Episode 358: Homer & The Iliad (with Lexie Henning)
/Traveling bards, days of performances, and a 10 year war - we’re talking about Homer and The Iliad with scholar and podcaster, Lexie Henning!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of warfare, death, enslavement, drowning, and plague/disease.
Guest
Lexie Henning is the Programs & Administration Coordinator for the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World. Her research interests include Classical reception in media, nationalism studies, and cultural heritage in political conflict. In 2020, she co-founded The Ozymandias Project, a humanities focused non-profit aimed at making access to the ancient world more accessible to the general public. Her work in public humanities led her to create and host Ancient Office Hours podcast and co-host The Reading Party Podcast.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Brandon Grugle
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And today, we are joined by our new friend, but a good friend, Lexie. Lexie, welcome to the show.
LEXIE: Hi. Thank you, guys.
JULIA: Now, Lexie, can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and what you might be talking about here on the podcast, if they didn't, you know, scope out the episode title before they started listening?
LEXIE: Sure, sure. So my name is Lexie Henning, I am a podcaster, but I will say that I work at UCLA for something called the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World. It's a research center centering on Ancient Persia. Although, that's not what I'm talking about today, but essentially, the background for what we are talking about today is that I picked up my bachelor's in classical studies, so the study of ancient Greece and Rome, although I always liked Greece more.
JULIA: As you should, as you should.
LEXIE: Exactly. And I've always just loved ancient history and mythology. And so that's what I spend a lot of my life on. Yeah.
JULIA: And I think what we're going to be talking about something very exciting today, something that we've talked a lot about on the show peripherally, I suppose. Like we— we've touched on stories, but never the overarching story of what that is.
AMANDA: It's been a rest stop, Julia, a service station. We've been like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "—You know what? While we're here, let's just dip into the Arby's real quick and then get back on the road. But we've never like made it a destination."
JULIA: Yes, but now the destination is here, folks. We're talking about it. We're talking about the Iliad and the Odyssey. And I'm so excited to be talking about those things, because, man, they really inform a lot about Greek mythology, huh?
LEXIE: I mean, it really sets the basis for every epic ever.
JULIA: Yeah.
LEXIE: And one thing that we can definitely get into later is that, you know, this is the best, it's the original, I am, what I consider, a Homer purist, which I know offends some people, but sorry.
JULIA: Now, Lexie, we— we have talked about the stories of the Trojan War and the— the beforemath and the aftermath. The beforemath is definitely the right word for it. I'm just gonna keep that in there. But we, I guess, haven't talked about the— the beat for beats of these stories. So could you give us like, I guess, the SparkNotes version or the Lexie's favorite moments version of these stories? And we can kind of go from there and ask you some questions.
LEXIE: Sure. There's so many. And then of course, what we have to remember is what has trickled into sort of our modern consciousness are a conglomeration of stories that aren't necessarily in the original source material. So just to set the stage for you guys, and for the listeners who may not be familiar. When you say Iliad, when you think of that, you would think of probably the Brad Pitt Troy, right? And so then you think, "Okay. So you have, like, the stealing of wives, you have Helen being stolen from Paris, and you have kind of their journey back to Troy. And then you sort of have King Agamemnon running to, you know, help his brother out and kind of this whole voyage." The original source material, though, none of that is actually in there. So when you start the poem, it starts in year 9 of a 10-year war.
JULIA: A real immediate situation.
LEXIE: Right. And like Achilles, famous sort of strumpet moment where he decides, you know, "I'm— I'm— you've stolen my treasure, my Briseis. I'm not gonna fight." Yeah, that's already going. Like, you— you basically have this already done. And so it's kind of sad when you think about it, because we have all this great mythology built up, but the source material is, like, in the last few days of like, the ninth year, and the entire epic poem is like nine days' worth of the whole war.
JULIA: Wow.
AMANDA: Wow.
LEXIE: And people don't know that.
JULIA: I certainly didn't.
LEXIE: So everything— people are like, "Oh, yes." And— and all this happens, I'm like, "Yeah, that's great. But we get that from, like, other sources, not this one." So what you do get is a description of many duels. And you do get a lot of background exposition kind of through the text, but yeah, it's like nine days. So the SparkNotes version though for the layman who wants the whole story, not just the nine days, it starts actually with a wedding, which many Greek things do. But a wedding that goes terribly wrong. And so essentially what you have is Eris, the goddess of Discord, and she takes his golden apple, and throws it in the middle of a wedding, because she's pissed that she wasn't invited.
