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113 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 421
Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatilityby deliberately revealing his true name as he escapes the injured and extremely peeved Cyclops. A Cyclops who's Dad is Psoeidon. Psoeidon who is the God of the sea that Odysseus is currently sailing on. It's a nice example of the Greek's obsession with slapping down hubris, but it seems mightily out of place for a man lauded as some clever epic hero, both during the Odyssey and the Trojan War.
I decided that Euripides, like Amy Schumer, was punching up. The Cyclops scene can be read as a trenchant joke digging into the intensely creepy origins of Athenian rape culture. It subtly calls into question the ethics of a common custom in Athens: the sexually-inflected mentorship of adolescents by older men. And the fact that the rape is preceded by a mock-symposium goes even further, skewering the common sympotic custom of singing songs about desirable young boys.So anyway, a) ten points for comparing Euripides to Amy Schumer, b) trigger warning, and c) let's just confirm that this is the official progenitor of
In other words, Euripides� rape joke works for me.