<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><br><br><br>--- On <b>Tue, 1/26/10, Son of Witz <i><sonofwitz@butcherbaker.org></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><br>From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz@butcherbaker.org><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Soldier Of The Mist: first reading (mit spoilers)<br>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth@lists.urth.net><br>Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 5:35 PM<br><br><div class="plainMail"><br>>> Why Latro is so favored by the gods is not clear to me, nor is why he<br>>> can<br>>>touch the Gods and make them visible to others. (I'm certainly not well<br>>>versed in Greek Myth, so these are my best guesses)<br>><br>> Well, he’s not merely *favored* by the Gods. He’s cursed by Demeter<br>> because his part of the Persian army desecrated the grove
near her<br>> Temple. This IIRC was listed as a reason for the Persian’s defeat,<br>> particularly by the Spartan 300 (where Latro was wounded).<br><br>I vaguely remember something about a desecrated grove. Do you remember<br>what scene or chapter that was.<br>thanks. ~witz<br><br></div><div class="plainMail"><br></div><div class="plainMail"><br></div><div class="plainMail">At the beginning of Chapter 1, Latro is told that he had been wounded "near the shrine of the Earth Mother, where the Great King's army fought the army of Thought and the Rope Makers."</div><div class="plainMail"><br></div><div class="plainMail">I don't remember if Wolfe says anything about the desecration of the grove, but Herodotus does. The Persian navy sailed to the sanctuary of Demeter. "There they beached their ships. They cut down cultivated trees, surrounded the ships with a stockade of stone and wood, and fixed stakes in the ground around the
stockade." <i>(The Histories</i>, trans Robin Waterfield, Oxford World's Classics, p. 580.)<br><br></div><div class="plainMail">Best wishes,</div><div class="plainMail">Jack</div><div class="plainMail"><br></div><div class="plainMail"><br>_______________________________________________<br>Urth Mailing List<br>To post, write <a ymailto="mailto:urth@urth.net" href="/mc/compose?to=urth@urth.net">urth@urth.net</a><br>Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></div></blockquote></td></tr></table>