JULIA: Classic.
LEXIE: And she's written on it for, like, the most beautiful. So, of course, you have three main goddesses. You have Athena, goddess of wisdom. You have Hera, Queen of the Goddess, and goddess of marriage and wife of Zeus. And you have Aphrodite, the literal goddess of love. And they're all fighting over it. And so essentially, Zeus gets, like, real pissed and he's like, "Look, man, I'm not getting into this." So he essentially plucks a shepherd boy named Paris and says, "You get to judge this." So they all offer him like wonderful gifts. Surprise, surprise, he chooses the goddess of love. And she says, "Well, you can't have me because I'm a goddess and— whatever. But I will give you the most beautiful mortal woman in the world." And it's Helen who, surprise, surprise is already married to Menelaus, the King of Sparta. And so he's like, "Oh, that's fine. I'm fine." He is— Paris is not actually a real shepherd. He is the son of Priam, who is the king of Troy.
JULIA: Sometimes we just send princes to go be shepherds in the wilderness, like that thing happens.
LEXIE: Yes. There's a whole prophecy where his sister, Cassandra is, like, foretelling the doom of Troy unless he's killed, but his parents kind of are not wanting to kill him. So they just, like, send him out and think he'll never be here. It's fine, we're fine. It wasn't.
JULIA: No.
LEXIE: But essentially, he goes, he reclaims his identity as the prince of Troy. He goes and steals— well, in some versions, he steals Helen from her husband in her home. And in some versions, she leaves willingly, and that really— depending on your adaptation actually changes kind of the dynamic of the entire myth.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
LEXIE: But you can decide which one you like. But essentially, then Menelaus is really pissed, goes to his brother Agamemnon, who's wanted to conquer Troy for years. And essentially, they start like a 10-year war to both get her back and burn the city of Troy to the ground. And what you get is a lot of, like, the best heroes and kings of Greece coming to this war to fight because it'll make them immortal. And so essentially, that is, what the Iliad is. It's— it's a long thing.
JULIA: My favorite detail that I didn't know before was that Agamemnon already had beef with Troy. And now it's like, "Oh, yes, the perfect excuse to start a war. Excellent." Like, "Let's just do it." Oh, I love that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: My other favorite detail that we didn't get to quite talk about, but the judgment that Paris does of the goddesses is done while he's like— they just find him in a bath somewhere. He's like bathing in a spring and he's just, like, fully naked, having to be like, "Uh, which of you is hottest? Okay. Um, interesting. Great question."
LEXIE: Yeah.
JULIA: It's so good, it's so good. So when we're talking about the— the nine days that the Iliad actually kind of features in the actual writing that Homer did. Now, this is a genuine question, I might just be misremembering. This is the whole thing with Achilles and the Achilles heel, and going on the rampage and whatnot?
LEXIE: Yes. Like, it's a huge part of it, because—
JULIA: Okay.
LEXIE: —Homer does want to highlight Achilles and sort of his legendary fight or— I call it a tiff, because I'm like, it's a pissing match. So—
JULIA: It really is.
LEXIE: —it's a legendary tiff that was blown up. It was, you know, a mountain out of a molehill. But at the same time to the Ancient Greeks, it was actually a huge slate because you can do a lot of stuff. You have a lot of freedom in the ancient world to do a lot of weird, horrible things that would have been like, acceptable.
JULIA: Hmm.
LEXIE: But what you can't do is you can't steal another man's rightfully earned treasure, right?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And you get this wonderful— I mean, I think it's kind of funny in the text, but to other people, they are like, "Oh, that's not that funny." But essentially, when you learn about how the fight started, right, once you have the initial wave of attacks, and you get your first Trojan prisoners, what you have is Briseis and Chryseis. And Chryseis is kind of the one we don't hear about. She's the daughter of the high priest of Troy. And the soldiers, the men essentially say, "Okay. We know that Agamemnon, his High King, is going to get first pick of the women, but Achilles as the best warrior is gonna get second pick." And so they know that there's going to be this debate about the king essentially wants the prettiest one, but also he wants to sort of try to humiliate Achilles. So he wants the one that he thinks Achilles might want. So the men kind of do this brilliant thing, where they say, "Okay. We're gonna line them up in sort of what we think is the order of best to worst."
