do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

David Stockhoff · 22 May 2011, 22:28 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 18:28:56 -0400
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
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On 5/22/2011 3:55 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> 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.
Even better.
>> 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]

Depends how you look at it. There are patterns among primes that I don't 
pretend to understand. But some primes may be rarer than others.
>> 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.

I agree this is fiction, and that is my point. My theory is derived 100% 
from available books. Not history. Mine is a literary argument, not a 
historical one.

I think the connection you describe is speculation and must remain so.


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