Bacchus and the Dolphins
KoA parallel of the day! These always make me happy. I just realized the hilarious similarity between the story of Bacchus (Dionysus) and the dolphins (as seen in Book 3 of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses') and the story line of the King of Attolia. First of all, Bacchus enters dressed in "embroidered robes of gold and purple" and "half-dazed with wine and sleep." Hmm, fancy dressing and a wine jar in one hand, sound like any kings we know? Bacchus/Gen then proceeds to play the buffoon as the sailors/attendants steer him to the wrong port/hallway. The only person who sees past the god's/king's disguise is the helmsman/Costis, who then tries to warn the sailors/Attolians but gets laughed off and ignored. "Then the god, making sport of them, as if he'd only just perceived their treachery" calls them on their misbehavior and reveals his true form. Rather like the scene with Gen's attendants, "... Costis felt the shock like a physical blow. If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed from something wholly unfamiliar" (KoA ch.10, p. 228 in the hardcover version). I personally feel that KoA would have been much more amusing if Gen had turned all of his attendants into dolphins. And of course, what KoA parallel would be complete without the victory of the wooden stick over the sword? In the 'Metamorphoses,' Pentheus (who had bragged earlier that he would show Bacchus how his sword was better than the deity's stupid wooden stick) is killed by a mob of Maenads wielding those same sticks. Proving that you CAN kill a man with a practice sword/thyrsus.
THEME! Ovid would have loooved the QT series. His book, 'Metamorphoses,' is all about (to state the obvious) metamorphoses. Likewise, each of the QT books focuses on a metamorphosis of sorts. TT sees Gen transformed into the boy hero of Eddis, then in QoA (as Eddis notes) he transforms from the boy hero into a hero hero, and in KoA he becomes Annux. CoK is about the metamorphosis of Sophos from a fuzzy little bunny into the king of Sounis.
THEME! Ovid would have loooved the QT series. His book, 'Metamorphoses,' is all about (to state the obvious) metamorphoses. Likewise, each of the QT books focuses on a metamorphosis of sorts. TT sees Gen transformed into the boy hero of Eddis, then in QoA (as Eddis notes) he transforms from the boy hero into a hero hero, and in KoA he becomes Annux. CoK is about the metamorphosis of Sophos from a fuzzy little bunny into the king of Sounis.