Speaker 1: Oh, hi, hello, and welcome to another episode of Let's
Speaker 1: Talk About Met's Baby, the show that examines how utterly
Speaker 1: garbage some men of the ancient world were. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: liv she who is bound to hear not all men
Speaker 1: at least once. After this episode airs, we'll see maybe
Speaker 1: I'll keep it tally well. As if that didn't set
Speaker 1: it up well enough, I am here with a conversation
Speaker 1: with Imogen Brisco, a PhD student stud Ovid's quote unquote
Speaker 1: love poetry, most of which is I mean, we we'll
Speaker 1: get into it, but a couple of years ago, maybe
Speaker 1: it was like only last year. I don't even remember. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I covered some of Ovid's ours amatoria on the show
Speaker 1: because it is absolutely batshit, fucking bananas. It is misogyny
Speaker 1: in a text. It is literally the original handbook to
Speaker 1: modern pickup artistry. It is wild. And so when I
Speaker 1: heard from Imagen pitching this has a topic for a conversation,
Speaker 1: I nearly lost my mind with excitement. We recorded it
Speaker 1: a while ago, as you will hear for reasons, and
Speaker 1: I was just so thrilled the area around Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: because apparently I'm fun for Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It's exactly as good as I expected it to this conversation.
Speaker 1: Plus I got ranty, so it's long enough without me
Speaker 1: dragging out the introduction. Just know, well like big trigger
Speaker 1: warnings because for real, it's gross and entertaining, but gross.
Speaker 1: There's talk about how many can best convince women to
Speaker 1: have sex with them or worse, you know, force them,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so it's much more in that realm
Speaker 1: than the former. Yeah, so it is. It is very dark.
Speaker 1: It is pick up artistry from the ancient world. But
Speaker 1: I do promise we have fun with it, because it's
Speaker 1: the only way to speak about something like this without
Speaker 1: devolving into a pit of sadness that humanity has not
Speaker 1: come far at all in the intervening two thousand years.
Speaker 1: Like for real, it's a little it's a little too
Speaker 1: on the nose, but just beware conversations. When Avid invented
Speaker 1: pick up artistry, the r z amatoria with image in Brisco,
Speaker 1: I am I'm so excited to talk about this because
Speaker 1: I just the ours imatoria is is so utterly wild.
Speaker 1: So as soon as I saw you know, those those
Speaker 1: words next to your name in my little form. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh shit, no, I'm so keen. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't even totally know where to begin,
Speaker 1: but maybe like what drew you to be studying this
Speaker 1: baffling and also so deeply entertaining work, Like what do
Speaker 1: you love about it? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's it's a really interesting question. I
Speaker 2: think I kind of started with the Amoores and then
Speaker 2: worked my way through to the ars Amatoria. I mean
Speaker 2: I did the Amores as like translation at school, so
Speaker 2: the slightly less racy parts of it, they kind of
Speaker 2: set you the nicer passages, and then yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it was. It wasn't until like my third of my
Speaker 2: undergrad that I really looked at the ars Amatoria properly.
Speaker 2: And I remember being set this question of as like
Speaker 2: a seminar prep of like can you think of any
Speaker 2: modern things that this reminds you of? Like you're going
Speaker 2: to read the whole ars Amatoria, what can you think of?
Speaker 2: And I remember doing like a short forum post about
Speaker 2: the Denist system from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and
Speaker 2: talking about his kind of pick up artist systems and
Speaker 2: how ovid is, you know, essentially doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: and I think that's kind of where it all came from,
Speaker 2: was this idea that like we can see such a
Speaker 2: continuation from the ancient all the way through to the modern.
Speaker 2: And that's really what I look at now in my research.
Speaker 2: So my thesis at the moment, I mean, I'm kind
Speaker 2: of coming to the end of my first year, starting
Speaker 2: my second year, so I'm sure it will have changed
Speaker 2: by the time this podcast comes out let alone, you know,
Speaker 2: in a couple of years, But at the moment, my
Speaker 2: focus is really on masculinity in of its amateur work,
Speaker 2: so the amrees os Amatoria and the remedia Morris as well,
Speaker 2: so like the Cures for Love and Yeah, this this
Speaker 2: idea of like the links with pickup artists in the
Speaker 2: modern day, I find really interesting and something that I
Speaker 2: think hasn't been touched on as much yet, which is
Speaker 2: what I'm hoping to do, is the way that Ovid
Speaker 2: has been I'd like to say co opted, but I
Speaker 2: don't think he has necessarily been co opted. I think
Speaker 2: he's been taken at his word by modern in cell
Speaker 2: groups as well. So there's a lot of relevance to
Speaker 2: the modern day, and I think that's what keeps me
Speaker 2: coming back to Ovid constantly, is this idea that he's
Speaker 2: always relevant somehow, no matter what's going on. There's just
Speaker 2: something about him that I, you know, you can keep
Speaker 2: relating to the modern day. But also that's just I
Speaker 2: can't figure him out as a person, like you said
Speaker 2: of like the Ovid of it all. He's completely baffling.
Speaker 1: He really is. And like so I joke about this
Speaker 1: a lot on the show, like uh Rome is not
Speaker 1: my favorite. I'm all about Greece all the time, except
Speaker 1: that I love Avid because, like one, most of what
Speaker 1: I've read is Metamorphoses, which is just a beautiful, you know,
Speaker 1: way of capturing primarily Greek myths. Hence why I'm able
Speaker 1: to love it. But what is so interesting to me
Speaker 1: about the Metamorphoses it is like in complete contrast to
Speaker 1: the rs which is that, like in the Metamorphoses, he
Speaker 1: seems to have a real sympathy for the plight of
Speaker 1: women who are assaulted by gods. That is what makes
Speaker 1: him quite unique amongst mythological sourcing is that like he cares,
Speaker 1: he says, it's assault. He has empathy for the plight
Speaker 1: of these women. And you know other people as well
Speaker 1: who are who are facing down the gods in this way?
Speaker 1: And then he goes and writes the rs Inmatorium, which
Speaker 1: is like nasty in the most entertaining way. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when I was reading it, I also just kept
Speaker 1: being like, wait, like what am I reading? Like It's
Speaker 1: like when you know Ofvid, you read it and you
Speaker 1: just think, okay, like, are is this tongue in cheek?
Speaker 1: Are you playing with us? Is this serious? I think
Speaker 1: that it It has such elements of both that I
Speaker 1: can only imagine that it would just be yeah, like
Speaker 1: a wealth of information for you to peace through in
Speaker 1: your study, because like it's really baffling, Like what do
Speaker 1: you think about how like what his intentions might have
Speaker 1: been with it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think, I mean in terms of
Speaker 2: like my own writing, I try not to go down
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've heard this before. I think even with
Speaker 2: like you know, other people from exter doing of it
Speaker 2: who've come on and you know, we talk about author
Speaker 2: real intention is difficult, and I try not to go
Speaker 2: too far into it in my actual work because you
Speaker 2: know that way lies madness essentially. But I like to
Speaker 2: think about of it as a person and about whether
Speaker 2: he's genuine or not. I think it's a fun for
Speaker 2: exercise whether or not we can actually put it into
Speaker 2: our scholarship.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we'll never have the answer, but like the
Speaker 1: theorizing can be there.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I know you shouldn't
Speaker 2: meet your heroes, but I would love to meet him
Speaker 2: because I almost want it confirmed that he's an arsehole.
Speaker 2: I know he is, but how much is he poking
Speaker 2: fun at the fact that he is or does he
Speaker 2: just not know? And I think that he's clever and
Speaker 2: he's self conscious. I think those are the two things
Speaker 2: that you can say from what we've got. Definitely is
Speaker 2: that I don't think he ever does anything kind of
Speaker 2: yeah accidentally. I think that throughout his work he's putting
Speaker 2: forward you know, arguably different narratorial personas, but that he's
Speaker 2: always making conscious decisions. I mean, something that I find
Speaker 2: really interesting in the ars Amaturia is that he talks about,
Speaker 2: you know, this work being based on experience in the
Speaker 2: opening lines of book one, and then you see little
Speaker 2: episode of like almost he goes into this semi ortobiographical
Speaker 2: mode that points in the urs where it links up
Speaker 2: with episodes from the Amoors, and that's something that I've
Speaker 2: always found really fascinating. He has this, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: getting into the kind of dark underbelly of it straight away,
Speaker 2: but he talks about one time I pulled my girl's hair,
Speaker 2: and essentially he tells about a physical assault on his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: which he also covers and I cannot remember which poem
Speaker 2: it is in the Amoros, but he talks about upsetting
Speaker 2: his girlfriend by kind of lashing out at her and
Speaker 2: pulling her hair. But in the hours he basically says,
Speaker 2: like the moral of the story is, if you're going
Speaker 2: to attack your girlfriend, try not to rip her clothes
Speaker 2: because this ended up costing me loads of money, which
Speaker 2: is just absolutely insane. And yeah, just on like the Metamorphoses.
Speaker 2: I think it's so interesting talking to people who come
Speaker 2: out of it from the met almost because I've done
Speaker 2: it the other way around, so I mean talking to
Speaker 2: other people who study of it as well, and people
Speaker 2: are just interested in him. And if you read the
Speaker 2: met and then you come straight into the Urs, you're
Speaker 2: going to be absolutely baffled. It made more of like
Speaker 2: a natural progression the way that I read his works
Speaker 2: and kind of did bits and pops of the Metamorphoses.
Speaker 2: But never really read it cover to cover until much later,
Speaker 2: and now, you know, as part of my teaching, I'm
Speaker 2: covering the metamorphosies with first and second year undergrads and
Speaker 2: hearing their thoughts on it, and like you said, talking
Speaker 2: about this sympathy that Ovid shows to women, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm really quite convinced by this idea that like some
Speaker 2: part of him is really interested in like the lived
Speaker 2: female experience. And then I kind of struggle to reconcile
Speaker 2: what I'm talking to them about, and then I come
Speaker 2: back into my own work and I'm like this, there's
Speaker 2: a dick.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I mean that. Yeah, it's just it's it's fascinating,
Speaker 1: and I love that. It reminds me of what I
Speaker 1: love about mythology so much, which is that like it's
Speaker 1: all a contradiction. Every bit of it is a contra addiction.
Speaker 1: Mostly in that case, it's because we've got like a
Speaker 1: thousand years worth of sources and regionality and everything in there.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well that makes sense, like that that
Speaker 1: is rational, like why that everything is a contradiction. And
Speaker 1: when it comes to Greek myth but often it's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's just one guy, Like how can just one guy
Speaker 1: be so contradictory and that is sort of like a
Speaker 1: different level of interesting, Like, yeah, what is he doing that?
Speaker 1: He wrote the met and then he wrote the Ours,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if it's like this notion of mythological
Speaker 1: women being better or not better, like in his mind
Speaker 1: that they are they are more deserving of sympathy because
Speaker 1: he hasn't encountered them, and like because yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's a major in cel narrative running through the RS
Speaker 1: that makes you think that like, Okay, maybe he's got
Speaker 1: a thing against real women, but he likes fictional like
Speaker 1: it maybe like a good equivalent would be like women
Speaker 1: in video games versus real life women, you know, like
Speaker 1: this idea of a false woman, like the guys who
Speaker 1: got angry when they made Larercraft have smaller boobs, you know,
Speaker 1: Like it makes me think of that, Like, Okay, he
Speaker 1: can love the mythological but he can't stand real Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and almost, I mean, you know in the Met's
Speaker 2: we have that with pig Melion. Yeah, aligns himself with
Speaker 2: pig Melion quite quite well, which is I mean, he
Speaker 2: does it with a lot of the artist figures in
Speaker 2: the Metamorphoses, anyway. But yeah, pig Melion, he seems to
Speaker 2: have quite a lot of sympathy for his you know,
Speaker 2: disgust at women and then his crafting of a perfect woman.
