Saturday, April 30, 2005

The Indiana Law Blog: An Homeric Musing

O.K. I don't believe it. I don't believe that after three years of posting pretty much every day, Marcia Oddi is going to be able to quit blogging cold turkey. So I'm not taking The Indiana Law Blog off my toolbar yet.

I think this is like when I reread The Iliad. I always think there's just a chance that Athena will not impersonate Deiphobus, that Hector will therefore have another spear to do in the vile Achilles, and that Dr. Pangloss will have been right. But it always ends the same way come Book 24:

And thus they buried Hector, tamer of horses.

But that ending is only the beginning of a number of rich ironies in later stories The real Deiphobus, Hector's brother, and Paris, also Hector's brother and, on one view, the source of the whole mess, are the ones who eventually do do in Achilles. Then, after Paris leaves the world behind, Deiphobus becomes Helena's husband. But then, now two husbands later, she betrays him to Menelaus, her original husband, and Odysseus as Troy is sacked.

So, Marcia, if you are closing up, if not completely shuttering your virtual windows, may there be many later stories. (I don't think I'll wish you an elegant sufficiency of Homeric ironies, though.)

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