JULIA: Man, terrible.
LEXIE: And they deliberately put Chryseis first and Briseis second.
JULIA: Hmm.
LEXIE: So of course, Agamemnon is like, "All right, man. Yes, I want her." So he picks Chryseis and that's how Achilles gets Briseis. But then, of course, with her father being the high priest and then with, like, plague and famine, and other shit like happening in like hitting the wall, Chryseis' father essentially comes to the Greek camp and begs, and says, "Bad things will happen. You will get plagued. Apollo will send a plague to you if you do not return my daughter." blah, blah, blah. And being a very stubborn high king, Agamemnon says, "No, I will not do so," until actually plague comes hit his army, and then he's like, "Oh, I done fucked up. This is terrible." So—
JULIA: There's so many instances of Agamemnon going, "Oh, damn. I fucked up. My bad, my bad."
LEXIE: Right? So then you're like, "Uh-oh." So, yeah, essentially, then he is forced to eventually agree and says, "Okay. I'm not messing with this anymore. You can have Chryseis back." But having to give up his booty looks real bad, so he was like, "Okay. Well, if I can't have my thing, Achilles can't just get off, you know, and— and be off the hook. So I'm gonna take his prize," which he rightfully earned. So then by stripping it from him, that's like the greatest insult you could offer to essentially the greatest warrior, but any warrior really, but especially the greatest warrior. So that's why he gets mad, and then he's like, "Okay, I'm gonna sit in my tent, and then you're gonna beg for me to come back or you're not, and I'm not gonna fight." So that's why he essentially ends up there.
JULIA: And that's how it's gonna go for, like, nine years.
LEXIE: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "And that's gonna suck for everyone else besides me, who is just going to chill on this camp."
LEXIE: You know, that's how it has to be sometimes. You know, if you just— it's the principle of the thing, which it— it really kind of was, but—
JULIA: Listen, we love a dramatic bisexual, so Achilles is always going to be plus one in our books here, for sure. So what is the inciting incident then if we're— we're talking about these nine days and the ninth year of this 10-year war? What is the inciting incident that Homer starts us off with?
LEXIE: I mean, the book itself also starts with a bit of exposition, so it tells you kind of who's there. So essentially, what he does is the entire chapter of Book Two is dedicated to just telling you who is fighting in the war.
AMANDA: Oh, great.
LEXIE: It's literally called the Catalogue of Ships, because he tells you, "And we have this king from here, and his ship, and his people." And— and it's like a really long chapter, too. So if you just want to, like, challenge yourself and say a bunch of really hard names and boats from places that you've never heard of, and are, like, this is super random, read Book Two.
JULIA: That's very good. Totally fair.
LEXIE: Good luck. Yeah. But instead, what I'll say is one of the early duels that I do like.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And we don't actually have this in modern media, for some reason. We don't— like we literally leave this character out of any kind of media adaptation, because it's uninteresting to the layman, I suppose. But there's a great duel with Diomedes, and this is a warrior of great renown, and he defeats Pandarus who's a Trojan prince, I believe. And then he actually also goes out and has a duel with Aeneas who in these stories is not really— he— he's kind of a bit player, but for fans of the Aeneid will know that when Troy falls, he is the one who kind of gets out and then has to go on his own sort of Odyssey and then finds Rome.
AMANDA: I'm like, "I know him. He has a play. It has his name in it."
JULIA: He does.
LEXIE: He does, he does. He's a very bit player here, which is hilarious to me, but yes, then eventually Virgil takes him up and goes, "I will make him my hero," and then copies essentially Homer.
JULIA: Amanda, that has real romance novel energy, where—
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: —it's like guess the romance novels about this, and then there's that one really interesting side character, and you're like, "When is their romance novel coming out? Tell me, I want to hear all about it."
AMANDA: Exactly, exactly. But speaking of novels and thinking of like frame narratives, which we also love, why does it start here? Like, why did we skip the first nine years? It's— it's really like interesting in literary, now that I think about it. Like, hey, we're not at the fresh, exciting first few days or weeks of this war. We're like nine tedious years in. But Lexie, to the best of your understanding, like why are we zooming in on the end here?