Speaker 2: And I guess that'd be a really yeah, like a
Speaker 2: kind of almost depressing view of like why Ovid has
Speaker 2: this fascination with women is he's able to write them
Speaker 2: in a particular way that suits him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, like that idea. And Pygmalion is like
Speaker 1: so deeply one of the grossest stories in the Men
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah that feels right. Yeah, it's so interesting. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just trying to think back on having
Speaker 1: read the RS because like it's so I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess just to remind my listeners that I will have
Speaker 1: also done that in the introduction, but like it really
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's called the Art of Love, but
Speaker 1: it really is like a sort of step by step
Speaker 1: instructions on how to get a woman, only they're all horrifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so it's kind of semi didactic written in
Speaker 2: ellergic couplets. So in terms of I mean ancient genre,
Speaker 2: it's disputed what the ars amatoria is. It is, yeah,
Speaker 2: written as if it's elegy which leads some kind of
Speaker 2: meta purists to believe that it must be leergy. But
Speaker 2: it's got a lot of didactic elements, and it clearly
Speaker 2: takes inspiration from other didactic poems, like you know, Virgil's
Speaker 2: didactic works and stuff like that. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 2: It definitely is didactic in tone, whether or not. You know,
Speaker 2: we look at the meter and Ovid paints himself as
Speaker 2: the Prikeptora Morris, the teacher of love, and he does
Speaker 2: that straight away, like in line sixteen of the first book.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure he's like, I am the Prikectora Morris,
Speaker 2: and he it's probably the clearest persona he ever gives himself,
Speaker 2: and he maintains that all the way through. He also
Speaker 2: ends book two and book three with the words like
Speaker 2: Naso magistair errat, I can't remember exactly the Latin, and
Speaker 2: Naso is like his middle name. So it's Ovid was
Speaker 2: my teacher. Ovid was my instructor, and that's what he
Speaker 2: wants his kind of students to go out into the
Speaker 2: world and say. And obviously we've got this this cheekiness
Speaker 2: of Ovid running through it. You know, how much of
Speaker 2: this is him actually wanting people to be walking adverts
Speaker 2: for his seductions. We don't know. Yeah, it's it's three books,
Speaker 2: and book one and two are directed at men, and
Speaker 2: book three is aimed at women, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: part of what makes this as a group of three
Speaker 2: so interesting is that he kind of dedicates Book one
Speaker 2: is how to find a woman, you know, to aim
Speaker 2: your affections at, which he covers pretty quickly, and then
Speaker 2: how to get that woman, and then book two is
Speaker 2: about how to keep the woman, and he kind of
Speaker 2: delineates quite quite clearly the points where he's changing tac
Speaker 2: with the with the male centered books. And then book
Speaker 2: three it's, yeah, it's kind of all in. It feels
Speaker 2: a bit more rushed. I guess it's it's the same
Speaker 2: pretty much the same length as the other two. And yeah,
Speaker 2: his advice to women is really interesting. A lot of
Speaker 2: it aligns pretty clearly with the first two books. You
Speaker 2: get the equivalents, but there is this pretty convey and
Speaker 2: saying argument that book three isn't really directed at women.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's it's for entertainment purposes, and that
Speaker 2: obviously his male audience are going to be reading it too.
Speaker 2: We get this kind of idea, especially in certain scholarship,
Speaker 2: of the men are kind of kind of just off
Speaker 2: stage right essentially, and of it's making little kind of
Speaker 2: winks and nudges towards them throughout book three. And even
Speaker 2: if you're not convinced by that, and you take him
Speaker 2: at his word that he is talking to women in
Speaker 2: book three, his advice is a lot more focused on looks.
Speaker 2: You know, how to how to not be disgusting seems
Speaker 2: to be a large thing. You know, he uses words
Speaker 2: like disgusting quite a lot. I mean, i'd be interested in,
Speaker 2: you know, the actual split between the books. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: at the end of book three has this kind of
Speaker 2: catalog of sexual positions that women should consider based off
Speaker 2: of how they look. So it's like it's like, if
Speaker 2: you've got stretch marks, you're better viewed from behind, like
Speaker 2: things like that. It's really quite rude in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, explicit for Ofvid he's not normally that explicit,
Speaker 2: but also quite nasty talking about you know, so petite
Speaker 2: women should ride horse, women with longer legs should have
Speaker 2: them over their shoulders. It's it's really quite full on,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of aiming this at women. As if
Speaker 2: he's saying, like, I'm interested in your pleasure, but what
Speaker 2: she's saying is here's how to look best for your
Speaker 2: male sexual partner. Yes, but we've still got a hugely,
Speaker 2: a huge kind of interest in appeasing his male audience
Speaker 2: throughout the third book, so I'm not hugely convinced that
Speaker 2: it's actually aimed at women. And even if it is,
Speaker 2: the advice lines up pretty well with keeping the men happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's really for women. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just yeah, I mean my biggest memory of reading
Speaker 1: that for the first time was just purely like, what
Speaker 1: on earth am I reading?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What is happening here? In the most enjoyable way, because
Speaker 1: I think that's the only way that's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: you know, the way to stay sane is to read
Speaker 1: something like that and laugh at it because it's utterly absurd.
Speaker 1: But that's how I feel about you know, modern pickup
Speaker 1: artists and stuff too, Like, obviously they are also inherently dangerous,
Speaker 1: but you still, like, I think, have to laugh at
Speaker 1: a lot of the nonsense that that men are being
Speaker 1: led to believe, is like how to get a woman.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the name of that guy.
Speaker 1: I think he's British American and he started that like
Speaker 1: enormous YouTube channel of like how to get women and
Speaker 1: also get rich. I listened to a podcast episode about him.
Speaker 1: Do you know who I'm talking about? Me like Eastern
Speaker 1: Europe to Escape, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah yeah yeah. So he's he's
Speaker 2: a big one at the moment, especially with the kind
Speaker 2: of insul cells as well, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it just screams all of his work from
Speaker 1: what I know, which is just listening to like Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards podcast, I'd like never heard of him before,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, I can't stop
Speaker 1: listening to this. It's horrifying. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: idea that, like, I mean, it's just the the idea
Speaker 1: that even two thousand years ago, there were people being like,
Speaker 1: so you just have to nag a woman, like tell
Speaker 1: her she's ugly. That's that's gonna turn her to your
Speaker 1: you know, advances, Like I just yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's incredible and the amount that does line up with
Speaker 1: the modern ideas. So I didn't originally intend to like
Speaker 1: jump straight into that, but you you look at that too, right,
Speaker 1: Like this the stuff that lines up, Like, I would
Speaker 1: love to hear more about that, because it's wild that
Speaker 1: two thousand years past and it's still just as absurd.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think the main thing to say about
Speaker 2: that is we kind of I don't know. I feel like,
Speaker 2: especially people who study of it, there's this inclination to
Speaker 2: try and like almost offend the people that you're studying,
Speaker 2: and I think I try really hard not to do
Speaker 2: that because I think he probably was, you know, like
Speaker 2: I say, just a bit of a bad person, even
Speaker 2: if he was funny and a bit emotional and interesting.
Speaker 2: I think he's still you know, a product of his time.
Speaker 2: Whether at the time he would be considered a bad
Speaker 2: person or not. We have to remember that for all
Speaker 2: his kind of posturing and his posing as you know,
Speaker 2: a victim of his girlfriend and a slave to love,
Speaker 2: he was a you know, a Roman man of the
Speaker 2: equestrian class who was educated in rhetoric and you know,
Speaker 2: turned down the chance to be a lawyer essentially, So
Speaker 2: he's pretty he's doing pretty well for himself. Also able
Speaker 2: to able to write poetry as a career, which isn't
Speaker 2: something that's usually open to other people. As much as
Speaker 2: he likes the whole you know, tortured poor artists.
Speaker 1: He's got some privilege.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think we really just like
Speaker 2: to say that certain people have they haven't read him properly,
Speaker 2: and that's why they've you know, adopted him or co
Speaker 2: opted him, or however you want to praise him. I
Speaker 2: think what we're defining is reading properly is something that
Speaker 2: I'm quite interested in, because I'm like, the words are there, yeah,
Speaker 2: whether you know, we can't say that they're not for everyone.
Speaker 2: I would encourage people who want to read of it
Speaker 2: to take him with a picture of salt and to
Speaker 2: try and get a bit more context and read the
Speaker 2: whole hours rather than just the passages where you know,
Speaker 2: he endorses rape and says all these other horrible things.
Speaker 2: But certain people have almost cherry picked quotes from of
Speaker 2: its work that they use to push their own, particularly
Speaker 2: masculinist agendas. So yeah, the pick up artist link is
Speaker 2: relatively well established, and I think Donna Zuckerberg is the
Speaker 2: main scholar who's really worked on this. Muck's like a
Speaker 2: Bud's sister kind of unfortunately, but yeah, she she did
Speaker 2: a really good book called Not All Dead White Men.
Speaker 1: I have that. I've never read it.
Speaker 2: I need to, Yeah, I have to be honest, haven't
Speaker 2: read the whole text, but the chapter on of it
Speaker 2: is really instructive for looking at pickup artists. That's from
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, it's only five years ago. Yeah, and she
Speaker 2: talks about a particular pickup artist. I know his surname
Speaker 2: is Strauss. I believe he's called Neil Strauss, and he's
Speaker 2: the guy who wrote the game, like the big pickup
Speaker 2: artist that made it into the mainstream. And he literally
Speaker 2: calls of it like the father of modern pickup artistry?
Speaker 1: Does he really?
Speaker 2: So there are people endorsing of it as someone to
Speaker 2: look back to and saying like, look are what we're
Speaker 2: doing is right because it has a precedent of you know,
Speaker 2: two thousand years people have been doing this, and they
Speaker 2: do really use him to push that. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I think with the pick up artist that
Speaker 2: there's a couple of people. But yeah, Donna Zuckerberg's chapter
Speaker 2: on it is brilliant and very informative. And then with
Speaker 2: the in cells, I feel like it's something that hasn't
Speaker 2: been as touched on. And the thing that kind of
Speaker 2: clued me onto the direct link rather than me just
Speaker 2: reading through and thinking this seems a bit in Celly.
Speaker 1: Screams in Zell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a blog post on the Pharos doing
Speaker 2: justice to the Classics website. It only came out this year,
Speaker 2: and it was about of it, well, the presence of
Speaker 2: ancient authors on the in cell wiki. So from what
Speaker 2: I can gather that in cells had their own Wikipedia page,
Speaker 2: but we're getting frustrated with Wikipedia's like rules for what
Speaker 2: you could post and the moderation, and so they created
Speaker 2: their own Wikipedia, which is terrifying. Like I've been on it,
Speaker 2: and I'm quite scared that the university is going to
Speaker 2: take away my computer access at some point because my
Speaker 2: history is just not looking great at the moment. Actually,
Speaker 2: just like clicking through the in cell which he very happily,
Speaker 2: well obviously not happily. It's just awful. But yeah, they
Speaker 2: you and it functions in the same way as Wikipedia,
Speaker 2: where like you hover over a hyperlink and it brings
Speaker 2: up the start of the article about that personal thing,
Speaker 2: but it will be an entry that they've written. So
Speaker 2: they have a list of what they call proto cells,
Speaker 2: so people who weren't who were around before in cells
Speaker 2: were like a thing, you know, a recognized group, and
Speaker 2: they claim they claim people like Charles Bakowski as a
Speaker 2: proto cell, they claim Jesus Christ as a proto cell.
Speaker 2: Like it's just insane. They just have this list of
Speaker 2: people that they've decided were in cells. But if you
Speaker 2: then click on the hyperlink, it takes you to a
Speaker 2: page that they have written about.
Speaker 1: That person, right about how how exactly that person?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where like the OVID things come come in.
Speaker 2: They use of it on their in cell wiki page. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they have a page called Timeless Quotes about Women and
Speaker 2: they have about five quotes from OVID on there and
Speaker 2: no referencing, no links to the translation that they've used,
Speaker 2: not even which book it's from. One of them just
Speaker 2: says the Art of Love. But yeah, it's it's stuff
Speaker 2: about women being gold diggers, women enjoying forceful sex, like
Speaker 2: they've really picked what they want, yea. And that that
Speaker 2: was where I got that like the real interest in
Speaker 2: it from, because I realized that not only are is
Speaker 2: there like this sense of in Sellish line of thought
Speaker 2: throughout of its work, well at least in places, but
Speaker 2: they are using his work to further their.
