What this project is about.
This one is from Book 9.
How long it took to read this (aloud): 14 mins (approx – hit stop on recording prematurely)
What it’s “about”: Hercules crosses a river, kills a raping Centaur, gets killed in a very very gruesome way (wearing a shirt impregnated with Cenatur blood ends up like an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon – the one with the ants – and then ‘rescued’ by his dad Jove.
Words I didn’t know: xx
Quotable quotes:
He swam cross-current
And fought the waves; then as he came to shore
He heard his wife call out and at a glance
Saw Nessus mounting her. Hercules cried,
“Don’t think you’ll get away with all your speed,
You fornicating fool, half-man, half-beast,
Nor shall you get your fill of what is mine.
AND
Rumour, who mixes
Frail truth with lies, began to tell a story
AND
undoubting Hercules
Was glad to wear the Hydra-poisoned shirt.
As Hercules sent up his praise to Jove,
Incense, red wine poured on the marble altar –
To make its flames grow brighter in devotion,
The altar’s heat increased the hidden fires
That burned within the shirt and spread their flames
Until they seemed to pierce the hero’s bones.
In manly fashion, still much like himself,
His groans and sighs were silent and withheld,
Yet when the pain was more than he could bear,
He tore the altar from its base and filled
Long miles of Oeta’s forest with his cries.
Then as he tried to strip the shirt away,
His flesh came with it. Horror to his sight,
It seared his bones and clung or stripped them bare;
Like white-hot rods thrust into icy water,
His blood steamed with the heat of Hydra’s venom,
Its flames burned inward to his vital parts,
And darkened sweat poured from the restless furnace
That covered lungs and belly, even the marrow
Of bones turned into steaming, brackish water;
And all his limbs turned black with hidden fires.
He raised his hands to heaven as he cried,
“Saturnia, eat your fill of ruined flesh,
Look down at me from your high throne in heaven
To feed the barbarous sinews of your heart.
AND
Take, take this burden from me, which is life,
That is no more to me than hopeless labour,
Long hours of disease and agony.
And what you take shall be a gift to me,
The only grace a stepmother can give.
How it lands to my eco-sensibility: xx
Obvious allusions, ways it was used (that I am aware of already) : xx
What I know I didn’t ‘get’: xx
To my knowledge, who’s used it why/how (RACC): xx
Further research questions: xx
Anything else: xx
marchudson.net 
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