyssey.

• 37:28Liv Albert?

  That's not true. She's just the first woman to have translated it in, I don't know, a great number of years and certainly, you know, it got the most wide read reaction, which is wonderful. This is Emily Wilson's first lines of the Odyssey. Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy. So that too, right? It is objectively the same words that, or the same purpose, the same point. It is the same, you know, first lines as at least the last two that I read, the ones before are, you know, again, they're, they're so much older that they don't even really resemble this. And yet they are all working off the original, the same original Greek text.

• 38:12Liv Albert?

  And even as I say this, I realize it's possible that the butler and Alexander Pope are not, they might be working off of a Latin translation that came first. That was also quite common. There was also a time when Latin was like the ancient language that people read and ancient Greek hadn't been read as much. And so people were translating based off of already Latin translation of the Odyssey. It's, there's so much going on. And so it's just another good example. But the way Emily, Emily Wilson translates it is, so she got a lot of flack for, for saying, tell me about a complicated man. For saying, for using the word complicated to describe Odysseus, whereas say, you know, it was Latimore who said, man of many ways. And the other one said, uh, what was it? Man of many turns? That's another way.

• 38:56Liv Albert?

  It means complicated. What they're saying is that like, you know, there's, there's lots going on with him. There, there's a lot to, to break down. A man of many ways, a man of many turns, a complicated man. But because Emily Wilson is a woman and because the word complicated is, has like a, a slightly different connotation as something more. I mean, a man of many ways doesn't mean that much in English, but it's a more literal translation of the Greek. So the Greek is, yeah, but that quite literal translation as, as far as I've spoken to a lot of, a lot of scholars about this. A most little translation would be a man of many turns. But what does that mean in English? Very little. You, you have to really think about like, what, what could that mean in English? Whereas Emily Wilson puts it as complicated.

• 39:41Liv Albert?

  That means lots in English. That makes perfect sense. It doesn't make it different from the Greek. It's just a different way of understanding it. It is a way of putting it into phrasing and terminology that is more accessible to us today. The men get angry because they think that it means that she's shitting on Odysseus, even though, hey, spoiler, being complicated is just being human. Um, and so, you know, there, there really is, there's so much that goes into a translation. And yes, naturally I spent like, what, 10 to 15 minutes answering that question, but I, I mean, I really like, I'll take any excuse to, to redo these opening lines of the Odyssey with, with a purpose like that, with this question being asked because.

• 40:19Liv Albert?

  I think it's really easy to imagine that, that translating a work is just like you read the words in one language and then you put them into the words of the other language. But that is simply not how language works. And that's because languages themselves are developed in this very personal way, in this very specific way to the culture and what they encounter and what they care about. This man of many turns means everything in ancient Greek and it means very little in English. Complicated though, means something. Um, and so it, it really, I think it is just so interesting to look at the ways that these translations can affect how we see the stories. Uh, it's, I'm not even being critical. It's just a nature of how, what translation you read will, will fully affect how you think about a story. It's unavoidable.

• 41:04Liv Albert?

  It's not good and it's not bad. It's just the nature of translation and language, let alone the fact that, you know, there's almost 3,000 years in between the development of this story and us today. Like, if there's just so much going on. So that is all. Liam, very long-winded way of saying that translations mean everything. And, and it, I really do recommend if you, if you really want to, to understand this stuff and to, if you're interested in this nature of translation, like read a couple others. And, or even just find a few, like either online or even in a library, go in and do what I just did.

• 41:43Liv Albert?

  Find what you can, you know, are going to be the same lines and look at the ways that, that different people interpret those lines. It's always going to be affected by who they are, where they grew up, what languages they speak, what language they know, how, how they came to ancient Greek, how they understand the ancient Greek world. Like, everything is defined by people. It's why, it's funny, I'm going to make this connection to, to my last Q and A episode where I talked about AI. And it, it's why I think that AI is not only useless, but dangerous. Because in order for us to appreciate art and literature and history,

• 42:24Liv Albert?

  we have to understand that all of those things are inherently tied to humanity. And they absolutely cannot be removed from humanity without removing what makes them tick. What makes art special, what makes literature special is, is inextricably tied to the humans who are reading it, interpreting it, translating it, understanding it, taking it in, in whatever physical way, whatever intellectual way. Like, everything is so defined by human beings that, that it, that's what it means to have all these different translation. And that's why AI is terrible.

