Appian

Tony Ellis · 28 Aug 2006, 23:45 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:45:16 +0100
Subject: (urth) Appian
Message-ID: <000001c6cafc$03ab11b0$6401a8c0@cthulhu>

Rex Lycanthrosaurus said:
>> It seems a little strange that Severian can describe
>> 'his' Autarch as almost like 'a plump woman of 40' and not wonder how
>> someone who has been doing the job for at least 62 years could look
so
>> young.
>
>Stranger still that the penultimate autarch, who looks like "a plump
>woman of forty," can have been trained in his duties as honey steward
>over fifty years ago, which, depending on his age when he started
(5-12,
>which even you agree with), would make him at least fifty-five, if not
>in his early sixties. So "he" obviously cannot be forty. 

Again, you're either misreading or misquoting me. I didn't say the
Autarch was 40, I didn't even say he looked like he was 40. I said
Severian said that the Autarch looked almost like 'a plump woman of 40'.
And he does say that. Nobody is saying the old Autarch is 40. Severian
is saying he *almost* looks like a plump woman of 40. It's a simile,
dude. 

The significance? The old Autarch doesn't look like a man of 72, which
is how old he would be in the entirely unsubstantiated case that he was
Appian and Appian gained the throne at age ten, 62 years ago. The idea
of a eunuch in his late 50s, running to fat and with, as Severian tells
us, an unlined face, being poetically described as *almost* like a plump
woman of 40, I have no problem with.

As for your idea that Appian was a 'boy-emperor'... OK, purely for the
sake of argument, let's pretend for a moment that Appian did attain the
throne at age ten, even though there is absolutely no textual evidence
for this. Now tell me how you know that Appian attained the throne just
62 years before Severian became Autarch.

I'm all ears. All Odilo tells us, in The Cat, is that 62 years before
Severian became Autarch, the Autarch Appian gave his permission for
Sancha to leave the House Absolute. How long had Appian been Autarch
then? We're not told. Why not 20 years? Why not 40? 

Even to get an Autarch who is merely an implausible 72-years-old, you
have to invent an entirely not-textual boy-Autarch and balance this
invention on top of an entirely non-textual ascent to the throne 62
years ago.

>and as a perusal of the archives will show,
>apparently you yourself were surprised that Number Five's real name in
>Fifth Head turned out to be Gene Wolfe. (See
>http://urth.net/urth/archives/v0008/0692.shtml) 

It was nice of you to go the trouble of digging up an eight-year-old
post like that; thank you for showing everyone that when someone does
come up with a good argument, which can be backed-up by the text, I'm
happy to go along with it. :-)

>Plus your argument also begs this additional question. If the
>penultimate autarch's name is *not* Appian, then what is it?

Pedantically speaking, that's 'raising the question', not begging it.
Begging the question, interestingly enough, is where you state something
that can only be proved true if your argument is true, and then use that
to try to prove that your argument is true.

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