Heroes and monsters
Jun. 15th, 2004 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeToday I was reading the Lefkowitz book, a chapter in which she retold the story in the Iliad with an emphasis on the roles of the gods -- which, actually, was an assignment I set for myself in a high school independent study class, but then I found the book so, hmm, how to put this, "uncongenial" that I ended up revising my task to be simply finishing it. Anyway, my mind drifted off to think about the TNT miniseries about Helen, which was okay, and the new Troy movie, which I don't have high hopes for, and then I remembered reading about a new movie about King Arthur coming out this summer. In this movie, Arthur is a Roman general (!) and Guinevere a warrior queen of the Picts! Arthur not a Briton? How sacrilegious is that?
Meanwhile, as if I were not already ludicrously overwhelmed with things to read "soon," I saw mention of a book that sounds about as cool as a book could: The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor. The premise is that ancient Greeks and Romans were well aware of prehistoric fossils and that these finds may have been the inspiration for mythical creatures, such as centaurs, griffons, cyclopes, etc. This reminds me of something I read recently that connected various cultures' descriptions of dragons with the types of dinosaur bones found locally -- such as great, fearsome Chinese dragons inspired by the large-scale fossils in the Gobi Desert, and elegant little dragonettes in Switzerland, where pterodactyl fossils were more common. Mayor is also the author of Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs, about early biological and chemical warfare, and her forthcoming third book is about the relationship between America's Native people and paleontology. It sounds like she thinks "outside the box" in really cool and fruitful ways.
Meanwhile, as if I were not already ludicrously overwhelmed with things to read "soon," I saw mention of a book that sounds about as cool as a book could: The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor. The premise is that ancient Greeks and Romans were well aware of prehistoric fossils and that these finds may have been the inspiration for mythical creatures, such as centaurs, griffons, cyclopes, etc. This reminds me of something I read recently that connected various cultures' descriptions of dragons with the types of dinosaur bones found locally -- such as great, fearsome Chinese dragons inspired by the large-scale fossils in the Gobi Desert, and elegant little dragonettes in Switzerland, where pterodactyl fossils were more common. Mayor is also the author of Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs, about early biological and chemical warfare, and her forthcoming third book is about the relationship between America's Native people and paleontology. It sounds like she thinks "outside the box" in really cool and fruitful ways.