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Sigmund Freud For all my craze about Freud and classics, I do have to admit that there are several valid critiques of Freudian theory out...

This is a story of two unexpected lovers cursed with loving each other.  Psyche was the most beautiful girl on Earth. Suitors, both...

Some readers like to interpret the story of Alcyone and Ceyx as a tender tale of how love trumps tragedy, but others think of it more as...

Modern conceptions of the afterlife are rather binary. As a result of Christianity, we often tend to imagine a rather binary heaven or...

There aren’t many myths which surpass the story of King Tantalus in terms of gruesomeness. In my opinion, Tantalus is the greatest waste...

Artists are obsessed with ideal forms. As one myself, I would know that the relationship between creator and creation is one that is...

Back in middle school, I carried a piece of amethyst with me everywhere. I have no recollection of where I managed to find it, but I...

The Romans worshipped a god for practically everything. Jupiter ruled the skies, Neptune ruled the waters, Pluto ruled the underground....

Bartholomeus Spranger's painting of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, who is hiding behind the bush (1585). In 1583, the Holy Roman Emperor...

The Roses of Heliogabalus, a painting by the Dutch artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. "He [Elagabalus] loaded his parasites with violets...

During Arachne and Athena's competition There’s nothing that the gods hate more than getting humbled. If you’ve read my post on...

Though theater is often reduced into a pure form of entertainment, it played the important role of social and political commentary in...

Book 4 of the Aeneid  is one of my all-time favorite selections of Latin poetry. For those who don’t know what the Aeneid  is, it’s...

Image of a Roman wedding carved onto the side of a tomb. The question of love is one that remains constant throughout the ages. Love’s...

On the Walpurgis night of 1977, mobs of women stormed Rome in witch disguises, passing the night in rowdy drinking and dancing.  Trailing...

A painting depicting a stereotypical Roman witch: an old hag with supernatural abilities ***The following is a revised excerpt from a...

Narcissus staring at his own reflection Narcissus was a young man of inexplicable beauty. Born from a god and a nymph, Narcissus came...

Apollo had a crush, things got messy, and now we have a flower. When modern meets myth, the “truth” gets muddled. I’ve noticed that queer stories tend to have especially polarizing receptions: one which firmly believes in the romantic nature of a same-sex friendship and one which will deny it any cost, so a queer romance as uncontested as Apollo and Hyacinthus’s is like a breath of fresh air—or perhaps a westward breeze?—for such an undermined genre.

The Saja Boys really took “let me be your idol” to a new level. Topping every single chart in the world, the fictional Kpop demon boy group from Kpop Demon Hunters did something that I never thought would be possible in a million years…dethrone BTS. Since Kpop had really only turned mainstream in the past decade, you’d expect these kinds of fanatic circles to be relatively modern, but the Ancient World totally pioneered the craze.

Another common gripe that I have with classical retellings is that their protagonists fall into either the archetype of the uninspiring...