{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3994",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3994,
    "subject": "Latro's recitation and love's power",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-05-10T21:32:06+00:00",
    "last": "2003-05-10T21:32:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0305-3401@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2003-05-10T21:32:06+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Latro's recitation and love's power",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "At the end of Chapter 40 of Soldier of Arete, Latro is asked to speak a poem \nfrom memory to prove that he is a Hellene.  Latro has been depressed and has \nthought about killing himself.  From his mind comes this odd bit:\n\nYou golden lyre, Apollo's and the muses', \nYour tune commands the dance, your tone he uses,\nWhen master of the warbling choir,\nHe lifts the crystal voices higher.\n...\nyou quench the bolt, the lighning's fearful fire,\nthe eagle rests his wings, that never tire;\nto hear you shaken by your song,\nfell Ares quits the spear-proud throng.\n\nNotice that the 6th line invokes the eagle, symbol of Rome's ascendance.  \nhowever, the last line is also interesting in that Ares the god of war gives \nup and quits battle (!).  I believe that the soldier books are showing the \nreformation of the God Ares, weaning him away from manly war into manly love.  \nLatro wants to quit, and the only verse he can think of is this inexplicable \none of Ares giving up conflict.  I believe that with the other evidence, that \nGaea calls herself his mother and grandmother in his memory palace, that there \nare many lions in place there, and that this poem tells how Ares gives up \nstruggle (and perhaps gives up godhood for a time to be a mortal), as well as \nhow Thymaris calls Latro Pleistorus, there is some evidence to support that \nLatro is Ares.\n\nAlso, the very last line of Soldier of Arete is interesting.\n\n\"Allow us to voyage in safety, O lovely Ino, to that great city, Syracuse, the \nprecinct of Ares.\"\n\nPretty neat that it would end with that god's name as the last word.\n\nHere is my theory: If, as was indicated in the text, Ares is an aspect of \nAhura Mazda, and Latro is an aspect of Ares (and what better name for Ares \nthan 'Soldier'), then what we are seeing is a vengeful god growing weary of \nbattle and bloodshed and recognizing the power of love (through Pharetra, \nAphrodite, Io, etc).  What I said in jest earlier seems more likely to me: the \nvengeful old testament God learns to love by living among humans through one \nof his angels, and decides to repeat the experiment having dismissed Arete as \nthe true way to replace it with the way of love.\n\nYet I think there is an equal and opposite force at work in the text: on the \nwhite isle, the shade of Achilles wants more blood, more struggle, while the \ngod Ares has come to desire only peace.  Thus the two sides of the zoroastrian \ngreat powers: ahura mazda for good, and that other fellow for evil.\n\nUpon looking in the index, imagine my great joy when the first two names are \nAchaens and Achilles, confirming my suspicion that Achilles would be upset at \nthe Spartans for their effrontery.  They are also the force that causes latro \nto weary of battle: the ceremony of manumission frees latro from his bloodlust \nand he begins to weep compassionately and openly.\n\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}