Dec 15– From "The Odyssey" by Homer, translated by Butcher and Lang

 I had some deja vu about reading this.

Dec 15– From The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Butcher and Lang

Summary: Odysseus talks to vampire ghosts.

Commentary: I really thought I read this twice already this year, once for 15MAD in January and again when I read The Odyssey. I realize now I read the part of The Aeneid that's ripped off lovingly referenced in this.

Ughhh, prose translation. I don't like poetry (see yesterday), but at least be faithful to whatever you're translating. This is like one of those weird 90s anime dubs that totally change the story. This is one of the parts of The Odyssey that Odysseus narrates personally, which I always think are a little weird. There's a lot of frame story within a frame story stuff in The Odyssey. 

Odysseus meets his dead crewman Elpenor, who dies from getting drunk, falling off a roof, and breaking his neck. It's kind of tragicomic.

The ghosts all drink the blood of some sheep/rams/goats they sacrifice:

You don't see a lot of vampire-ghosts, so that's cool. Even if one of them is his mom, which is sad.

Yea and even so did I too perish and meet my doom. It was not the archer goddess of the keen sight, who slew me in my halls with the visitation of her gentle shafts, nor did any sickness come upon me, such as chiefly with a sad wasting draws the spirit from the limbs; nay it was my sore longing for thee, and for thy counsels, great Odysseus, and for thy loving kindness, that reft me of sweet life.”

Then he tries to hug her, but his hands pass through her. The Odyssey has a surprising number of generally, effectively sad moments. Even if it also has things like, "while they woo thy godlike wife and offer the gifts of wooing."

Thanks, Butcher and Lang. Great translation. (At least in verse the wooing are on separate lines. Most of the other translations go with "courtship gifts" which is way less awkward.)

There are some hecatombs, which always sounds like it should be some sort of undead fortress or something (it's a sacrifice of 100 oxen). "Be wary, adventurers. None have ever returned Hecatomb of the Lich... At least, none have returned alive!"