What about a man who was dead?
Dec 29– From The Odyssey by Homer translated by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang
Summary: "The killing of the wooers."
Commentary: Hey, this is the book that I'm on for Casually Completing Classics. Neat. Still don't love this translation, but whatever.
The part of this book that always strikes me the most is how Odysseus treats the women servants who have betrayed them. He kills the suitors. That's fine, they ruined his house, harassed his wife, tried to kill his son, etc., etc., and it's mostly more or less clean deaths in battle. But he makes the women clean up the bodies (a gruesome enough task), then hangs them to make sure it's an especially "pitiful death."
It seems completely overkill. Embarrass/fire them? Okay. Kill them? Probably overdoing it. BOTH, and make it worse than the actual suitors just feels cruel for the sake of cruel. I'll do some Googling before I write tomorrow's CCC on this section.
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