Speaker 1: Ideology see that I wouldn't have get I guess I
Speaker 1: should have, but the idea that they're actually directly using
Speaker 1: him in that way just feels I think it's just
Speaker 1: because I have such a poor opinion of them obviously,
Speaker 1: where I'm like, you don't read somebody like of it,
Speaker 1: you're ridiculous, not at least because I just have to say, like,
Speaker 1: the more we like, I don't. I don't think about
Speaker 1: in cels often, thankfully, but even just like talking about
Speaker 1: them this much, it just makes me want to Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that, like, obviously you can't expect
Speaker 1: them to make sense, but I like, if you are
Speaker 1: building your entire personality around this concept and building an
Speaker 1: entire Wikipedia page or Wikipedia like concept around this, like,
Speaker 1: can't you also recognize that the term involuntary then no
Speaker 1: longer applies, Like this is clearly very fucking voluntary, Like
Speaker 1: you just call yourself an involuntary celibate when you've dedicated
Speaker 1: your life to being this guy. Yeah, yeah, it's now voluntary.
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, it's just like it's truly truly wild. Yeah
Speaker 1: uh but yeah, oh my god, the idea of like,
Speaker 1: because I mean, the thing about even like you know,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, like he's you know, it seems likely
Speaker 1: maybe he was a bit of an asshole amongst being
Speaker 1: also very talented. That's fine, you know, people can be
Speaker 1: talented and also misogynoust assholes. But like reading the reading
Speaker 1: the RS too, like there is so much that is
Speaker 1: seemingly intentionally comedic as well, Like do you think that
Speaker 1: that was also the point, Like a lot of these
Speaker 1: things seem to be like so ridiculous as to be
Speaker 1: intentionally comedic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think I think he's he can be
Speaker 2: quite like yeah, just just overblown in the way that
Speaker 2: he talks, and he's very conscious about as well, kind
Speaker 2: of picking his audience. I think he's aware of his
Speaker 2: context and that, especially in the book Towards Women, he
Speaker 2: kind of says like, you know, only certain women should
Speaker 2: read my texts, and then kind of midway through or
Speaker 2: just past the middle point of book three, he starts
Speaker 2: saying like, I wasn't going to talk about how to
Speaker 2: evade your husband, because you know, it's not right to
Speaker 2: encourage adultery, But anyway, here's a list of things that
Speaker 2: you can do. So obviously there's there's deliberate humor in here,
Speaker 2: because he knows what he's doing, and he knows that
Speaker 2: it's silly and subversive, and you know, I think that
Speaker 2: that's something that makes it kind of fun and enjoyable
Speaker 2: to read. And also it's what makes these episodes that
Speaker 2: are quite troubling all the more shocking is that it's
Speaker 2: kind of within this what seems quite a lighthearted text,
Speaker 2: you know, this idea of like the art of love
Speaker 2: or I mean, there's there's debate about how to translate
Speaker 2: ours amatoria as well, because ours is more like skill interesting,
Speaker 2: so it's it's more to do with it is it
Speaker 2: is pretty much a manual. It's like the skill of
Speaker 2: the lover as well. Amatoria is more it's the person
Speaker 2: the a martyr. So yes, it's like the skill of
Speaker 2: the lover, and obviously Ovid is the lover supreme. And
Speaker 2: I'm really fond of this idea that although he delineates
Speaker 2: his persona in the Ours as the procepto amoris, which
Speaker 2: we don't really he is never explicit in the Amors.
Speaker 2: I like this idea that it is the same we're
Speaker 2: meant to read it as the same guy, but just
Speaker 2: a bit more grown up, because it was I think well,
Speaker 2: I'm not you know, confident on the dating in terms of,
Speaker 2: you know, how we do the dating, and it's not
Speaker 2: something that really comes up in my research that much.
Speaker 2: But I know that there's at least kind of ten
Speaker 2: or fifteen years between the Amoras and the ours. So
Speaker 2: we do get this idea that the Amoras is the
Speaker 2: kind of almost like just like the horny nonsense of
Speaker 2: like a twenty year old guy. Yeah, and then when
Speaker 2: he's a bit more you know, a bit older and
Speaker 2: a bit more mature, he's kind of like, right, I've
Speaker 2: learned my lessons and I'm ready to share that with
Speaker 2: everyone else. I quite like this idea and for continuation
Speaker 2: between the two, because we do we always put them
Speaker 2: together into one volume of translation pretty much, you know.
Speaker 2: But one I've got is like it's just called the
Speaker 2: Erotic Poems, and it includes all of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and even the Amoros.
Speaker 2: Some of them are very off the topic of love.
Speaker 1: I haven't got them.
Speaker 2: There were the read there weren't the reading. I mean
Speaker 2: Book two in particular is the main one I've studied,
Speaker 2: and in that you have a couple of like diptychs
Speaker 2: and pairs of poems where there's one where he's saying
Speaker 2: to his mistress, you know, I swear on my life
Speaker 2: and on all the gods that I haven't cheated on
Speaker 2: you with your hairdresser who would have been a slave woman.
Speaker 2: And then the next poem is him being directed to
Speaker 2: the slave woman being like, how could you give it away?
Speaker 2: You're idiot, like really laying into her, and you know
Speaker 2: it's just utter silliness. But then once you actually read it,
Speaker 2: you know, again and again. He then goes into quite
Speaker 2: he like explicitly threatens her at the end, and there's
Speaker 2: this underlying awareness of his higher status. As much as
Speaker 2: he kind of pretends that he's at the mercy of
Speaker 2: these two women, he's actually, you know, by the end
Speaker 2: of those two poems, he's got them both kind of
Speaker 2: under his thumb. In the middle of yeah, in the
Speaker 2: middle of book two of the Amora's we have another
Speaker 2: diptych where his mistress Corinna has an abortion and he
Speaker 2: gets really angry at her because of how ill it
Speaker 2: makes her. And then we get the sense in the
Speaker 2: second poem that she's feeling a bit better now and
Speaker 2: he's ready to go on a moral tirade at her
Speaker 2: about how it's unnatural. She's deprived the world of the
Speaker 2: potential for more Ofvid is actually a large part. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we call them love poems, and I mean straightforward, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's anything to do with relationship poems basically. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: is just like, you know, typical love poetry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we need to remove the word love.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's that's horrifying. Don't make me hate you completely,
Speaker 1: of my God, No, it's that's that's fascinating and dark.
Speaker 1: Having really primarily read the MET, I just think it's
Speaker 1: so interesting to see because I really I do love
Speaker 1: the MET and so I really have notoriously talked about
Speaker 1: loving Avid, And I think even probably when I read
Speaker 1: the RS, I was just like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: kind of have to trust and hope that he's being
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek and being satirical. But hearing about theomoras,
Speaker 1: I feel like, maybe maybe it's pretty legit. See it's
Speaker 1: like kind of how he thinks.
Speaker 2: I mean obviously, like and it is worth you know,
Speaker 2: you note that I'm picking out the oh yeah, fun
Speaker 2: or inflammatory ones. He does have some nice stuff in
Speaker 2: there as well.
Speaker 1: For sure, but yeah, it's still about.
Speaker 2: The horror ball stuff as well. Yeah, yeah, and does it?
Speaker 2: Does it? You know the fact that large parts of
Speaker 2: it are more straightforward and nice love poetry. Does that
Speaker 2: actually kind of forgive of the bits where he's talking
Speaker 2: about beating his girlfriend or cheating on her with her
Speaker 2: slave girl and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. It does not, So it's really
Speaker 1: okay to cherry pick the bad stuff for a conversation
Speaker 1: like this, but also because like, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I think there's a very strong mindset from certain
Speaker 1: groups of people that might suggest that, like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't judge somebody by only like one section of their
Speaker 1: work or whatever. But it's like, and that's fine too,
Speaker 1: but you also can't pretend that they didn't say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he still said all of this, So here we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, it's part of what makes
Speaker 2: him kind of such an interesting guy to look at,
Speaker 2: such a you know, an interesting writer and an interesting
Speaker 2: historical figure. Is trying to work out. Like you said,
Speaker 2: I do believe that the Ours reads largely as kind
Speaker 2: of tongue in cheek, and that's the way that, like,
Speaker 2: like you said, I'd like to read it. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: kind of I always want these more hopeful readings of
Speaker 2: these things. And that's why I have really enjoyed turning
Speaker 2: back to the met this term whilst teaching it, is
Speaker 2: because I'm able to see of it in a nicer
Speaker 2: light than what I normally do, and remember that, like,
Speaker 2: not only is he one of the most talented, you know,
Speaker 2: writers in the Latin language, he also has some inexplicable
Speaker 2: understanding of lived like female experience, lived experience of victims,
Speaker 2: and of people kind of in the Metamorphoses, the figures
Speaker 2: whose gender is kind of confused by the narrative or
Speaker 2: who kind of either change their gender or have it
Speaker 2: changed for them. It's you know, he's got some really
Speaker 2: interesting insight into these things. I'd love to know what
Speaker 2: was going on there. Equally, there's an argument that he's
Speaker 2: just a bit of a deviant and just wants to
Speaker 2: talk about anything to do with sex, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of what we get through his love poetry, I guess, yea.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's something that I was thinking about, is
Speaker 2: do we call it love poetry, because I mean the
Speaker 2: ars amatoria, I would argue, is more sex poetry. It's
Speaker 2: about how to attain kind of casual affairs for the
Speaker 2: most part. I mean, he talks about keeping a lover
Speaker 2: in book two, but largely it's based off of, you know,
Speaker 2: maintaining access to the girl, keeping her interested, you know,
Speaker 2: leading her on a bit with false promises, promising her
Speaker 2: gift but never actually delivering them, because once you've given
Speaker 2: her the gift, she can just run off with it.
Speaker 2: So you have to keep stringing her along equally, you know,
Speaker 2: let her know that she's got potential rivals, that you're
Speaker 2: wanted around town, but not don't ever let her catch
Speaker 2: you in the act. You know. He kind of prescribes
Speaker 2: this very walking of a very fine line, which I
Speaker 2: just don't believe is the way that you would treat
Speaker 2: someone that you were like actually courting. I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: or you'd like to think again.
Speaker 1: No, and I think that that's yeah again. What's what,
Speaker 1: like screams modern pickup artist. You know, is that like
Speaker 1: it's not about finding affection and like a relationship, it
Speaker 1: is about like I don't want to say tricking, but
Speaker 1: it is, you know, ultimately a lot of it is
Speaker 1: like tricking a woman's but it's also just that like
Speaker 1: it's about control, right, Like it is about it's about
Speaker 1: a man having control over not only a woman, but
Speaker 1: like the situation entirely. Like yeah, I mean it's misogynistic
Speaker 1: and it's like core right, it's about subjugating women, but
Speaker 1: like specifically for sex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's there's a really interesting kind of
Speaker 2: string of argument in scholarship that that they oars amaturia
Speaker 2: isn't so much about finding a girlfriend. It's about being
Speaker 2: able to have sex with prostitutes without paying.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which again, you know, some of these arguments are
Speaker 2: more illustrative of the wide range of things we've got.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how convinced I am by it, but yeah,
Speaker 2: does kind of make sense. He has he has a
Speaker 2: lot of focus on money. He talks a lot about
Speaker 2: gifts and exchange of kind of sex for goods, sex
Speaker 2: for money. Don't ever meet up with your girlfriend on
Speaker 2: her birthday because you'll end up having to buy her
Speaker 2: a present like stuff like that. He's really fixated on
Speaker 2: this idea of kind of exchange, I guess, yeah, which
Speaker 2: is just yeah, absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's yeah, oh my god, it really Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: screams not even just modern pick up artists, but like
Speaker 1: a very large subset of modern dating, like just dating,
Speaker 1: and like, I think you know that rightfully says how
Speaker 1: dark it can be to date in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it really just kind of generally screams sort
Speaker 1: of a certain type of man, and like the way
Speaker 1: they might just talk to their friends, just that that
Speaker 1: really specific thing of not seeing a girl on.
