do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Jerry Friedman · 22 May 2011, 19:55 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 12:55:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
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> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>

...

> I  have my own theory.
> 
> I  always assumed that the form of the title  "Lives of the Megatherians" was a 
>simple imitation of Butler's "Lives of the  Saints." Based on this, one would 
>think that the Beasts are the opposite of  saints in a world even more fallen 
>than our own: human beings who are evil  rather than saintly, and who are in 
>some sense "exalted" by their evil, thus  deserving such treatment. But the 
>saints are not numbered. And we don't know  from this what evil the Beasts did 
>except that it must have been  great.
> 
> Upon googling, I found that another precedent is Suetonius' "Lives  of the 
>Twelve Caesars"---which I always knew as simply "The Twelve Caesars."
...

Wikipedia says the original title was De vita Caesarum, with no number.

> I don't see anything to connect the Beasts with Ascia or  Abaia except the 
>number 17, and again I think the whole significance of "17" is  that it is not 
>"12." It is the thematic opposite of 12. 12 is the "complete"  number because it 
>is highly divisible. 17 is "very" prime, i.e., highly  indivisible.

I think that may be part of it, though 17 is no more prime than 13 or 19.

[added later]

> Q: Why are there 17 Megatherians and 17 Ascians in their ruling Group? Are they 
>the same?

> A: Why are there 12 Apostles and 12 Caesars? Are they the same?

I agree with you on some points, but here I have to say there is another 
connection that people have stressed: Severian calls Abaia a "great beast", 
"megatherians" means entities connected to the great beast(s) somehow, and 
Father Inire says the Ascians are the "slaves of Abaia".  That makes it 
considerably more likely that the two 17s are connected.  Also, this is fiction, 
not history.  I don't think Wolfe anticipated what significance readers would 
find in every tiny detail, but this one seems to have a good chance of being 
purposeful.

Jerry Friedman

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