/lit/ - Literature

Someone who is subjected to Apotheosis is called a god, OP.

If you want to look at literal historical examples, several of the early Roman Emperors---i.e., Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, and Claudius---actually DID undergo apotheosis.

In other words, after the deaths of Julius, Augustus, and Claudius the Roman Senate voted to make them gods. (And Caligula declared himself a god during his own lifetime.) Afterward temples were set up in their worship.

After this happened they were referred to as "Divus Julius," "Divus Augustus," and "Divus Claudius"---i.e., the Divine Julius or Claudius the God or however you want to translate it. But the meaning was clear.

If you want a skeptical look at this from a contemporary, the Roman writer Seneca wrote a satire on the Apotheosis of Claudius. It's called the "Apocolocyntosis of the Divine Claudius". Apo-theosis literally means in Greek "turning into a God"....Seneca's title means something like "turning into a pumpkin"....it's usually translated as something like "The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius".

Hope that's helpful.... I do know Greek and Latin if I can be of any more use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pumpkinification_of_Claudius

>>aelia axa est

Surely you meant "Alea iacta est".

Okay /lit/, you should all suge mentulam meam for answering this question.

Here's the Latin version of the quote:

prodigiosa loquor veterum mendacia vatum;
nec tulit haec umquam nec feret ulla dies.

It's not the Metamorphoses. It's the AMORES, Book 3, Elegy 6, lines 13ff

Here's another English version of the relevant passage:

Book III Elegy VI: The Flooded River

Stop, you reed-filled river with muddy shores,
I’m hurrying to my girl – wait for a little, waters!
You’ve neither a bridge, nor a roped ferryboat,
to carry me across, without a stroke of the oar.
I remember you as little, and didn’t fear to ford you,
and the tops of your waves barely touched my ankles.
Now you rush by, full of melted snow from the mountain,
and your swollen waters roll on, in murky flood.
What use was my haste, the scant hours given to rest,
that merged the night with daylight,
if I still wait here, if there’s no art on offer
to allow me to set foot on the other bank?
Now I need the winged sandals Perseus had,
when he carried the dreadful head wreathed with snakes,
now I want the chariot in which Ceres’s seeds
were first sent to reach the untilled ground.
**All marvellous untruths told by ancient poets:
things that never existed and never will.**

Seriously, you owe me a blowjob for finding this for you, OP.

>>I mean, vampires always drank blood, right? I don't think Stoker added blood drinking because of Catholicism; don't other sects of Christianity drink wine at communion?

Yes they do, but the whole point of the Reformation was to point out that ONLY Catholics believe they are actually literally drinking blood and eating flesh. From the standpoint of the historian of religion, this makes Catholicism more like a Dionysian or Orphic sparagmos---it makes clear the pagan roots of Christianity. From the standpoint of Luther, Calvin, or any other non-Catholic Christian, it's cannibalism and blood drinking.

Also, doesn't the scene where Dracula feeds a baby to his brides remind you of Swift's "Modest Proposal"? We're just not accustomed to thinking of Stoker as an *Irish* author with typically Irish anxieties.

Holy shit. I'm being intellectual in a Twilight thread. Somebody pinch me.

Shakespeare criticism is by and large an index of things not worth saying about Shakespeare.

He has a massive vocabulary, a command of differing high and low styles, and most importantly there's no biography we have that could "explain" his work away. In other words, he's still a mystery in a way that Dante (who did meet Beatrice and wrote from that inspiration) or Joyce (who did meet Nora and immortalized the day she first gave him a handjob) are not. Because we figure, oh Dante or Joyce did it for a girl they loved and lost or didn't lose, or whatever.

Hence, the authorship debate. Freud thought the plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. Walt Whitman and Mark Twain believed the Bacon theory. HELEN FUCKING KELLER believed the plays were written by Francis Bacon. (See the new book by Shapiro, "Contested Will", if you doubt me.)

You want to know my theory?

One English writer gets to be the most famous writer of all time. His name? Shakespeare (or so they say).

Meanwhile, 400+ years earlier, the only Englishman ever to be elected Pope gets elected as Pope. He promptly uses his powers to give Ireland to the King of England, which says a lot about the Papacy and about Irish Catholics. What was his name?

Well, Pope Adrian IV. The only English Pope. Look it up. His real name was Breakspeare.

Obviously Shakespeare was some kind of pen name. Obviously there is a conspiracy. I just find it hilarious that it's only within the past 10 years or so that people have started to suggest (based on the "Shake-shafte" found in a Catholic recusant household during Shakespeare's lost years) that Shakespeare might have been Catholic. DUH. Joyce noticed this, Antony Burgess noticed this, they both knew about Shakespeare / Breakspeare. They just had better things to write than more fapping over the supposedly greatest writer of all time.

Pic related: It's Hamlet's Uncle, the Roman who conquered Britannia and was deified there.

Here's what I really want to ask you Shakespearefags. I have never seen this discussed.

If you read Suetonius' Lives of the 12 Caesars, you learn that the Roman Emperor Claudius was selected to be emperor after the assassination of Caligula, because they found him hiding behind a tapestry, saw his feet sticking out, and pulled it aside, and declared "It's Uncle Claudius!"

Now Hamlet has an uncle named Claudius. In no source for the play (Saxo Grammaticus, Holinshed, Polydore Vergil) is it indicated that the usurping uncle of Amlethus, the real 13th c prince of Denmark had the name of the Roman EMperor who annexed Britannia and was deified at Colchester, and worshipped as a god.

But Shakespeare uses the name Claudius in the play, and also includes a moment of hiding behind the tapestry, except it turns out it's NOT Claudius hiding, although Hamlet thinks it is.

I was just thinking about this because Derek Jacobi plays Claudius the Emperor in the BBC's "I Claudius" but also plays Uncle Claudius in Branagh's "Hamlet" and it just struck me....Why has nobody suggested that the discovery of Polonius behind the arras is a sort of visual pun? Why does nobody mention that Claudius was the emperor of Rome who annexed Britain? Shakespeare doesn't pull his names out of thin air, and more to the point, Cymbeline and Lear show that he took a distinct interest in Roman Britain.

Yet I have never seen an edition of Hamlet which has a footnote about why he named the character "Claudius". It's like people assume he's Shakespeare, he's beyond us all. Bullshit. If a writer needs to come up with a name, he comes up with a name for a reason.

Does this sound loopy? I assure you the wind is southerly where I am, and I do know a hawk from a hernshaw.