LEXIE: I think— and— and this is kind of a— a debated question even among classicists ourselves. But you essentially look— have to look at sort of the themes that Homer himself— and actually, this is— this is also something that is kind of interesting. It is a huge debate whether Homer was one person or many people. We don't actually know.
AMANDA & JULIA: Hmm.
LEXIE: Because we attribute Homer as sort of this blind bard who sang these epic poems, right? And it was recorded. But there's been for the last at least 15, 20 years, this sort of debate over— it could have actually been several poets kind of playing a huge game of telephone where you recite the parts you liked, you change what you didn't, and then you add on to it, and then it just kept getting added on to, so we don't know. But if we're gonna go off the basis of it was one man, one brilliant man, you know, some of the critical themes that we think about it— he— that he wanted to really include where this concept of— and I'm gonna use the— the Greek word which is kleos, which means glory.
JULIA: Hmm.
LEXIE: And you also look at the themes of pride, and fate, and wrath. And those are very common themes to the heroic epic poems. let's just say.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And, like, yes, there's a lot of those themes going on within the nine years, but it comes to— ahead in the final part of the war, because what you have is— that's where you have the sort of climactic duels with Hector and Achilles. That's where you have primes embassy to Achilles when he's trying to recover his son's body.
JULIA: Hmm.
LEXIE: You know, cheating fate, so you— you do kind of want to get to the meat of these characters. And even when it has— because it does cover some, like, middle bits, which is kind of interesting. I mean, you have sort of the proposed duel between Menelaus and Paris and sort of what does it mean to be pride for— what is your fate? Is your fate to die here slain by the man whose wife you stole? No, it's not because Aphrodite essentially sweeps him from the battlefield when he's about to be defeated and, like, just plops him into the marriage bed, right?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: As she does.
LEXIE: So you're like, "Okay." So, I mean, yeah, I— I don't really have a great answer for it, but I think that when I consider the themes, you really want to sort of skip the build and get to the climax, especially since writing in Ancient Greek was hard and it took a long time. There are no spaces between—
JULIA: Hmm.
LEXIE: —the word. There was no lowercase. So you— you wrote in all uppercase, and it took a long time.
AMANDA: Nice. Easy for statues. Hard for just probably, like, reading day-to-day.
JULIA: For epic poems, yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LEXIE: It was hard for everything. And the thing is also it wasn't recorded as it was being told, right? This was being sung.
JULIA: Sure.
AMANDA: Right.
LEXIE: So there's a lot of reasons, but I think it gets to the heart of, you know, being humans and wanting to just get to the good stuff, let's say.
AMANDA: Fair.
LEXIE: So you have a fair bit of exposition, and it tells you when flashback sequences as well.
AMANDA: You may wonder how we got here.
LEXIE: Right. You know, because, like, well, we have to set it up, because if you don't set it up, you're gonna be like, "So why does Agamemnon have such a stick up his ass about this, that and the other thing? It doesn't make sense, right?" So you do have to kind of know— I mean, it doesn't tell you explicitly in this source, you— you do have to kind of go somewhere else for the whole story, but it does make reference to the fact that he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, essentially for a little wind.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: He kills his daughter, his nine-year-old— like for— for a little bit of wind that will maybe—
AMANDA: But—
LEXIE: —send him off and, you know, that's what pisses off his wife, Clytemnestra, which also is perfect, because all these themes and these ideas lead you into other works, because then you have Escalus writing about it, and you— you have, you know, Clytemnestra doing her thing, being angry the whole time he's gone, so—
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Was the assumption that most of these audiences would have been familiar with the things that happened to, like, either prior or post these stories, basically, in Homer writing the epic that he wrote?
LEXIE: Some of them had not actually been written— so— so some of it like he did kind of have to be like, "Okay, I'm setting the stage, because I'm going to tell you this happened." But yes, like, because Ancient Greece was so big on, like, an oral tradition, yes, a lot of the more educated people, let's say— but even— even— even the layman. But, yeah, they would have had general familiarity, right, with sort of Greek Mythology and— and— but, yeah, yeah, there— there would have been some familiarity. I don't know how much and I don't think anyone really knows how much because it depends on your audience, right, and— and where you travel. And if they truly were traveling bards, plural, or one traveling guy, you would travel all over Greece. You could go to some, like, smaller villages, you could be in the bigger city states. Yeah, it was really, like, highly dependent on audience, I'd say.
