Utopia Talk / General Talk / Herakles vs Achilles

Pillz Member	Sat Jun 06 16:00:34 Okay so I read this and it floored me. "Okay, so, hear me out— The prophecy re: Thetis was that her son would be stronger than his father. The fact that Zeus leapt from that prophecy to the assumption that it would be too dangerous to let her have sex with ANYTHING magical, even though she totally saved his ass from being overthrown, suggests that the child was bound to be stronger than his father in a very broad sense— that is, the child was destined to be the strongest of his father’s people, whether gods or men. The structure of Demi-Godliness is pretty broad, but, if you believe that the Iliad represents a syncretic story about various mythic figures, there’s postulation that Achilles is an adaptation of an old Balkan river spirit; that his mother is a Nereid and he is able to engage in personal combat with an actual River god, bloated with the corpses of a thousand men he’d killed and not be immediately pulverized speaks to the interpretation that Achilles is meant to be understood as a force of nature. Now, Hercules is a demigod, and, by the time of the Iliad, he’s been fully deified, so, on one level, it’s worth considering which parts of his career we’re talking about. On a meta-mythological level, Hercules and Achilles were both Gods, in the ancestor-worship and nature-worship traditions respectively, who ostensibly became men as the stories about them were told and retold. The difference is that Hercules bought the right to transcend death by saving the Gods from being overthrown by the Giants, whereas Achilles’s godhood was denied him for fear that he would BECOME the Giants. In response to this self-acknowledged “dick move” on their part, the gods gave Achilles free reign during his short life to basically do whatever he wanted. Hercules’s story is the reverse of Achilles’s— Hercules burned in order to die and be reborn, while Achilles’s mortal body burned with divine fury, which pushed him to make the choices that lead to his death. Neither were able to reconcile the reality of their human condition with the strength of their will, emotions, or, in Hercules’s case, his congenital tendency towards being a total fuckboy— Hercules was able to call in the favor he did because there wasn’t a strict prohibition on his ever becoming a god. Achilles was born mortal SO THAT he could be removed from the board. No shade, but, if I had written God of War, I would have written it about him." It's probably copy pasta but still. That's an A+ in Greek lit or classical mythology.
zombie jesus Member	Sat Jun 06 16:39:01 Nice read
Cherub Cow Member	Sun Jun 07 05:14:56 "That's an A+ in Greek lit or classical mythology." Not with the sources missing and all that undefined language. :p Hercules and Achilles have been rewritten dozens of times. This author was pulling from multiple sources without clarifying the different traditions of these characters. And a "God of War" reference murkies the waters..
Pillz Member	Sun Jun 07 05:30:11 It's 2300 characters not 2300 words.
Cherub Cow Member	Mon Jun 08 05:52:44 Was that some kind of reference? Was this posted on a site with a character limit? I had no luck Googling it before.
Pillz Member	Mon Jun 08 11:46:57 It's a FB comment someone posted in a group under a achilles vs herakles popularity contest. They deleted pretty quick, but Im quicker.
Pillz Member	Mon Jun 08 11:47:36 Obviously if this were actually meant to substantiate his points I'd have expected sources and greater exploration into the ideas
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