Status Updates From Il canto di Calliope

Eris, goddess of strife, finds Olympus empty as all gods are at Thetis’ wedding, her being the only one not invited; she starts breaking things in Olympus, wanting to get back at them for alienating her, until she finds the golden apple w the inscription and decides she’ll take this apple but won’t keep it

and in efforts to save them, he goes alone with the help of Hermes (the gods like O’s determination), he gives O a tonic to be immune to the pigification and says he is to bed her but only after her making her swear to not harm him/his men and go free, but then he lives as her husband for a year. Penelope is pissed at hearing these stories from the bards

Hecabe blames herself for the fall of Troy, knowing the herdsman she gave Paris over to would not kill him, but Helen says that her husband King Priam knew this too, it is just as much his fault if not more, for his word is law

Another year has passed, Penelope hears that Odysseus meets yet another island of giants and is like sure, Jan. What are the chances. She hears that half of his men were turned into pigs

Calliope asks which is more heroic? Menelaus losing his wife so he brings about war to get her back or Oenone losing her husband so she raises their son

Injured, Paris returns begging for her healing powers but she refuses as he asks out of selfishness; later she doesn’t find any trace of Paris nor his blood, and thinks was this a dream? (She had imagined and ran thru scenarios of what she would say if he ever returned, so maybe this was her mind’s way of giving her some vindication)

Oenone, the nymph wife of Paris, is abandoned after his meeting with the 3 goddesses, to be left to watch the war unfold with her son by her side in the mountains; Paris was left abandoned as a boy with the king knowing the prophecy that he would befell Troy but they could not stomach killing him, but after meeting the goddesses Paris went back to Troy to claim his rights and then eventually Helen

The Trojan woman are alarmed as the guards come back, Cassandra her sick daughter knows it’s their hidden brother dead, but no one believes her, thinks she’s mad

The brother is brought in, dead. They all grieve

A year after Troy’s fall, Odysseus has still not returned home to Penelope, she listens to the bards speak of his cunning escape from an island of Cyclops but in doing so, boasted that the great Odysseus bested a cyclops and thus knowing his name, the cyclops asked his father Poseidon for revenge; Odysseus is fated to not return for 10 years and his crew won’t return with him

He cannot choose, Hera promises any city will be his, Athene promises the wisdom to fight and win any battle, Aphrodite promises the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen one Troy

Paris gives Aphrodite the apple, and otw back the other girls say why didn’t you mention that Helen already has a husband? A says she didn’t think it mattered…oh how we’re just their playthings

Aphrodite loved love but not marriage, and Athene didn’t want to be here either (she has eyes on Odysseus I think)

The 3 women fight over a golden apple “to the most beautiful” written on it, soon they are transported on a mountain with Paris, they make him choose

Hera, Aphrodite and Athene attend wedding of Thetis to her mortal husband; Hera is bitter as her husband Zeus is a philanderer and when Thetis fled his advances he was pissed and ordered her to marry a mortal (not to mention, he knew of the prophecy that her son would be greater than his father, so he had to make sure he was mortal and not god to overthrow Zeus eventually)

Helen tells the Trojan woman to take it up with Aphrodite, she put a ringing in her ear that wouldn’t go away until she slept with Paris

Helen says yes that is her sin, but Paris was also a married man when he came to seduce her, and she, like everyone else in Paris’ life, never questioned him and gave him everything he asked for b/c he was handsome, and just overall likable. Spoiled

He was always encouraged to take what he wanted and so when he returned with Helen, he was shocked to learn that her husband was coming to start a war

Iphigenia is to be married to Achilles, she prepares herself beautifully but on the day to be married she notices there is no wind, on deck the men look morose and she sees her father, King Agamemnon with a knife in his hand and tears in his eyes, Athena demands a sacrifice and she will be it

Helen joins the Trojan woman slaves, Hecabe berates her for her sin of being seduced and blames her for the war

soon her parents grow worried and burn the statue but she jumps on the pyre with it

The gods looked at her devotion with pity and had Hermes negotiate with Hades to allow her husband one day out, when he returned to the underworld she couldn’t bear it and hung herself, the people built a shrine for their king and queen and the gods smiled

In his excitement he leapt from his ship, killing 3 Trojans before being felled by Barbarian King Hector, her people boast of their late king’s prowess and loyalty

Laodamia falls into depression, roaming around while a blacksmith looks onward recognizing grief from when his late wife lost a baby, he makes a statue of the king for her, she becomes obsessed with it and refused to do anything w/o her “husband” present

Laodamia begs her husband Protesilaus to not be the first ship to land in Troy; a deal was struck for all suitors of Helen, that if she were to ever go missing they must all vow to get her back, and that’s how her king husband is sent off to war, b/c one man lost his queen, many queens would lose their kings… oooh

The muse Calliope is helping a poet write an epic but he is upset, too many deaths, many of them women and he’s hurt, he didn’t want Creusa (who? Idk mythology like that) to die, would prefer her to be a footnote. Calliope says it’s supposed to hurt, this is war

When A asked for her advice she was honest, that he would either be famous or old not both and she knew what he would choose

He was felled by Paris (Apollo in disguise) and Thetis is enraged that she gave A so much as he is dead, that he would regret his decision and would value a long life, something her a god could never understand

Achilles take revenge on Hector, allows King Priam to buy back his dead son’s body

Achilles’ pyre is eventually made and Briseis finally cries for everyone but not for him

Thetis weeps for her son Achilles, hating his father’s mortal blood, knew A would not return from Troy, hid him away so he wouldn’t be drafted but Odysseus was keen to her tricks and she vowed to never let the seas be easy on him

B is taken to Agamemnon, Achilles weeps for the slight, Patroclus weeps for Achilles, but B does not weep even when Chryseis is returned and she is still a slave

Achilles refuses to fight and the Greeks are losing badly, even after being begged or having B returned he still refuses to fight, they turn to Patroclus instead to have him fight and he agrees, his body is returned and Briseis prepares him for a pyre