i really love that line οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ᾽ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ᾽ Ὀδυσσεύς, "no other odysseus will ever come to you," because he's saying not that he is the true odysseus but that there is no truer odysseus alive on the earth. he doesn't say, 'i am the real odysseus.' he says, 'i'm the realest odysseus you're going to get.'
there was an odysseus before there was a war
but who remembers him?
“He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.”
— A. S. Byatt, Ragnarok: The End of The Gods
If you were in ancient Greece and were recieving an apprentinceship from a half horse-half man, would he be your mentaur?
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