(urth) Father Inire as Dionysus

[Lee Berman]

>Antonio Pedro Marques: He professes it's a quest for knowledge, so he 
>should be going out for whoever possessed some bit of knowledge. 
 
I believe it is the Old Autarch who tells Severian that Thecla was chosen
for her loyalty to Vodalus as a means to bind his followers more tightly
to him. I tend to think Vodalus as an expendable pawn of higher powers
(easily replaced by Agia with the help of...Hethor) who doesn't really know 
that the true importance of his dinner choices (and all else that he does) 
relates to Severian as a nascent New Sun.
 
>Otoh, the folk in the necropolis seem to stand guard for their families, which 
>would suggest indiscriminate preying on the part of the outlaws.
 
Perhaps. But perhaps there many are other ghouls lurking in Nessus other than 
Vodalus. We are only concerned with the choices of Vodalus here and he seems
very selective to me. 
 
I think the pikemen who confront Vodalus fulfill Wolfe's desire to portray Vodalus 
as the opposite of these simple, modest folk as well as create a nice torch and 
pitchfork mob scene, another nod to Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.
 
>David Stockhoff: Lexicon Urthus says so, but I don't recall the revealing passage. 
>Appian was apprentice to the honey steward Paeon. He ruled for a long time, 
>being young, according to LU.
 
I think the name Appian comes not from BotNS but from the short story The Cat.
Borski perhaps rightly noted that Appian could be an appropriate name for a 
guy who is/was a beekeeper (though Apian would be the more proper spelling for 
that).