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

[David Stockhoff]

On 5/21/2011 8:52 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> I think we'll have to disagree about what "Lives of" could mean.
> Jerry Friedman
>
I have my own theory.

I  always assumed that the form of the title "Lives of the Megatherians" 
was a simple imitation of Butler's "Lives of the Saints." Based on this, 
one would think that the Beasts are the opposite of saints in a world 
even more fallen than our own: human beings who are evil rather than 
saintly, and who are in some sense "exalted" by their evil, thus 
deserving such treatment. But the saints are not numbered. And we don't 
know from this what evil the Beasts did except that it must have been great.

Upon googling, I found that another precedent is Suetonius' "Lives of 
the Twelve Caesars"---which I always knew as simply "The Twelve 
Caesars." This example introduces (1) number (but a nice round 
"complete" and "lucky" number) and (2) long-past imperial status (and 
even godly status, at least since Augustus).

If "Lives of the Megatherians" is the kind of significant joke we expect 
from Wolfe, and it plays off both these titles, then the Megatherians 
must be (a) twisted, "unholy" perversions of saints (b) past rulers 
known to everyone (c) human or at least semi-human, because this is 
common to both books.

This last point is key: humans are evil because they choose to be; evil 
monsters are evil simply because we say so, or because they were made 
that way---they don't make a choice to be evil. Therefore, no 
one---writer or reader---would care about the "life" of Cthulhu, because 
all he ever did was eat and sleep, and more knowledge of his life would 
just make him more human.

My vote is for Typhon as the sole Megatherian given a name by Wolfe. I 
believe the Megatherians to be otherwise lost to history the same way 
Severian knows nothing of the Caesars or the Good Caliphs or any other 
king list from our time. I believe they are meant to indicate a long and 
dark future political history of Earth/Urth, something on the scale (and 
containing the horror) of the Beast of Revelations arising many times 
over without any relief from a divine being or an End Times. Perhaps 
Typhon himself was the last of these rulers.

I don't see anything to connect the Beasts with Ascia or Abaia except 
the number 17, and again I think the whole significance of "17" is that 
it is not "12." It is the thematic opposite of 12. 12 is the "complete" 
number because it is highly divisible. 17 is "very" prime, i.e., highly 
indivisible.


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