Speaker 2: Her birthday, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, bending over backwards to like not do
Speaker 1: one tiny nice thing, Like it's what a mentality it's failed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he lists he lists a few a few days when, yeah,
Speaker 2: where you shouldn't see her, and it's various feasts and
Speaker 2: festivals as well where you would be expected to spend money.
Speaker 2: And then he suggests, in particular, taking her on a
Speaker 2: walk through town or the market on like the Sabbath
Speaker 2: where a lot of the shops will be closed and
Speaker 2: things like that. He's really Piggy's I think you know,
Speaker 2: whether you buy into the idea that this is actually
Speaker 2: about how to exploit prostitutes, which is a much more
Speaker 2: serious reading, or whether you think it is more just
Speaker 2: about you know, women in general. I think that the
Speaker 2: crux of it is it's about how to get as
Speaker 2: much by giving as little, and that is the kind
Speaker 2: of overarching theme throughout the arts Amatoria, which, interestingly I'm
Speaker 2: a struggle to find as such a strain in book
Speaker 2: three aimed at the women, I guess interestingly but unsurprisingly
Speaker 2: his yeah, his advice to women seems to be a
Speaker 2: lot more kind of surface level, whereas for the men
Speaker 2: there's a lot more i don't know, deception involved, but
Speaker 2: then also a lot of talking about women as deceptive.
Speaker 1: Right, so it's there, it's their fault, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, obviously, obviously it's women's fault. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it just makes me think of like even just the
Speaker 1: number of TV shows that I mean, I think, probably
Speaker 1: not so much recently, but I'm old enough to remember
Speaker 1: the nineties and the two thousands, and like the early
Speaker 1: two thousands were a very dark time, and you know,
Speaker 1: like the number of TV shows that would just make
Speaker 1: a joke about like oh, well, like it's too close
Speaker 1: to Valentine's Day to get a girlfriend, Like you've got
Speaker 1: to wait until after. And it's like, if you really
Speaker 1: break that down, it's like why, like okay, you're you
Speaker 1: just if you like a girl, you really want that badly?
Speaker 1: Not to like buy her something like I just it's
Speaker 1: utterly wild to me, and yeah, just screams this idea
Speaker 1: that like, we've just really been dealing with this for
Speaker 1: so long and it's so absurd. It's just blown away.
Speaker 1: The world continues to exist in the way that it does.
Speaker 1: How are we still here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's it's just one of those texts that
Speaker 2: I mean, I almost hope that that one day we
Speaker 2: won't relate to it as much, but that there's something
Speaker 2: something about the way that Ovid writes as well, whether
Speaker 2: he's being you know, in text where he's more serious
Speaker 2: and where he is and you know, this one, I
Speaker 2: do kind of see the argument that this is a
Speaker 2: bit of a parody of more serious didactic poetry and
Speaker 2: that he is kind of just poking fun. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to write a didactic poem, I'm going
Speaker 2: to do it in allergic meter because that's what I'm
Speaker 2: comfortable in. And I'm going to you know, talk about
Speaker 2: love because that's what I'm comfortable talking about. And either way,
Speaker 2: I think Ovid as a as a writer throughout all
Speaker 2: of his work just there's something very human about him,
Speaker 2: which is what I think, and I know it's probably
Speaker 2: just a bit like wishy boshy, but like that's what
Speaker 2: I think gives him such an during influence. I guess
Speaker 2: why we keep coming back to him, and people are
Speaker 2: interested in all the different types of his poetry and
Speaker 2: interested in him for completely different reasons. And yeah, mine
Speaker 2: just happened to be I guess, kind of a dark
Speaker 2: fascination with whatever's going on in his strange little brain.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I'm equally interested. It's like it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that I would much more, I would
Speaker 1: enjoy much more fully if it, you know, wasn't so relevant.
Speaker 1: Like I would love to look back and be like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, like man, people used to think that way.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. I'd love to readac about it. And instead
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, people still think this way.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, And like doesn't change how interesting it is
Speaker 1: from the OVID perspective, but it makes it a lot
Speaker 1: more frustrating.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I would love to know more about part three,
Speaker 1: like three when he's like directing stuff to women, because
Speaker 1: I mean, what little you've said is wild, So yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd love I'd love to hear more about what wow
Speaker 1: things he tells us to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean he he opens it by
Speaker 2: kind of saying, I've armed say it talks about the Amazons.
Speaker 2: I think it's I've armed Greeks against Amazons, and now
Speaker 2: it's time to arm you against Penthsa. I think I've
Speaker 2: said that right. So again, love is love is warfare,
Speaker 2: love is a game. You know this is These are
Speaker 2: really common things. I mean, lover's war is common all
Speaker 2: the way throughout. I'm just finding it. Yeah, I've armed
Speaker 2: Greeks against Amazons. Now I must fashion weapons for panh
Speaker 2: Saya and her girls. A well matched fight is best
Speaker 2: with victually granted through the favor of kind Venus and
Speaker 2: Venus Venus's earth girdling son. So he's basically saying it's
Speaker 2: it's not fair for women to go into this battle unarmed.
Speaker 2: So you know he's going to do them the favor
Speaker 2: of giving them some.
Speaker 1: Tips nice of hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just loved. He kind of immediately talks about
Speaker 2: like he then suggests that there's this kind of aside
Speaker 2: or interruption of like, why would you do that either
Speaker 2: from I think it's from the other men. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I hear you are, So why basically why betray a
Speaker 2: fold of sheep to the she wolf. I hear you ask, like,
Speaker 2: you know a lot of hunter and hunted prey and analogies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And he's basically saying like, don't don't base your judgment
Speaker 2: of all women on certain women. And he gives the
Speaker 2: example of people like Clytemnestra and then basically does like
Speaker 2: maybe a few lines, like less than a dozen lines
Speaker 2: on good women like Penelope. Then goes, you know, men
Speaker 2: are more often deceivers than women, but here's a list
Speaker 2: of women who put deceivers, and then just goes off
Speaker 2: on this kind of tangent. So talks about Madeia and
Speaker 2: people like that. So yeah, it's it's pretty clear right
Speaker 2: from the start that I mean, to me, I believe
Speaker 2: that the men are either the intended audience secretly or
Speaker 2: that they're meant to be there listening as well. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so he does he talk about he largely keeps
Speaker 2: on with these kind of lovers war and lovers a
Speaker 2: game metaphors, and that he is making it fair by
Speaker 2: doing this, thanks very much of it. The main thing
Speaker 2: that I've drawn out through just like skimming back through
Speaker 2: the books in preparation for this is that the amount
Speaker 2: of focus on how to present yourself is astounding in
Speaker 2: book three compared to book one. In book two, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's in book one where he has maybe
Speaker 2: like ten or twenty lines about like, don't over preen yourself.
Speaker 2: This directed at the men. He talks about, don't pum
Speaker 2: miss your legs until they're smooth, don't curl your hair.
Speaker 2: Do you think that theseus would have done that? You know,
Speaker 2: just just all of this stuff about like no one
Speaker 2: wants a man who's overpruned. But equally, make sure that
Speaker 2: you don't have nose hairs and bad breath, and like
Speaker 2: these are literally the things that he lists with kind
Speaker 2: of and he talks about a male stench, which I
Speaker 2: just think is hilarious. And that's kind of the extent
Speaker 2: of the advice towards men about how to present themselves.
Speaker 2: He has a lot bit about, yeah, make sure your
Speaker 2: shoes fit in your toga fits, you know, so you
Speaker 2: don't look like a slop. Equally, don't overdo it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: do the basics, be hygienic, wear clothes that fit you.
Speaker 2: And that's about it for blokes. And then yeah, we
Speaker 2: look at the women and it's just it's just constant. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He has a lot of kind of nature metaphors as well,
Speaker 2: about women are plants or not women are plant. But
Speaker 2: you know, he says about taking care of yourself and
Speaker 2: says that you get the best vintage from wellcare for
Speaker 2: grapes and things like that, just like take care of
Speaker 2: yourself and you're going to produce the best, you know,
Speaker 2: appearance or the best sex. What is he children, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: he talks a lot about specifies hair, makeup, clothes, and
Speaker 2: also not to let a man seeing you see you
Speaker 2: kind of in the process of getting ready, you can
Speaker 2: give away the deception exactly. Yeah. Yeah, And he says
Speaker 2: like one time he made the mistake of going into
Speaker 2: a girl's bedroom while she was putting her wig on
Speaker 2: and she had it on backwards because she'd rushed and
Speaker 2: you know, couldn't ever look at her the same way.
Speaker 2: Things like that. He talks about certain things that girls
Speaker 2: should train themselves to do well, so singing and dancing
Speaker 2: are all very charming. Talks about things to avoid, so yeah,
Speaker 2: it's his kind of overarching advice to women is know yourself.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of meant in the sense of know
Speaker 2: your faults and avoids showing them, you know, things like
Speaker 2: if you've got big teeth, don't laugh really wide and
Speaker 2: just like really nasty stuff like that. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: find the other bits horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, yeah, I also love him using the
Speaker 1: idea the example of theseus as like the correct manly
Speaker 1: man like of all the heroes, Like I think you
Speaker 1: did something really specific by selecting that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so towards the end of book three
Speaker 2: he goes on he has like a short kind of
Speaker 2: mythological I guess aside where he tells the story of
Speaker 2: procress and carefully, and then he's finished that, he then
Speaker 2: goes into the list of the sex positions. So it's
Speaker 2: all a bit like it's sometimes in the hours, it
Speaker 2: feels like he's just either trying to meet like a
Speaker 2: word count or really wanting to show what he can do.
Speaker 2: You know, here's here's a story as I would tell
Speaker 2: it in the Metamorphoses, but this time it's in ellergietics,
Speaker 2: and he'll just do a hundred lines of like a
Speaker 2: mythological disgust. Basically, I mean, there's some quite convincing arguments
Speaker 2: that they're not actually like meant to be read as
Speaker 2: bits outside of the text, that they are actually informative
Speaker 2: to the text. They are important, but kind of for
Speaker 2: the purposes of something like this, it's easy to just
Speaker 2: skip over them. And then yeah, after he's done kind
Speaker 2: of telling their story, which the moral is to him
Speaker 2: is to try not to fall too quickly into distrust
Speaker 2: of your male partners.
Speaker 4: Oh, Chris, yes, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, And then
Speaker 4: it just yeah, goes straight into how many lines do
Speaker 4: we have here, like thirty lines of if you look
Speaker 4: this way, you're better viewed this way during sex, if
Speaker 4: you if you look this way, you're better doing this.
Speaker 4: Give some mythological examples, which is always helpful. You know,
Speaker 4: he imagines andromache and people like that in bed.
Speaker 2: And then ends it by saying, after the pleasures of sex, like,
Speaker 2: don't kind of rush too quickly to ask for a
Speaker 2: gift because it will just scare him off. And then equally,
Speaker 2: don't open the bedroom bedroom windows. Much of your body
Speaker 2: is better left unseen. And that's how he kind of
Speaker 2: ends it. So, I mean, there's this constant I think
Speaker 2: we don't get like really any advice to neg women
Speaker 2: in book one and book two, it's all about how
Speaker 2: to take women's faults and turn them into something really,
Speaker 2: Like it says something about like if she's skeletal, call
Speaker 2: her spelt. If she's a bit chubby, call her like
Speaker 2: I don't know, it said like bouncing or something like that,
Speaker 2: like use use nice synonyms essentially. But then in book three,
Speaker 2: which you know, what would a female reader make of this?
Speaker 2: And what do we as modern female readers make of
Speaker 2: this that, like he's kind of just saying, like, your
Speaker 2: body's not great, here's how to do the best with it.
