Saturday, 2 November 2019

The Golden Slave, Chapter XVI, Concluded

This evening, posting was interrupted by Light Up Lancaster. Tomorrow, it will be interrupted even more by a Festival at Throssel Hole. (Scroll down.) Now let us finish rereading The Golden Slave, Chapter XVI, and leave XVII for a future occasion.

"Well, Mithradates was a soldier, too." (p. 216)

- reminds us of:

"Tene Mithra etiam miles..." (Scroll down)

"[Mithradtes] sat in the canton chief's high seat, which was shaped like the lap of stag-horned Cernunnos." (ibid.)

"Eodan remembered the king, motionless on the knees of a conquered god." (p. 218)

To conquer a people was to conquer their gods.

"Around the room gleamed [Mithradates'] unmoving hoplites..." (p. 217)

We have had hoplites before. See here and here.

That is all for now unless anyone wants to reread this chapter and tell me what I have missed? Flavius returns by the way but I am not presenting a mere plot summary. The next chapter has an interesting discussion about the relationship between civilization and barbarism.
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3 comments:

  1. Sean M. Brooks3 November 2019 at 06:08

    Kaor, Paul!

    Or a religion could "conquer" a nations or nations despite them not being conquered by other powers. As Christianity did to the Roman Empire and, later, to the Scandinavian countries.

    Ad asta! Sean

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  2. Jim Baerg4 March 2025 at 20:36

    Hoplites:
    IIRC in the Poul Anderson story in the shared world collection "Medea: Harlan's World"
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea:_Harlan%27s_World
    Humans early in the exploration of Medea find some animals that are heavily armored & the humans name the 'hoplites' after the heavily armored soldiers of ancient Greece.

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  3. Sean M. Brooks5 March 2025 at 14:14

    Kaor, Jim!

    I also thought of our Terrestrial porcupines, whose armor of sharp quills tends to discourage attack from far larger predatory animals.

    Ad astra! Sean

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