Monthly Archives: January 2015

A humorous take on Hercules’ reputation as a “ladies man”

From this week’s New Yorker:

The Eight Serious Relationships of Hercules

BY 

PENELOPE

In his eighteenth year, Hercules, son of Zeus, went forth from Thebes to seek fame and glory. He was welcomed by the King of Thespiae, who had heard of Hercules’ great strength, and hoped that the youthful hero would ignite the fancy of his eldest daughter, who had exclusively been dating jagoffs. And Hercules saw that Penelope was quite attractive, and, to the King’s delight, a great passion was born. But, as the months passed and the King continued to hover, Hercules started to grasp the inky depths of Penelope’s daddy issues, and at times he could not tell if he was her boyfriend or some kind of peculiar erotic proxy. And so Hercules was distressed but not altogether surprised when he returned one day from the hunt only to find that Penelope was gone—fled to Ithaca with one of the aforementioned jagoffs.

HERMIONE…

Read on at the New Yorker online…

Today on WNPR: Purging memory in ancient Rome and the modern Soviet Union

Historical Deletion and Censorship

Listen to this show at cpbn.org or at 90.5 FM in the Hartford area.

By 

What happens when a ruling party flat-out removes any proof of a person’s or community’s existence?

This hour, we take a closer look at the history of deletion and censorship. We learn about the ancient Roman practice of damnatio memoriae and explore more recent attempts to erase people, places, and things from the history books.

Post your comments below, email Colin@wnpr.org, or tweet us @wnprcolin.

GUESTS:

  • Eric Varner – Associate Professor in the Departments of Art History and Classics at Emory University
  • Marianna Tax Choldin – Mortenson Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; member of the Committee to Visit the Library at the University of Chicago; author of A Fence Around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas Under the Tsars and The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR
  • Michael Pilato – Globally recognized mural artist and owner of pilatomurals

Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.