JULIA: Sure. Okay, that makes sense. Because I'm like, was the story that was being told, like, setting up like, "Oh, yeah, you know, Agamemnon, the guy who comes from, like, the cursed bloodline, you guys know all about that, right?" Like, not having to fill up the rest of the blanks. Or if it was something that Homer was like, "And then we're gonna go back, and we're gonna explain that he comes from a cursed bloodline, and that's why all these bad things keep happening to him. And, like, you know, his dad killed his brother, and you know, this guy killed his daughter." And then so on and so forth. So I'm always very curious about like— is it like, how we have to watch Star Wars down and be like, "Oh, well, you had to have watched that animated series that was only on Disney XD for, like, four years to understand what's going on in this live action thing that we're really excited about."
LEXIE: Yeah. I mean, and— but like, luckily, the poem will help— like, books one through four, right? Out of the, what, 20— 24. Yeah, books one through four, that's all exposition, right? So you can set the stage through your first four books, and set all that background for your listeners, let's call them.
AMANDA: How long did it take to say the whole poem? I mean, it will be excerpts, right? Like it will be sections, it will be, you know, like one story at a time, which explains kind of why they are also broken down into helpful, like, chapters for lack of a better word within each book.
LEXIE: When you were requesting a performance, your bard would come, and it would take at least— you know, there's 24 books. The thing is you would sing it continuously, right? Because there— there— really in ancient times, there weren't really book or chapter breaks the way you would see modern translation. So you— actually, you would start singing the— the tale, and you would actually try to keep just singing the whole tale until it was over. I think, you know, we get a skewed idea of how long something really is also because when you're reading it in translation, you— what you see in front of you is this massive book. I think the thing to remember, right, is that when you are looking at the Ancient Greek itself, it's about just over 15,500 lines of Greek.
AMANDA: Okay.
LEXIE: Right? So that's— it's a lot.
AMANDA: Long, but like a novella.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: Right, right. Because if you're trying to sing it— and especially when you're doing in meter, the meter, kind of just, you know— and it's— it's a beautiful cadence, because you— da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, you know, so—
AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: —it would end up being quite flowy, I believe. I really would love to hear this as an actual— I mean— and you can, right, for scholars of— of Ancient Greek, if you care to memorize the whole thing, you could just stand up anywhere, and you could start reciting as much as you've memorized. I remember my freshman year of college, I went to study abroad in Greece and my professor had memorized the first five lines. And so we stood up in like the great theater.
AMANDA: Wow.
LEXIE: And was like, "Alright, I'm gonna recite to you." And here we are in, like, Epidaurus and we're like, "Oh, my God."
AMANDA: Oh my god.
LEXIE: "We're— we're in the theater." And— and you recite—
AMANDA: Chills.
LEXIE: —the first five lines and we're like, "Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. This is what it was like. Oh, my gosh."
AMANDA: Yeah. It was amazing.
LEXIE: Yes.
AMANDA: There's simply 14,995 more.
LEXIE: Exactly.
AMANDA: See you later.
JULIA: That was genuinely my next question was like, there's gotta be people out there who, like, do performances of it, right? Like— or, like, I can imagine, like, a theater troupe, or like a group of people who were like, "Alright, you've got books, like, one through four. You've got five through eight." And like, just going from there and, like, performing it over the course of, like, several days. Like, I think that would be so interesting to see and, like, probably, there's a market for that. I'm not going to tell people like, "Hey, man, like, you leave your job and, like, go set up this theater group."
AMANDA: Learn ancient Greek.
JULIA: But, like— I mean, I would go see that like over a festival day or something like that. Like, that'd be fun.
LEXIE: Yeah, I mean, I don't— it's kind of sad, like we don't really do it here, just because I think people think it's so much easier to just stage a modern sort of adaptation. You can get close to it, everyone reads it in translation because let's be real, the amount of people who actually want to sit and learn Ancient Greek for many, many years are not many.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And it's really hard. You know, I— I took like a year in Ancient Greek and I was like, "This is so hard. I got to—"
JULIA: Let us very quickly grab our refill and then we can continue the epic that is the Iliad, shall we?
LEXIE: Sure.
