Latro & Unseen God (Possible spoiler)

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 14 Nov 2006, 20:00 · from 2006-November.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:00:08 +1100
Subject: (urth) Latro & Unseen God (Possible spoiler)
Message-ID: <20061114200008.9FFFFDA84B at mailserver8.hushmail.com>

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 04:24:45 +1100 Rex Lycanthrosaurus 
<lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>Not sure I agree, since the name Hades means "unseen" and he's 
>king of
>the underworld, where there is no sunlight--plus Dis Pater is 
>never
>encountered until we're dead.
>
>The very last chapter of _Sidon_ with its boatman and Cerberus-
>analog
>(besides reinforcing the Latro-as-Heracles subtheme) seems to 
>indicate
>Latro is close to the particular realm in question.

Good point! But I'm going to stick with the my interpretation for 
now. Pindar says he doesn't know who is meant by "the god unseen" - 
why wouldn't he have picked up on a Hades reference? And it seems 
to be a well-recognized christian usage - eg Colossians 1 (tks to 
Google). Plus the Maiden's reference to the god (assuming it's the 
same one) as a radiant being, which doesn't seem to fit Hades very 
well. Finally, Latro actually meets Hades a couple of times, which 
weakens the "unseen" aspect.

Though there could be a double meaning.

Anyway, my half-baked guess at the moment is that there's a 
connection with Latro's memory palace, which will turn out to be an 
image of Akhenaten's destroyed temple to Aten in Karnak. East of 
the Nile; huge, open, airy; a radiant supreme/exclusive solar 
deity; a dead city; Karnak has an avenue of sphinxes (although all 
ram-headed, I think, but there were sphinx's in the Aten temple 
too).

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