Before you go getting too excited about that last post I should probably explain some things.
- The book cited by Apollonios Dyskolos is “On Made Up Stories.”
- 5/23 is a Discordian number.
- Thersites is a clown character from the Iliad who mocks Agamemnon.
- Fabius Dorsennus was one of the first authors of Atellanae fabulae, a Roman adaptation of the tragicomic phylakes plays invented by Rhinthon of Tarentum. Dorsennus became a stock character (possibly the basis for Il Dottore) and the genre eventually evolved into the Italian commedia dell’arte.
- Gelaste means laughing.
- Atella was an Oscan city in Campania.
- Comedy originated among the Doric Greeks, according to Aristotle and Athenaios.
- One of the most important Oscan texts to come down to us is known as the Cippus Abellanus.
- Alkinous was credited by Homer with making gold and silver mechanical dogs.
- Glaukos means owl.
- Hephaistos was credited by Homer with making all kinds of mechanical creatures.
- Chalcheios is an eponym for the Festival of Bronze shared by Hephaistos and Athene.
- Archytas was credited with making a mechanical dove.
- Philolaos was the teacher of Archytas and also made mechanical animals.
- The temple of Minerva Medica in Rome was actually a Nymphaeum which later scholars misidentified as belonging to the Goddess.
- Medica means Doctor.
- Octavian was a total prick. (And a limp one at that!)
- Appian’s Funeral Oration of Mark Antony is thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
- The two epithets of Athene combined mean the one who heals through laughter.
And yes, I fabricated a plausible-sounding source to give legitimacy to Athene’s mechanical owl from Clash of the Titans, because that’s how I roll.