Speaker 2: Do we think that book three is actually designed to
Speaker 2: further his kind of erotic project of book one and
Speaker 2: book two, Which is the reading that I kind of
Speaker 2: subscribe to, is that whilst I don't believe it's exclusively
Speaker 2: aimed at women, I believe that he wanted women to
Speaker 2: read this, and that actually he's making them more susceptible
Speaker 2: to the kind of tricks of the trade. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: advising to men in books one and book two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it almost sounds like he's also you know,
Speaker 1: he wants them both to read it, but he also
Speaker 1: wants the women who are reading it because they should
Speaker 1: to know that the men are reading it too, Like
Speaker 1: it's clear that it's not like it's it's not just
Speaker 1: for you, because you know, the men are obviously more
Speaker 1: important in this scenario, So like you should know that
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you any secrets that they are not
Speaker 1: allowed to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I mean within the first few lines
Speaker 2: of this book, he's got that you know, why are
Speaker 2: you why are you giving them secrets? And you ask, like,
Speaker 2: who's this you? It's clearly not the women. They who
Speaker 2: He directs the first couple of books and like, just
Speaker 2: go back to the start of book one. He opens
Speaker 2: it in quite an interesting way. It's like, if there's
Speaker 2: anyone in Rome who is not like adept in love,
Speaker 2: let him read my book, and like results are guaranteed.
Speaker 2: And I just find that really interesting. This this kind
Speaker 2: of I guess, the difference in the way that he
Speaker 2: directs it towards the men and the women. But two,
Speaker 2: we don't get it as much because it's seen as
Speaker 2: quite a continuation of book one. He's kind of like,
Speaker 2: right now onto the next topic, just picks up where
Speaker 2: he left off. But yeah, book three he has to
Speaker 2: refigure it and it's very clear that the men are there.
Speaker 2: He's not hiding the fact that his male audience is
Speaker 2: still present.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's important that the women know the men know,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's just yeah, it adds to the
Speaker 1: level of gross where it's like, Okay, well I'm telling
Speaker 1: you to do this stuff, but the men know that
Speaker 1: I've told you this, which means you are at fault
Speaker 1: if you know, you look a certain way and you
Speaker 1: don't position yourself in that ascribed way because they know
Speaker 1: that I've told you. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: this extra level of horror of just like no, no,
Speaker 1: like you best listen to me because the men are watching,
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2: Do as you're told. Essentially, Yeah, it's really interesting because yeah,
Speaker 2: he frames it with the you know, with all these
Speaker 2: kind of war metaphors at the start, is like almost
Speaker 2: empowering the women. He's giving them equal arms as the men.
Speaker 2: But I mean, arguably they've got like half as many
Speaker 2: lines dedicated to them, nowhere near as in depth. It's
Speaker 2: it's a lot more about how to kind of present
Speaker 2: yourself in kind of a sexy way, in an attractive,
Speaker 2: desirable way, and how not to be gross. Whereas for
Speaker 2: the men, it's it's a lot more specific. And there
Speaker 2: are a couple of points in the first couple of
Speaker 2: books that I wanted to draw on because we're kind
Speaker 2: of I feel like we've like talked about the grossness
Speaker 2: of the first couple of books, but yeah, if it's okay,
Speaker 2: I wanted to get into just a couple of those
Speaker 2: episodes just to really like make it clear what we're
Speaker 2: talking about when we're saying that it's it's gross and
Speaker 2: it's horrible. So, I mean, the first one that I
Speaker 2: picked up on is very quick in book one, and
Speaker 2: it's probably the most like commonly known bit of grossness
Speaker 2: in the ars Amatoria is he starts to talk about
Speaker 2: where to find a girl, so how to find a
Speaker 2: girl that suits your fancy and he's like, you won't know,
Speaker 2: be remiss in Rome, there's plenty of girls. Talks about
Speaker 2: all the different ages and types of girls that you
Speaker 2: can find in Rome, and then says, here are some
Speaker 2: places you can meet girls, and his main place that
Speaker 2: he prescribes as the theater, and his example of why
Speaker 2: the theater is a great place to pick up women
Speaker 2: is the rape of the sabine women. Where Romulus put
Speaker 2: on this like fake well like a spectacle two. I
Speaker 2: think that the kind of I don't know that the
Speaker 2: surface level idea of it was to get the Sabines
Speaker 2: down to Rome and create some kind of peace with them,
Speaker 2: but obviously there was this secret plan that they would
Speaker 2: kill the Sabine men and rape all the Sabine women
Speaker 2: and take them as wives, because you know, they'd set
Speaker 2: up this wonderful city of Rome, but they didn't have
Speaker 2: any women, or not enough women, so they decided to
Speaker 2: just steal some from the neighboring tribes. And I think
Speaker 2: that the backstory is that they'd had like they tried
Speaker 2: to create some kind of marriage treaty and the Sabines
Speaker 2: had turned it down, and so they were like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: as recompense, come along to these games that we're going
Speaker 2: to put on. And yeah, Ovid just then he says,
Speaker 2: the theater is a great place to meet women. And
Speaker 2: you know, Romulus set this precedent when he gave the
Speaker 2: secret signal and then describes he just goes into this
Speaker 2: kind of yeah, this is not even the side. He
Speaker 2: goes through quite an almost metamorphosis esque description of the
Speaker 2: rape of the sabine women. Wow. Talks about, you know,
Speaker 2: all of the different ways that they showed their panic
Speaker 2: and their fear, and he's very aware of their fear,
Speaker 2: the same way that he is in the metalphes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But and he then talks about how many of them
Speaker 2: managed to make panic like sexy. He thinks he discusses
Speaker 2: having like some of them went pale, some of them blush,
Speaker 2: some of them ripped their hair and it went all
Speaker 2: frenzied and that was really attractive. So he's kind of
Speaker 2: touching on the real severity in the horror of the
Speaker 2: rape of the same by women. Yeah, but then being like,
Speaker 2: and that's why the theater is a great place to
Speaker 2: meet women, and then he just moves on. It's insane. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just I.
Speaker 1: Mean, one, I know if this is a podcast, but
Speaker 1: I need everyone to know that my face looks I
Speaker 1: just like. For one, it never ceases to amaze me
Speaker 1: that Rome wrote that into their founding mythology, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: as a as a lover of Greece, I think it
Speaker 1: says a lot like for all theseus was a piece
Speaker 1: of shit. They did not write a story like that
Speaker 1: into their mythology. But aside from that, like that is wild.
Speaker 1: That is especially compared to the men. Yeah, we feel
Speaker 1: for the women in that, yeah, not so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And it's just it's just a baffling kind
Speaker 2: of like editorial choice to be like, you know, because
Speaker 2: he doesn't give many examples for the others. He doesn't
Speaker 2: give historical precedents for the other places that he says
Speaker 2: are great for meeting women, you know, the promenades, and
Speaker 2: he specifies like a few different like landmarks that are
Speaker 2: great places to pick up women, and they're all landmarks
Speaker 2: dedicated to Augustus's family, so people read that as a
Speaker 2: bit of a dig, you know, or meet them at
Speaker 2: like like it's like Octavia's colonnade or whatever, and that's
Speaker 2: kind of it. And then he does the theater goes
Speaker 2: off on this like fifty paid fifty you know, excursus
Speaker 2: about the rape of the safe by'e women in extreme detail,
Speaker 2: and then he goes, don't forget the races. The races
Speaker 2: are also a great place to pick up women. But
Speaker 2: with the races, he talks about how the seating is
Speaker 2: really confined and this is what they can't escape.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, oh, you know it facilitates physical contact,
Speaker 2: and you think, like, okay, if you left it there,
Speaker 2: arguably a bit creepy, but maybe okay. And he's like,
Speaker 2: because she can't get away, and it's just yeah, but
Speaker 2: you're not helping yourself of it.
Speaker 1: No, okay, this I meant to ask this earlier, but
Speaker 1: you've really set it up now with the Augustus reference.
Speaker 1: Where does this fall in his exile? Because he was
Speaker 1: exiled by Augustus, right, and so there's I know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about like whether even the Met
Speaker 1: is written kind of as a dig to Augustus and
Speaker 1: like kind of how he felt about him. So do
Speaker 1: you know where where these poems like fall into that timeline?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean it's it's definitely pre exile.
Speaker 2: The dating is it's around like zero between like two
Speaker 2: BC and two CE essentially from what I know. Yes,
Speaker 2: so we've got that before his exile. I think the
Speaker 2: Met is usually dated to round like eight CE, so
Speaker 2: this kind of predates that. Although that's not to say
Speaker 2: that he wasn't working on the Met at the same time,
Speaker 2: because it's I mean, it's fifteen books long. It probably
Speaker 2: took him a very long time and you know, arguably
Speaker 2: you could see like the the beginnings of the met
Speaker 2: here with these mythological excurses that he goes on. So yeah,
Speaker 2: the big thing about Ovid's exile in the Tristia, I believe,
Speaker 2: or ex pont it is one of his pieces of
Speaker 2: exile poetry, he claims that he was exiled for what
Speaker 2: he calls carmen et error, so a poem and a mistake,
Speaker 2: and people take the Carmen usually to be the l's amatoria.
Speaker 2: They believe that, you know, with Augustus's moral laws about
Speaker 2: adultery and the protection of the family of it, kind
Speaker 2: of prescribing casual sex, promoting adultery, all of this stuff
Speaker 2: is it just doesn't sit well with what Augustus is
Speaker 2: trying to put forward, you know, really trying to protect
Speaker 2: the Roman family and ensure that the elites were reproducing
Speaker 2: at the right rate of it is essentially sticking his
Speaker 2: fingers up to that, whether on purpose or not. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, like you say, it's very debated what he
Speaker 2: was exiled for. We don't know what the error was
Speaker 2: either the mistake. There's a suggestion which I find quite convincing,
Speaker 2: that he got himself involved with someone in the Julian
Speaker 2: family and you know, maybe was involved in some kind
Speaker 2: of adultery within the imperial family. So that would be
Speaker 2: a pretty good reason to exile him. But as far
Speaker 2: as I know, his wife goes with him to exile
Speaker 2: as well, So who knows not to say that he
Speaker 2: wouldn't chreat on his wife. You know from his poetry
Speaker 2: he would yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of the general consensus,
Speaker 2: if we can call it a consensus, is that usually
Speaker 2: it's argued that if there is a carmen a poem
Speaker 2: which was responsible for his exile, it's got to be
Speaker 2: the ars Amatoria, And if there was a mistake, it's
Speaker 2: likely to be something that would be a personal slight
Speaker 2: to Augustus. You know, how much truth there is in
Speaker 2: that we don't know? And again it comes from of
Speaker 2: its own kind of autobiographical in inverted commas writing, So
Speaker 2: how much he would yeah, exaggerate or try and you know,
Speaker 2: it would be a really good self promotion technique to
Speaker 2: say yeah, because it maybe he just made a mistake
Speaker 2: and then was like, I'm going to say it was
Speaker 2: one of my poems as well, and then people are
Speaker 2: going to be fixated on it for two thousand years,
Speaker 2: because he is the type of a poet who thought
Speaker 2: forward and you know, the metamorphases. He's like, I've sealed
Speaker 2: myself into the literary cannon now, And obviously.
Speaker 1: He's not wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's lucky that, you know, his work got preserved
Speaker 5: in manuscripts.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've lost his Madeia, which is really tragic,
Speaker 2: but most of his.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, like, just even hearing you
Speaker 1: reference Madeia earlier, I mean, I've always been fascinated by
Speaker 1: the fact that he had a madea that we don't have,
Speaker 1: and like, what was that like? But you know, from
Speaker 1: my love of the met I've always been drawn towards
Speaker 1: the idea that his Medea could be, you know, in
Speaker 1: the vein of I mean, of the others, right, the
Speaker 1: ones that do survive, because both Euripides and Seneca tend
Speaker 1: to be fairly sympathetic to her plate. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: I wonder, Now, I wonder if it would just be
Speaker 1: like this like massive pro jason like Creos I didn't
Speaker 1: deserve it, kind of like I'm so curious.
