(urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?

[James Wynn]

>> James wrote:
>> Gerry, I think your responses to Lee's points were argumentative without touching on
>> the point he is making.
>   
> Jerry:
> Quite different from my impression.

I think it was this that sort of irked me:

> Gerry:
> Megatherian = a large extinct ground sloth.  Doesn't tell us much
> IMO.  And surely any gigantic evil-intentioned sea monster might
> reasonably be called "Great Beast".  While I don't see him being
> called "Ground Sloth"!

So should we assume that "The Lives of the 17 Megatherians" refers to 17 
very famous giant sloths?

Here's the deal:
1)  Abaia is called "Great Beast"
2) Megatherian means "of the great beast(s)" or "like great beast(s)"
3) "Megatherian" is not a "different word". It is the same term in a 
different language.

To me, it seems to be not even much of a puzzle that the 17 Megatherians 
are names for the powerful giant aliens that do rule and/or have been 
ruling Urth.

The other options are that megatherians refers to a line of human rulers 
that have ruled under Abaia's authority or a line of human rulers that 
have fashioned themselves as being like Abaia or all the undersea 
powers. But the various occurrence of '17' in Ascia and in the 
Commonwealth simply has to be related. And I think we have enough 
information to put the pieces together:

There are 17 recognized "Great Beasts" who are ruling or have ruled 
Urth.  The term "Casdroe of 17 Stones" originates from a time when the 
17 alien powers came to Urth and were actively fighting over territory. 
Ascia's Group of Seventeen was put together with those Great Beasts in 
mind. Either the founders originally recognized and even worshipped all 
of them or, as Dan'l suggests, each of the original members represented 
an alien power (not necessarily 'possessed' them). Now, apparently, 
Ascia is wholly dominated by Abaia and Erebus (or perhaps only Erebus's 
memory). When the Ascians say "Where the Group of Seventeen sit, there 
final justice is done" that refers to a human council.

Why would people NOT write a history of the alien powers that have 
controlled and influenced life on Urth for millenia? And if you write a 
history of the activities of a sentient life, then that is a biography 
("The Life of").

I think you really have to understand the literature Severian encounters 
as having been culled and translated from ancient literature by persons 
greatly separated in time, location, and culture with often very little 
knowledge of each other. That you or I would not call an inquiry into 
the history of a giant sentient sea creature a biography is irrelevant. 
Wolfe is twisting our expectations of language to give the sense of the 
eons before Severian's birth.

I've tried to argue this before in the case of The Story of Frog. I 
think it is really key. Some guy (somewhere along the line in the Asian 
subcontinient) is researching  the story of Frog (Ymir) and says "Look, 
the story of the Ymir (king = raja = frog) is the same as this other old 
story of 'Romulus' that I found. They just use different names. His own 
story doesn't mention Raja's mother's name so he uses Romulus's "Rhea 
Silvia". He has two names now for Raja's father, so he calls him 
"Mars-Typhon" just as the Greeks and the Romans used to combine the 
names of foreign gods with their own when they considered them 
equivalent. Later, another translator performs some speculative 
philology and translates the parents names as "Bird of the Woods" and 
"Spring Wind". "Raja" gets named Frog. And with that designation, a new 
wholly different translator says "Look! this old story 'The Jungle Book' 
is actually a mythologized tale of the life this fellow "Frog".

Anyway, so it seems to me.

J