• 43:08Liv Albert?

  Um, and that's even ignoring the fact that, again, it produces more carbon than like fucking everything else we've ever done. Like, It's also why NFTs are equally terrible and Bitcoin is equally terrible because in order to create that stuff, it produces more carbon than like every car on the goddamn road. It's really bad. And so I've found a way to make this into a fuck AI rant, which I got a couple of comments who really of people who really loved that I did that comments on Spotify. And so thank you. I really, it was nice to hear that that my point got across because I'm not trying to shit on people who enjoy AI or are having fun with it. I just want to point out what else is going on there and and why it may not be

• 43:53Liv Albert?

  as exciting or new agey as as people think and why it is is is dangerous in in a whole a whole myriad of ways. That was it was not many questions that I answered. And yet we're already at 45 minutes. So this has been so much fun. I love you all so much for asking these questions. I'm going to do another one on Friday, because I don't think I have anything otherwise set up. And there are so many more and I'm really enjoying this. So if you didn't get your question answered today, I will probably do it again in a handful of days, provided this cold does not come back because that's what keeps happening. But it won't this time. It won't. Thank you all so much.

• 44:51Liv Albert?

  Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes to my Olympians, the incredible producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke. Chaos, the podcast is part of the My Hurt Podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up for our new newsletter at missbaby.com/newsletter. No, I didn't send one out in November. And yes, I hopefully will send one out in December. I had all of these like wild, incredible ideas of like all this new stuff I could be doing. And I was so full of it and I'm so excited still, but then I was like, haha, you came up with all of these ideas.

• 45:36Liv Albert?

  And then literally had to spend basically a month moving because it took seven days to drive here. I'm just going to ramble a tiny bit. If you want to listen, enjoy. It took seven days to drive here. We had two cats because as I recently announced on the Instagram, I did adopt a cat from Greece and he is flipping adorable, but also a kitten. And then I have another kitten, or rather cat, who is a rescue who is terrified of literally every human on this planet. And we moved them across the country in a U-Haul truck and it was wild. And then I still had to go back to Victoria to do a speaking engagement and also to like wrap up my old apartment.

• 46:18Liv Albert?

  And on the first night that I did that, I was staying with my mom and the apartment building three doors down from hers. It was unfinished and so uninhabited. Thank God. It went up in a full inferno, a full inferno. We got evacuated at like 1:00 a.m. and just watched this five-story building turn to dust before our eyes. And then didn't have power for two days and then I had to fly back and then I immediately got an absolutely terrible cold that's hung on for two weeks. And anyway, that's all to say, there will be a newsletter soon. I'm really excited about it. I promise. I've got so much going on. I think January is going to really be it. We're going to launch a ton of new stuff.

• 46:55Liv Albert?

  Even more exciting things happening for me and the show. I'm really trying to find all the ways possible to get the ads out of the show as much as possible to really get them back to a more reasonable amount, hopefully with me reading some, so they're less annoying. I promise I'm working on it and I'm working on ad free and I'm working on this whole big, big, big, big, big Patreon rebrand. I think I mentioned I wasn't going to still use Patreon, but FYI, spoilers. I'm going to. It's gonna be really great. We're gonna offer so much more and it's still gonna be fully available free with ads, no matter what. Um, that's all to say, I'm really excited. Uh, my ADHD is not in check right now. I'll be back on Friday with more answers to

• 47:35Liv Albert?

  your questions. I am Liv and I really love this shit, particularly translations. Thank you all for asking those questions. What a joy.

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