Speaker 2: I know, it's it's such a travesty. It's one of
Speaker 2: those things that you hope will just show up one
Speaker 2: day in one of these you know, rubbish dumps where
Speaker 2: they just discover stuff. But yeah, yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 2: I'd like to think that, yeah, that he would you know,
Speaker 2: be part of the like Justice for madea Team. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that. Yeah, the the poetry like that where
Speaker 2: arguably he's taking it more seriously, so you know, that
Speaker 2: would be I guess a play sorts or even if
Speaker 2: he was telling it in the same way as the
Speaker 2: met I do believe that he has a more serious
Speaker 2: tone in those, even though he's still himself and he's
Speaker 2: still a bit jovial and he has always, you know,
Speaker 2: got a bit of tongue in cheek. I think that
Speaker 2: he's capable of being a serious writer, and I like
Speaker 2: to think that in Maday he probably would do that.
Speaker 2: I think that The Ards is the example, the biggest
Speaker 2: example we have of this just absolute absurdity. I feel
Speaker 2: like I keep calling it silliness, which is quite reductive.
Speaker 2: It's just the word that comes to mind, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's absolutely absurd. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is kind of comforting to call it silly though too,
Speaker 1: because we have to, like I think, we have to
Speaker 1: be reductive, because that's like, I think that's actually almost
Speaker 1: important because it shouldn't be taken seriously at all. It
Speaker 1: is silly, Like that's I think a good thing to emphasize.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like what you're saying, like he can be
Speaker 1: very serious in The Met. I mean, particularly in the
Speaker 1: madeia episodes of The Met, he's quite serious. Makes me
Speaker 1: think of Procne and Philamella, where he is incredibly serious,
Speaker 1: like that is a traumatic story and he tells it
Speaker 1: like a horror show. So it is so interesting then
Speaker 1: to turn to this work and see sort of this
Speaker 1: other side, because yeah, I mean he was he was
Speaker 1: very capable of serious poetry and serious storytelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting you bring up, yeah, Propney and Philomena,
Speaker 2: because it's it's one that I've been doing in these
Speaker 2: lessons with about the Met and well about kind of
Speaker 2: women in ancient literature. And the example from The Met
Speaker 2: that we've used is that story and teaching that is
Speaker 2: really interesting. But people come at it from completely different
Speaker 2: angles as well, Like some people read it as purely
Speaker 2: just horrific, and that's because he's a man and he's
Speaker 2: taking pleasure and showing this horrible event, and others see
Speaker 2: him as really really sympathetic towards Philomela. And you know,
Speaker 2: I mean through this, it's not the type of poem
Speaker 2: or kind of episode that I think I would have
Speaker 2: revisited of my own accord. Really and actually going back
Speaker 2: through it and really thinking about her, I think that
Speaker 2: she is such an interesting character and of its portrayal
Speaker 2: of hers really interesting because she kind of maintains her
Speaker 2: femininity throughout everything that happens to her. A lot of
Speaker 2: his especially his rape victims, will barely any of them
Speaker 2: get revenge at all. Most of them are metamorphosed as
Speaker 2: part of like a way of saving them in inverted commerce.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the fact that she gets remain revenge but
Speaker 2: arguably isn't really masculinized in her strength. She still maintains
Speaker 2: this real femininity, and that was something that a lot
Speaker 2: of people are like, you know, talking about it, that
Speaker 2: they've resonated with is like, rarely do you get ancient
Speaker 2: women who are strong without also being kind of masculine.
Speaker 2: If you think of like Atalanta and figures like that
Speaker 2: who are like, I'm going to remain virginal in a
Speaker 2: way where I compete with men so that they can't
Speaker 2: like win me over Yeah, she's she's a really interesting character,
Speaker 2: and it's it's so difficult to yeah, to reconcile OVID
Speaker 2: in episodes like that, and Ovid the OVID that's written
Speaker 2: this this piece where yeah, he's talking about the Sabine
Speaker 2: rape and saying like, that's why you should go to
Speaker 2: the theater, and you know, this is funny, and I
Speaker 2: mean you can see the same kind of seriousness and
Speaker 2: understanding of the horror of these assaults in that short
Speaker 2: passage about the Sabine rape, but the context that he
Speaker 2: sits it in is completely just it's just, yeah, a
Speaker 2: huge juxtaposition, and he does, yeah that I think Book
Speaker 2: one is the most rife with this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So a bit later on he says, it's all right
Speaker 2: to use force. Force of that sort goes down well
Speaker 2: with the girls. They love to yield. What what they'd
Speaker 2: love to yield, they'd often rather have stolen. So this
Speaker 2: is one of the quotes that again, you know, we
Speaker 2: talk about him being kind of absurd and that as
Speaker 2: kind of I guess I don't want to draw too
Speaker 2: much of a distinction between like learned readers and like
Speaker 2: layman readers, because I believe that everyone should be able
Speaker 2: to access this poetry and understand it. But like, surely
Speaker 2: you have to have some kind of deliberate blinkers on
Speaker 2: to read that and be like, cool, I'm going to
Speaker 2: apply that to my life now. But that's what's happening.
Speaker 2: And that's why these texts are so important to keep
Speaker 2: going back to, is because someone has read that and
Speaker 2: gone right, so forceful sex is okay, especially to the
Speaker 2: point where it's basically rape. Although I don't believe he
Speaker 2: uses the word rape, the translation I have says, yeah,
Speaker 2: the audacity of near rape is a compliment.
Speaker 1: Well, that sounds like he is picking. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the word I want, but he is, yeah,
Speaker 1: picking and choosing what he's calling rape. Because literally, if you,
Speaker 1: I mean, you've just described rape, you can't just then
Speaker 1: call it near rape. And I didn't. I didn't say rape, Like, well,
Speaker 1: if you describe non consensual sex, I'm sorry to tell
Speaker 1: you that's what it is. It reminds me of like, obviously,
Speaker 1: the point of my podcast is to talk about how
Speaker 1: most of Greek mythology involves assault, and we've not been
Speaker 1: taught that it is assault for like the last hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, but the number of times that I have
Speaker 1: been told that, Like, you know, because say the story
Speaker 1: of you know what, I'll say the story of of
Speaker 1: say your ropa, right, like, like, I don't think that
Speaker 1: one's I think I know it is often described as
Speaker 1: the rape of Europa, you know, like these these stories
Speaker 1: that we we call that, we call it the rape
Speaker 1: of a woman. But that obviously that terminology, you know,
Speaker 1: has been used for hundreds of years, and so people
Speaker 1: will come to me and they'll say like, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: that's just an old word that meant abduction. And I
Speaker 1: just look at like, I mean, I never look at
Speaker 1: the people. It's always online, but I just want to
Speaker 1: look them dead in the eye and be like, why
Speaker 1: do you think that is? Why do you think that
Speaker 1: the word for abduction used to be rape? Is it
Speaker 1: because that was the intention of the abduction? Like get
Speaker 1: a grip? Yeah, that's the whole point. Like you can't
Speaker 1: just say it wasn't rape just because you wanted to
Speaker 1: not be described it? Would you described it as a rape?
Speaker 1: What can I tell you?
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think yeah. That the only other point
Speaker 2: I had on this type of stuff that I just
Speaker 2: really wanted to draw out is a bit away from
Speaker 2: that side of things, still in a similar vein, but
Speaker 2: not as explicitly about raping women.
Speaker 6: I guess something that he kind of preaches throughout is
Speaker 6: this idea of like I guess, like a meritocracy of like,
Speaker 6: work hard enough at your pick up artistry, and you know, oh,
Speaker 6: work hard enough your seduction whatever we.
Speaker 2: Want to call it. You know, it's essentially the same
Speaker 2: stuff that is in modern pickup artistry. Yeah, work hard
Speaker 2: enough and you will be able to win over any woman.
Speaker 2: And I think that that is like a really I
Speaker 2: think this is actually almost the crux of the issue
Speaker 2: is that that is such a dangerous precedent that Ofvid
Speaker 2: is saying any woman can be won over. And this
Speaker 2: is what's dangerous about pick up artistry and how it
Speaker 2: links into in cells is people feel like they have
Speaker 2: a right and that this is you know that the
Speaker 2: being told no means try again later, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no means try harder, Like yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what.
Speaker 2: It is they're saying. Like he literally is like, be persistent.
Speaker 2: If she says no, just try again another time, or
Speaker 2: keep keep persisting, And he literally does prescribe, just work harder,
Speaker 2: work hard enough, and you can have any woman. And
Speaker 2: he talks about women's bidos being much stronger than men's,
Speaker 2: which is a very interesting thing that I think has
Speaker 2: persisted quite a lot through history, and especially like female
Speaker 2: medicine as well. It's quite dangerous this idea that like
Speaker 2: women are really lust full. So yeah, he talks about
Speaker 2: the female libido being strong, then talks about it being
Speaker 2: like equivalent to a kind of minad style frenzy, and
Speaker 2: talks about his examples of female lust are all examples
Speaker 2: of incest and best reality. So he talks about like
Speaker 2: episodes from the Met, which is why I'm like really
Speaker 2: hesitant to talk about the dating because it's it's just
Speaker 2: something that I'm not sure of, and I feel like
Speaker 2: he's either written part of the met at this point
Speaker 2: or is like published bits of it. I really don't
Speaker 2: know on that side of things, But yeah, he's he's
Speaker 2: talking about Mirror and her wanting to sleep with her father.
Speaker 2: He has another of incest. He talks about pass looking
Speaker 2: at the bull and being just overwhelmed with lust, and
Speaker 2: like he describes female lust, it perpetuates this idea which
Speaker 2: you still see today of like not only it's kind
Speaker 2: of this use of like kind of feminism against itself,
Speaker 2: where they're like, women have sexual agency, but they're told
Speaker 2: not to talk about it by the patriarchy, and that's bad.
Speaker 2: So what we have to do is decide for them
Speaker 2: what they want. And that's the level that's kind of
Speaker 2: been reached today. And actually it's interesting to see this
Speaker 2: with others that he has a similar thing, but obviously
Speaker 2: just not quite as conscious of itself. I guess where
Speaker 2: he's saying, Yeah, women are inherently lustful and sex crazed,
Speaker 2: and therefore they will go for you if you try
Speaker 2: hard enough. Like, of course they will no idea about
Speaker 2: exclusively lesbian women. I mean, I know that homosexuality wasn't
Speaker 2: conceived of in the same way in the ancient world,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, there would have been women who only
Speaker 2: wanted to sleep with women, there would have been a
Speaker 2: sexual women. Yeah, there's just this, yeah, this concept that
Speaker 2: like they must want you somehow, And I think that's like,
Speaker 2: I guess, like the main point that I wanted to
Speaker 2: make about the kind of the dangers here. It's not
Speaker 2: all just cherry picking certain aspects of the text and
Speaker 2: putting it into this modern context, which is a huge issue.
Speaker 2: It's also there is this rhetoric here which I believe
Speaker 2: has been continued. I don't believe that all of these
Speaker 2: people are using OVID as a direct source. I think
Speaker 2: that it's a continuation over you know, thousands of years
Speaker 2: of this idea that, yeah, if you work hard enough,
Speaker 2: you'll be able to get what you want. And there's yeah,
Speaker 2: no kind of concept of a woman's right to say no,
Speaker 2: and a woman's just the idea that women might not
Speaker 2: want to sleep with you, which is why men get
Speaker 2: these disillusioned men who believe that they are involuntarily celibate
Speaker 2: because they're like and try just assholes.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and still be an assholes. That's the number
Speaker 1: one solution for in cells, be not gross like God.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of so much rhetoric from today, where
Speaker 1: you know that these people aren't reading AVID in most cases.
