The feeling when you got to a website and see a "linkdump" sidebar and can't stop yourself from skimming over it and then you end up reading a long post by the Kiwi Hellenist on the Iliad.
"If you take a class on the Iliad, one of the first things covered is to avoid that kind of puerility. They’re all awful people — in all senses of the word. Homeric heroes aren’t people who are good, they’re people who have an extraordinary impact on those around them. They’re larger than life. They’re powerful enough that they don’t need to care what you think of them."
https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2023/10/hector.html
Whenever I hear somebody loving the Iliad I always wonder. Which part did they like? The spears going through the eye sockets and into the brains and other disturbing details? The looting of fallen opponents? The pervasive theme of slavery underneath it all? The over the top emotions and human folly? When I read it, I was mostly entranced by the fact that such old texts exist, and by the idle wondering about the reasons people would keep copying that text through the centuries. Something about the elements of human nature that remain with us today, unrecognized. How easy would it be for us all to revert, I wonder – and not in a good way.
(Brought to you by @brennen's linkdump on https://p1k3.com/)