Category: Ancient
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Classical Reception: Killing Eve’s Villanelle as “The Dying Gaul”
The following has very minor spoilers about classical reception from Killing Eve season 2, episode 7 entitled “Wide Awake,” that aired on May 19, 2019. The show stars Sandra Oh as the titular character and her counterpart, Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s a satisfyingly unique series.…
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A Historical Look at Frank Miller’s Xerxes #2
Frank Miller’s second issue of Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander hit shelves this week and here is the historical hottake (see review of Xerxes #1). The story picks up after the Greek victory at Marathon (490 BC), following the famous runner to deliver the news to a…
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A Historical Look at Frank Miller’s Xerxes #1
Frank Miller’s first issue of Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander finally hit shelves this week and here is the historical hottake (see review of Xerxes #2). We’ve been hearing about Frank Miller’s follow-up to his 300 miniseries for years. When 300: Rise of an Empire finally hit theaters in 2014, I…
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A Fresh Translation of Caesar’s Civil War
Cynthia Damon has produced a fresh English edition of Caesar’s Civil War that was decades (or centuries!) in the making, depending on how you look at it. Like most ancient texts, we do not have a pristine copy of Caesar’s Civil War handed down to us from antiquity. Instead, we have a slew of medieval manuscripts,…
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Classical Reception: Batman and the Court of Owls
Scott Snyder expertly taps Ancient Greek myth and history to create a whole new set of villains and challenges for the Dark Knight. In the New 52 run of Batman, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo introduced us to the Court of Owls (trade paperback 1 and 2), an ancient, underworld society in Gotham that seeks…
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Rethinking War Monuments, Ancient and Modern
Herodotus knew where Leonidas made his final stand against the Persian invasion of Greece because of a lion monument erected on a hill at Thermopylae. He bragged about memorizing the names of the 300 Spartans who fought alongside Leonidas, which historians today believe he learned from a monument erected upon the king’s grave in Sparta.…
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Classical Reception: Wonder Woman and the Strait of Messina
During the Justice League’s most trying times, Wonder Woman often serves as a conduit for parallels in Greek history and myth, at least when Geoff Johns writes her. The year-long Darkseid War(2015-2016) was one such event where the superheroes and villains of earth watched helplessly as two gods—the Anti-Monitor and Darkseid—battled it out. The effects…
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Caesar’s “Genius” at the Battle of Pharsalus
The notion that victors write history finds credence in the Battle of Pharsalus (48 BC). Julius Caesar not only wrote the sole surviving eyewitness account of the battle in his Civil War, but he also provided his own critiques of his defeated opponent, Pompey. Over the past two centuries, historians have followed suit with Caesar’s…
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Classical Reception: Dr. Strange’s Encounter with Caesar in Alexandria
In Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme 33 (1991), the mystic tangles with Thanos who sends the sorcerer back in time via a time warp. As he floats back in history, Strange manages to latch onto a place (Alexandria, Egypt) and a year (48 BC) to stop the backward momentum (these sorts of things happen often with the…
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Bodies Piling up at the Battle of the Bagradas (49 BC)
Inspired by the “Battle of the Bastards” episode from Game of Thrones, we are looking at ancient accounts of bodies piling up during battle. In the first year of the Civil War, Caesar’s army met disaster in Rome’s African frontier. He was not present, but he gives a detailed account of how his troops were…
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Alexander, Bucephalus, and Pig’s Ears in Scotland
One of the many legends of Alexander the Great comes his childhood when, at the young age of 13, he made a bet with his father that he could tame Bucephalus, a “very vicious and unmanageable” horse. Plutarch tells us how Alexander whispered to the beast and turned him toward the sun, hiding the horse’s…
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Classical Reception: Wonder Woman and the Plague of Athens
In 2015, the Justice League found themselves unable to combat the deadly Amazo Virus. It affected humans and metahumans in fantastical and horrific ways, ultimately killing its victims. Superman and Wonder Woman were among the immune, being an alien and a god respectfully, and thus, they were on the front lines of trying to unravel…