Speaker 1: It's just that this persists, like the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: the guy who's mad because he's a nice guy and
Speaker 1: the girl keeps going for someone else, and it's like, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: maybe you're not the fucking nice guy, Like you're not
Speaker 1: the arbiter of that, and then also this idea that
Speaker 1: like now it makes me like I watch a lot
Speaker 1: of like tiktoks from like women who are happily proclaiming
Speaker 1: that they're single and child free because that is what
Speaker 1: I am and it's nice to like not be alone,
Speaker 1: and and like the number of times that they'll reply
Speaker 1: to a man's comment where it's like, oh, you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up an old cat lady, and the women are like, great,
Speaker 1: do you think that's a threat? Like if they if
Speaker 1: the decision is between and it's I realized I didn't
Speaker 1: even register the fact that I'm sitting here with my
Speaker 1: cat on my lape that sentence, yeah, pausing that sentence
Speaker 1: to deal with the fact that that cat won't leave
Speaker 1: me alone. But but like yeah, like this it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: if I have to choose between a shitty man who
Speaker 1: who is just going to make my life more difficult,
Speaker 1: or the complete freedom of living on my own with
Speaker 1: a loving little cat, like oh, I'm so sorry, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be sad for the rest of my life
Speaker 1: because I don't have you at this asshole like in
Speaker 1: my life. Like it's this this bizarre mentality that that
Speaker 1: all women must like or just for sure, like all
Speaker 1: straight women. Let's even just go that far. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: all straight women must want a man. That's the ultimate goal.
Speaker 1: And eventually they will get so tired of being single
Speaker 1: that they'll settle for a piece of shit. And it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to tell you that being single
Speaker 1: is like pretty great, Mike. I don't answer to anybody,
Speaker 1: and I do not need that to change unless the
Speaker 1: guy is amazing. Yeah yeah, and guess what they're mostly not.
Speaker 2: That's time too, you know, it really reminds me of
Speaker 2: It was literally something I saw today. There's you know,
Speaker 2: around this time of year in particular. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they do it in like, you know, North America
Speaker 2: as well, but in the UK we have these reclaim
Speaker 2: the Night marches where especially as it starts to get
Speaker 2: darker because of like daylight savings, women will all gather
Speaker 2: and just walk through the town and it's about, you know,
Speaker 2: we should feel safe walking at.
Speaker 1: Night, and I wish we had that is that we don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, there's one happening in Extra at the end
Speaker 2: of this month, which is why it's kind of fresh
Speaker 2: in my mind. And they shared this It was just
Speaker 2: a Twitter exchange, and it was this guy saying reasons
Speaker 2: why women are single. They walk too fast, they have
Speaker 2: their headphones on, they're rude when I try and talk
Speaker 2: to them, And it was like someone had replied to it,
Speaker 2: basically saying, like, the three main ways that women present
Speaker 2: like protect themselves from unwanted attention is by walking fast,
Speaker 2: and wearing headphones and being a bra.
Speaker 1: So sorry, we're doing that on purpose. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: intentional because we do not want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to tell you, like that's not
Speaker 1: an accident. Yeah, but I really think that that's such
Speaker 1: a it's such a good like way of understanding their mentality,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the time, like obviously we're generalizing obviously,
Speaker 1: but like but again, like I mean, if there's a
Speaker 1: if there's a dude listening to my show of all
Speaker 1: shows who thinks that when I say this, I mean
Speaker 1: him specifically, then you know what probably I do because
Speaker 1: the good ones realize that I'm talking about the shitty ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not all men in the comments.
Speaker 1: Fine, fine, that's like my entire show. Like that's fine,
Speaker 1: this is not new, but like, yeah, this this mentality
Speaker 1: that like we must want a man, and it is
Speaker 1: because like the reasons why we're single or stuff like that,
Speaker 1: walking to pass with headphones like, oh, you must you
Speaker 1: need to stop doing that because you want a man.
Speaker 1: It's like that, Yeah, they can't fathom that that's on purpose.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, that's the whole point. Yeah, I walk
Speaker 1: with headphones on so no one talks to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes yeah. And also just like I mean safety, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's safety. Like you know, I think it's so important
Speaker 1: that we like are so open about all the different
Speaker 1: things that women do to protect ourselves from men. But like,
Speaker 1: in addition too, it's also that you know, nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten, if a dude talks to you on
Speaker 1: the street, he's being a creep. So even if I'm
Speaker 1: not feeling like explicitly unsafe, you know, like it's it's
Speaker 1: light out, I'm in a crowd of people, whatever, Like
Speaker 1: I still want to avoid a creepy dude talking to me,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's still the point. Like I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the last times that that I
Speaker 1: had a guy try to like, you know, I'm walking
Speaker 1: around with my headphones in and and like you know,
Speaker 1: they like make a motion to you know, take them
Speaker 1: out or whatever. And it's like for me, which is
Speaker 1: not visible on this call, but like for me, one
Speaker 1: of the things that men do most is to like
Speaker 1: they think they're complimenting, like I'm covered in tattoos, and
Speaker 1: they just like think they're complimenting it, and they're always
Speaker 1: fucking weird, and it's like it's such as it's a
Speaker 1: kind of similar mindset specifically tied to I think women
Speaker 1: with tattoos that like the idea that that I got
Speaker 1: them and I and I want men to talk to
Speaker 1: me about them, and like that's why I got tattoos.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I can't assure you enough that like
Speaker 1: these are not for you. I don't want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about them. I don't want you to compliment
Speaker 1: my ink, Like you're always going to sound like a
Speaker 1: dumb ass. And it's always dudes who aren't tattooed, because
Speaker 1: dudes who are tattooed get it. And you're like, I
Speaker 1: just yeah, I find it. It's so entertaining to kind
Speaker 1: of navigate.
Speaker 2: You didn't go through hours of needles stabbing your skin
Speaker 2: and pay you know, hundreds of potentially thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: to get this stuff on you for a guy to
Speaker 2: stop you in the street and.
Speaker 1: Be like hm, cool ink, like honestly, And there was
Speaker 1: just a word tat more than anything horrible anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just the ways that this is just still so relevant
Speaker 1: is I mean, I knew, but it's still my god,
Speaker 1: it's horrib.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean just to like, I guess bring it
Speaker 2: back into a little bit. There's it's you know, if
Speaker 2: we're talking about women out on the street, and how
Speaker 2: much of that you know will end up on the
Speaker 2: on the cutting room floor. But the idea of like
Speaker 2: being able to walk around and not be bothered. He
Speaker 2: he does talk about in his advice about you know,
Speaker 2: how to how to get a woman approach her when
Speaker 2: she's out in her litter, so like her little walking
Speaker 2: group with her kind of companions, that little guards like
Speaker 2: keeping us safe. Make sure that you bury her pace
Speaker 2: so that sometimes you're ahead of her, sometimes you're behind her.
Speaker 2: Make sure that like whenever you can, you brush your
Speaker 2: hand against hers. And and that just readss like stalker
Speaker 2: ish and and he says like literally follow her down
Speaker 2: the promise if she goes for walks, make sure you
Speaker 2: know where her walking spots are like stuff like this.
Speaker 2: It's just like it's it's literally follow women but also
Speaker 2: rub up against them as much as possible without seeing
Speaker 2: if they actually want that. Like I think, as a
Speaker 2: woman reading these texts, you're kind of just like, that
Speaker 2: really isn't good advice because I mean, not to give
Speaker 2: him credit, but I guess like certain bits of it
Speaker 2: are just interesting or seem to be about forming good relationships. It's,
Speaker 2: you know, it is like, take care of her when
Speaker 2: she's ill, and then he'll finish that off with the
Speaker 2: seeds that you've sown will reap you a big reward
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: So she can't even be nice about this one nice thing.
Speaker 2: I was trying to give an example of him being nice,
Speaker 2: and I just backed I just realized that wasn't a
Speaker 2: good example. But there are bits and pieces where he
Speaker 2: gives advice that would actually be relatively useful. And obviously
Speaker 2: those are ones that I haven't touched because they're not
Speaker 2: as fun as well, and there's interesting and just inflammatory,
Speaker 2: you know. But I would never advise anyone to read
Speaker 2: this book and actually take any of it as advice
Speaker 2: because there is this under current all the way through
Speaker 2: of just just persist and get access to the women
Speaker 2: at any any cost. Essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's true of all, like of modern
Speaker 1: pickup artistry too, where it's like this is not going
Speaker 1: to work. You have been conned into thinking that this
Speaker 1: will work. Yeah, and that's simply not the case. It's
Speaker 1: horrific advice. What are you doing?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And with modern pickup artistry as well, there's this
Speaker 2: kind of even clearer idea to bring it back to
Speaker 2: like the meritocracy and like if you work hard enough,
Speaker 2: you get what you want. Not only is that in
Speaker 2: of its work, it's more just like a dangerous precedent
Speaker 2: to set. But in modern pickup artistry, they will make
Speaker 2: them keep paying to come back. It's not only exploitative
Speaker 2: of the women that they approach, it's exploitative of the
Speaker 2: men who take part in these things. There's a really
Speaker 2: good piece by it's kind of a sociological text by
Speaker 2: Rachel O'Neill called Seduction, and she basically immersed herself in
Speaker 2: pick up artists cultures in or like kind of seduction
Speaker 2: groups in London. So this book came out I think
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, so it was like for a couple
Speaker 2: of years before that, and she talks about like the
Speaker 2: money side of it, that like they just keep paying
Speaker 2: to come back, and a lot of them end up
Speaker 2: really disillusioned by the end of it. And I think
Speaker 2: that that's where like pick up artistry on its own
Speaker 2: is pretty dangerous and creepy and weird. But once you
Speaker 2: then get these disillusioned guys who have had their heads
Speaker 2: filled with ideas about what they deserve because they've worked
Speaker 2: so hard and paid so much money, that's where I
Speaker 2: think that the real danger lies in all of this,
Speaker 2: and that yeah, that they can take an ancient text
Speaker 2: that certainly does have these elements in it and just
Speaker 2: present snippets of it as evidence. It really gives people
Speaker 2: the idea that what they're doing is right as well,
Speaker 2: which is why I think it's it's so important to
Speaker 2: talk about these poems, especially as people who are reading
Speaker 2: them in a wider context, understanding the context that they
Speaker 2: were written in, and you know, knowing that Ovid is
Speaker 2: rarely serious in his love poetry, and that you know,
Speaker 2: whether you whether you you know, buy into him just
Speaker 2: being like a fun little prankster or not. I think
Speaker 2: there's this idea that people who aren't familiar with the context,
Speaker 2: are just taking it for their own means, And yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's why I think it's really important that we
Speaker 2: keep talking about them. There's this suggestion that, like, should
Speaker 2: we teach the arts amatoria, so like, absolutely, we need
Speaker 2: to content waring loads of it, but I think it's
Speaker 2: really important that we are talking about it and understanding
Speaker 2: where these thought processes come from.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, yeah, no, I mean it makes me think
Speaker 1: of like the number of times that I have been
Speaker 1: told that, like I need to just stick to the
Speaker 1: mythology and not talk about the treatment of women, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's literally what I'm doing. It's that the
Speaker 1: mythology treats women like shit. And if we keep, yeah,
Speaker 1: like if we keep only taking in these these versions
Speaker 1: that have been retold to wash over all of that
Speaker 1: and pretend as though all these women actually loved Zeus
Speaker 1: even when he was the fucking swan, Like yeah, like
Speaker 1: that's what's ridiculous. Like what I'm doing is literally talking
Speaker 1: about the ancient sources exactly as they exist. Ye, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, Like that's how it is,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean it is very applicable to Avid,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean for all that, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty safe to say that he recognizes the
Speaker 1: absurdity in a lot of the hours, like he is
Speaker 1: still saying it. It does still exist, Like we can
Speaker 1: absolutely still talk about it, and it's the same. You know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people hear me and they think
Speaker 1: that they're like, why do you talk about this if
Speaker 1: you hate mythology, And I'm like, I fucking love mythology.
Speaker 1: I just am still going to talk about how it
Speaker 1: was awful to women. And it's like I'll still love
Speaker 1: Avid and has met and like be fascinated by him
Speaker 1: and register that the ours is gross and dangerous, especially today,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, I mean we can have both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Yeah, And like we don't know what
Speaker 2: he was like as a person, and you know, I
Speaker 2: mean I feel like it's kind of echoing what I know.
