Latro & Unseen God (Possible spoiler)

Rex Lycanthrosaurus · 14 Nov 2006, 22:29 · from 2006-November.txt.gz

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From: lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm (Rex Lycanthrosaurus)
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 16:29:38 -0600
Subject: (urth) Latro & Unseen God (Possible spoiler)
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On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:00:08 +1100, thalassocrat at nym.hush.com said:

> Pindar says he doesn't know who is meant by "the god unseen" - 
> why wouldn't he have picked up on a Hades reference?

Latro uses the name 'Hades' only once in the first two books, preferring
instead 'Receiver of Many,' which he uses at least three times.
'Receiver of Many,' translated back into Greek is Polydectes--indeed, an
epithet of Hades. So perhaps Pindar is more familiar with Polydectes or
any of Hades' other names.

TheoWiki (http://www.theowiki.com/index.php/Hades) also asserts that
"[Hades] is best known in Hellas under the name Plouton/ Ploutonas" and
that "Hades is the most recent form. An older form of his name is Aides
or Aidoneus and an even older form is Ais, which means house and refers
to the Underworld as the House of Hades."

> 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. 

Again, according to TheoWiki, "the meaning of the names Ais, Aides or
Aidoneus or Hades is 'The Invisible' or 'Invisibility giving', in
contrast with Helios 'The Visible', 'the Visible Giving'. It also makes
a greater contrast between Zeus and Hades whose name once meant 'the
brightness of the day'."

> 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). 

Latro's memory palace is almost certainly based on a real structure, and
it seems probable that something he's done here (along with his 100
fellow mercenaries) is what's earned him the enmity of Gaea/Demeter. But
is this "lost temple" Egyptian in origin or Assyrian/Sumerian? In my
opinion the sphinxes, griffins, winged bearded bulls, and man-bull make
the latter more likely.
-- 
  Rex Lycanthrosaurus
  lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - And now for something completely different

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