Convening

[emo_snal]

Tuesday, May 16th, 1214 BC - Jason woke with a headache from all the wine the night before. It took him a moment to remember where exactly he was, what ceiling exactly this was spinning above him and why was he here. He groaned a bit remembering. He had sworn in front of everyone yesterday that he would retrieve the golden fleece from far

Comments

[emo_snal]

Probably! I had done a search through the whole Argonautica for people's names to try to only spend time on fleshing out the ones that appear more than just in the introduction and "Ancaeus" appears throughout... except there's actually TWO Ancaeuses sooo it remains to be seen. But I really liked the description of him showing up wearing the bear skin and axe, it was possibly the most colorful introduction, so I'm sure I'll fit him in!

In fact his introduction paragraph is the classic example of what tedious reading the original form of it is. Look at this shit:

Moreover from Arcadia came Amphidamas and Cepheus, who inhabited Tegea and the allotment of Apheidas, two sons of Aldus; and Ancaeus followed them as the third, whom his father Lycurgus sent, the brother older than both. But he was left in the city to care for Aleus now growing old, while he gave his son to join his brothers. Ancaeus went clad in the skin of a Maenalian bear, and wielding in his right hand a huge two-edged battleaxe. For his armour his grandsire had hidden in the house’s innermost recess, to see if he might by some means still stay his departure.

I had to read that paragraph three or four times to sort out who of the people being named were going and who was just people's fathers. Like I still don't know who the "brother older than both" is, since as far as I can tell from that the first two are sons of "Aldus" but it says he's the son of "Lycurgus." Nor do they appear to have the same mother from what wikipedia tells me about them. Like, altogether that's a really tedious paragraph!

[halfshellvenus]

Ancaeus followed them as the third, whom his father Lycurgus sent, the brother older than both.
Yes--who is the "brother older than both" in THAT construct? Yikes!

This is dreadful sentence structure-- almost as if someone translated it word-for-word from the Greek, without making any attempt to change the word order to how things would actually be phrased in English.

It seems a poor translation, but there is also the possibility that it's somewhat intentional? As in, "Let us now, in high-worded fashion, intertwine language exceedingly grandiose and archaic, indeed obfuscatory, that we, heralds of this fine work, might adventures epic relate."

/o\