Speaker 2: You had Freddy Kimpton come on here, and something that
Speaker 2: he said really kind of resonated with me, because I
Speaker 2: mean we've studied together and we talk about OVID quite
Speaker 2: a lot, and we come at of it's work from
Speaker 2: completely opposite points of view as well, in terms of
Speaker 2: he's focusing on different poems to me. And I think
Speaker 2: the thing that Freddie said that's really just important for
Speaker 2: the ours as well, is like all we have is
Speaker 2: the words, So you know, in terms of if we
Speaker 2: are to just reduce it to what we have written down,
Speaker 2: what we have written down is difficult and worth talking about.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of the crux of it, I guess,
Speaker 2: is just that no matter whether we read it is
Speaker 2: meant to be kind of tongue in cheek, meant to
Speaker 2: be taken seriously, these words still have effect, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, a different reader could interpret them differently, And
Speaker 2: there are readers out there who are taking this at
Speaker 2: face value and going out into the world and behaving
Speaker 2: in the way that OVID says to behave, which just, yeah,
Speaker 2: isn't the type of world that I kind of feel
Speaker 2: safe in, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, and what you said earlier, you know
Speaker 1: about how like one, yeah, like modern pickup artistry is
Speaker 1: uh full, like they're scam artists in the exact same
Speaker 1: breath that they are misogynist assholes, Like yeah, well they're
Speaker 1: doing dangerous for women, but it is also scamming men,
Speaker 1: like they are talented in their just generally being horrific,
Speaker 1: but also like, yeah, the mentality that it that imbus
Speaker 1: that it that it that men think they deserve women
Speaker 1: and sex, Like that's that's the danger. And yeah, like
Speaker 1: you know, if if if examining and talking about this
Speaker 1: ancient work can and also like you know, draw light
Speaker 1: on on that that's still happening, that that these you know,
Speaker 1: ideas still exist and they're still disgusting and we you know,
Speaker 1: still can like break down kind of what what is
Speaker 1: going on there or or just like enlighten people who
Speaker 1: who aren't like that, you know, about these works and
Speaker 1: and like allow them to kind of see it for
Speaker 1: what it is both absurd and you know and dark
Speaker 1: and twisted, and you know, like I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still it's absolutely still valid. Also to study problematic works. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like as long as you recognize that they're problematic, like exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean, like this isn't entirely the same, but I
Speaker 1: fucking love madea Like I'm fine when she kills her
Speaker 1: children because it's sectional and it's and it's twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred years old, and like I can just still enjoy it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I don't know, it's interesting when whenever any
Speaker 1: kind of ancient work comes under fire like that, or
Speaker 1: think about it in the opposite respect where where like
Speaker 1: the right wing conservatives are like they're trying to cancel Homer,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, get a fucking grip.
Speaker 1: Like the closest thing to ever even remotely attempting to
Speaker 1: like stop studying something would be something that is outright dangerous,
Speaker 1: like the ours, and even still like I think we
Speaker 1: should still study it. People like, I mean, got the
Speaker 1: idea that anyone's trying to cancel Home or get a grip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh it's it's ridiculous, I think, yeah, with
Speaker 2: the whole You know, if if we were never to
Speaker 2: study texts that were problematic, classics and ancient history as
Speaker 2: a discipline would be dead.
Speaker 1: It would be literature. Yeah yeah, I have an English
Speaker 1: degree to the double major. I can tell you that
Speaker 1: studying English lid is just as problematic studying classics.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, you find out, you know that the
Speaker 2: guys that were writing all of these amazing pieces of
Speaker 2: literature just absolutely dicks in their personal life.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, oh it's just yeah, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: I knew this conversation would be good, but it's just
Speaker 1: it's fucking fascinating. It's so gross. Like I do love, though,
Speaker 1: to laugh at it in this way and to point
Speaker 1: out the absurdity. I do think, like you're saying, like
Speaker 1: it is so beneficial but also deeply enjoyable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. It's really really fun to just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: to have a bit of time to talk about it
Speaker 2: in this way, because it's it's difficult when you're studying
Speaker 2: something like the ARS to get across this kind of
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I feel like in terms of
Speaker 2: scholarly views, I have sat very much on the fence
Speaker 2: throughout this whole thing, and that is where I am
Speaker 2: at the moment, is like I'm not sure whether I
Speaker 2: read of it as sincere or tongue in cheek. And
Speaker 2: that's the really good kind of thing about I guess
Speaker 2: this format is that I don't need to know. I
Speaker 2: haven't really written all that much about the URS because
Speaker 2: I just struggle with it too much. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 2: going to disagree with myself in two years time, So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's really just have the opportunity to just to just
Speaker 2: chat about it and talk about how absolutely fucking insane
Speaker 2: it is anti.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean no matter which side you
Speaker 1: fall on of that question, it's still fucking absurd. So
Speaker 1: this conversation is just as valid regardless of what opinion
Speaker 1: you might form or than change two years later or whatever, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, or like Freddy said on my that
Speaker 1: past episode, like, the words are what we have and
Speaker 1: the words are absurd and silly in that way where
Speaker 1: I think it is kind of nice to be reductive
Speaker 1: because it is so just over the top ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, regardless of what Avid did or
Speaker 1: did not mean, of whether he was a cool guy
Speaker 1: or a piece of shit or somewhere in the middle, Like,
Speaker 1: regardless of any of that, he wrote this and here
Speaker 1: we are. So this is very fine. Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just I love it, but clearly, like we can
Speaker 1: talk about it forever, but we won't. But is there
Speaker 1: do you want to share anything with my listeners in
Speaker 1: terms of reading more from you or following you anywhere?
Speaker 1: It's also fine if that's not something you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely so, I relatively active on I was
Speaker 2: gonna say Twitter x twitter, whatever you want to call it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, it's like a form of protesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, speaking of the men who are pieces of ship.
Speaker 1: We're just going to keep calling you Twitter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, so I have yeah, like public
Speaker 2: Twitter and Instagram both are image and underscore risco. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not massively active on either in terms of posting,
Speaker 2: but I repost things that to do with my work,
Speaker 2: so that's helpful. And I co edit a magazine which
Speaker 2: is free to access online. It's currently on a free
Speaker 2: version of WordPress. We're hoping we might be able to
Speaker 2: get some money together to you know, make it ad
Speaker 2: free eventually. But yeah, it's called Ecclesia Magazine. The kind
Speaker 2: of the idea behind it is it's something that myself
Speaker 2: and its well, one of my friends from my MA
Speaker 2: came up with this idea kind of because he was
Speaker 2: out of classics and missed it so much that he
Speaker 2: wanted to still be writing about it and still be
Speaker 2: involved in that world.
Speaker 1: I know that feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole ethos of it is like accessibility,
Speaker 2: So it's always going to be free to access, even
Speaker 2: if that means that it's on a bit of a
Speaker 2: you know, an ad wridden platform at the moment. Also,
Speaker 2: we accept submissions from anyone regardless of level of you know,
Speaker 2: academic achievement. We're not looking for exclusively you know, doctors, PhDs,
Speaker 2: things like that. We've got a couple on there, just
Speaker 2: because obviously that's my kind of work circle. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we publish on anything to do with the ancient world.
Speaker 2: So I've written a couple of pieces for that. I've
Speaker 2: written one on a poet from Devon called Fiona Benson,
Speaker 2: who's done a book. It's it's a lovely poetry anthology,
Speaker 2: but really hard hitting in places where she kind of
Speaker 2: refit a lot of stories from the Met and she
Speaker 2: recasts Zeus as like a modern rapist. So in places,
Speaker 2: I mean it's called Zeus obviously is Jupiter in the
Speaker 2: met but a lot of her sources are taken from
Speaker 2: the Mets, so she has a kind of a Daphne
Speaker 2: episode and Iron and she kind of it's kind of timeless,
Speaker 2: but like recontextualizes it a bit more modern. So basically
Speaker 2: the premises that Zeus is on trial and we're seeing
Speaker 2: different pieces of evidence against him. It's a brilliant, brilliant
Speaker 2: piece of work.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I haven't heard of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like everything I want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've actually got two pieces published on that
Speaker 2: one piece of work because a couple of us are
Speaker 2: just absolutely obsessed with it. So yeah, I wrote something
Speaker 2: about kind of this idea of timelessness in victimhood and
Speaker 2: mainly focusing on Fion events, and but I think that
Speaker 2: that idea is really applicable to the met as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the main thing to push is you know,
Speaker 2: Ecclesia Magazine. We work very hard on it. We've only
Speaker 2: been doing it for like seven months, so it's still
Speaker 2: a bit of a baby, but any readership is brilliant
Speaker 2: for us. And then yeah, we're always looking for secondary editors,
Speaker 2: people to write for us stuff like that. So let
Speaker 2: me just double check what because our handles are different
Speaker 2: on Instagram and Twitter at the moment. Yeah, Ecclesia Underscore Magazine.
Speaker 2: So Acclesia is in the Greek word for like a gathering,
Speaker 2: not ecclesiastical churches. Great, yeah, and then yeah, on on
Speaker 2: Twitter it's Ecclesia Underscore mag just mag rather creavaccine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the main thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm so glad you have heard about that.
Speaker 1: I will yeah, I'll link to everything in the episodes
Speaker 1: of descriptions people can find it, but I'm also just
Speaker 1: going to go and follow. Yeah, I will. This is exciting.
Speaker 1: I love learning about new things too, but I'm also
Speaker 1: always happy to promote that stuff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you so much. That's really lovely.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh I love that that exists. That's so great. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing this. This was ridiculous
Speaker 1: amounts of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Like I said,
Speaker 2: it's just so nice to be able to, Yeah, just
Speaker 2: just talk about the absolute absurdity of this text and
Speaker 2: not in a kind of a lower pressure context. I'm
Speaker 2: not having to come to any big conclusions. It's lovely.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite thing about this show. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: rant and ramble about the world and like, and everyone
Speaker 1: loves to listen, so it's perfect.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, haha, nerds, thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 7: as always, enormous thanks to Imagine for having this conversation.
Speaker 1: Like, not only is it a topic I so wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about more, but we just had so much fun,
Speaker 1: which is hard when you're talking about something utterly horrifying,
Speaker 1: But we did great together and I appreciate it. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you enough, how horrifying some of the ours
Speaker 1: Amatoria is not least because of the ways it has
Speaker 1: inspired modern dangerous men. Uh huh. But fortunately, when something
Speaker 1: is so utterly absurd, it's also seriously fun to make
Speaker 1: fun of, just like the entire in cell mentality. Maybe
Speaker 1: just don't be an asshole? Have you ever thought of that? Anyway,
Speaker 1: this episode was long enough, so I will just leave
Speaker 1: you by saying that you can find links to image
Speaker 1: and social media that she mentioned in the episode's description,
Speaker 1: as well as the Ecclesia magazine, which seems very wonderful
Speaker 1: and cool. The more accessible ancient content the better, so
Speaker 1: find links to everything in the description there. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Myth's Baby is written and produced by me Leah Albert. MICHAELA.
Speaker 1: Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians, better known as
Speaker 1: the assistant producer. Laura Smith is the production assistant and
Speaker 1: audio engineer. The podcast is part of the iHeart podcast Network.
Speaker 1: Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help
Speaker 1: me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and
Speaker 1: the ancient Mediterranean by become a patron, where you will
Speaker 1: get bonus episodes and more and Kurt patrons, I promise
Speaker 1: you will hear from me soon. It's been a time.
Speaker 1: Visit patreon dot com slash miss baby, or click the
Speaker 1: link in this episode description. A reminder what my patreon.
Speaker 1: It is primarily considered to be helping me with the
Speaker 1: free podcast. You do not get a lot of bonus content,
Speaker 1: and I will not pretend otherwise. I do not have
Speaker 1: the time I am. I am perpetually drowning, but there
Speaker 1: is a lot of backed up bonus content and if
Speaker 1: you want to help, you would be just helping me produce,
Speaker 1: you know, two free episodes a week. I am live
Speaker 1: and I love this shit.