AMANDA: Nice.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. Of course, we have to start with thanking our newest patron, Emily. Emily, thank you so much for joining us here on Patreon. You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Ginger Spurs Boi, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Kneazlekins, Lily, Matthew, Nathan, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah and Scott. And of course, our legend-level patrons, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. And you too can support us on Patreon by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and getting cool rewards like recipe cards for every episode, ad-free episodes and so much more. Check that out at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. And while you are signing up for the Patreon, hey, also check out our new merch by going to spiritspodcast.com/merch. We have an amazing Ouija board planchette bath bomb that I'm going to tell you right now, smells amazing as well as looks amazing. And we have a cool color-changing mug that I drink my coffee out of this morning. It is so cool. Zoey did an amazing job designing it, I am in love with it. It is like a water spirit mural and it will bring you so much joy during these cold, cold winter months that are approaching, oh, so quickly. And hey, if you signed up for the Patreon, you get a special discount. Go check that out at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. Sign up, and then go to spiritspodcast.com/merch to use that special discount. I also have my recommendation for you this week, which is— I have been really on a kick lately of Pride and Prejudice adaptations being a sort of comfort media for me. I've watched the Keira Knightley one. I've been watching for the first time the Colin Firth mini-series. 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LIFE KIT: Climate change is gonna require collective action, but how can individual actions make a difference? On a new episode of Life Kit, we're walking you through what sort of climate-friendly choices can make an impact in your life and the lives of others. Listen to Life Kit, part of NPR's climate week, wherever you get your podcasts.
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JULIA: We are back. And Lexie, something we always love to ask our guests is what cocktails, mocktails, drinks, et cetera have you been enjoying lately? And I would go a step further and be like, hey, if you were going to have to sit down and listen to someone performing the Iliad in song, in verse, what is the cocktail that you would choose for them?
LEXIE: Well, I'm gonna give you two different answers.
JULIA: Okay.
LEXIE: Because one, if I'm thinking about what I'm enjoying, just generally, I had an amazing Sangria the other night.
JULIA: Ooh.
LEXIE: Like amazing Sangria.
JULIA: Nice.
LEXIE: And I don't know if I loved it, because it was actually that good, or if it reminded me of the best Sangria I could get when I was living in Athens last year.
JULIA: Ooh, yes.
LEXIE: Because there's an amazing rooftop bar where you look across at the Acropolis, and you can kind of see the Parthenon all lit up and it's beautiful.
JULIA: Woah.
AMANDA: No big deal, no big deal.
LEXIE: I had Sangria there, so that's always a favorite. But in terms of if I wanted to sit and listen to a performance or watch something, I mean, the ancient Greek drink of choice was wine.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And their wine was— they're very different from our wine because it was so much stronger. I mean, when you look at, like, the history of wine in the ancient world, which actually is a thing, you can actually study that.
JULIA: Yeah.
LEXIE: But it was so strong that actually you have sources saying how you need to divvy it up and water it down. So actually, there's three parts water, one part wine, it was so strong because if you had more than that, you would be very drunk.
JULIA: That's like the sailors grog where it's supposed to be like, you know, two-part water, one part rum, one part lime because, otherwise, the sailor simply couldn't sail boats anymore.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So imagine just getting real fucked up on unfiltered Greek wine, and then standing up to be like, "And I'm gonna tell you what Achilles did."
AMANDA: Or a consistent buzz. Like, imagine how far—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —one bottle of wine could take you if you're doing it three-to-one.
JULIA: True. True facts.
LEXIE: Yeah, yeah. So no, it's a lot. So— yeah, yeah.
JULIA: So we— we've kind of talked a little bit about what the, like, performance of the Iliad would look like, and you— you've touched on like— you know, you had these, like, traveling bards, or what have you who would do these performances. And I imagine we don't know exactly when Homer or the people who were Homer started performing the Iliad for people. But do we know, like, really what that looked like? Like, was it something that was for higher society? Was it more like Shakespeare where it was like for the people? What did it look like? I guess is my question.
LEXIE: Sure. Well, okay, I would say— so this is a really interesting thing to remember as well, especially about Greek history, is you have really distinct periods, and I'm going to butcher it in a way that a lot of my colleagues probably won't really appreciate. But for a more layman audience, I do find it helpful. So I— I do kind of break it up this way when I'm talking to people outside the field. What you have is the Minoan period where it's like the super ancients. They were the original indigenous people to sort of Greece as we know it today. And then they are the people also that sort of built up the prehistoric Aegean. And then what you have are the Mycenaeans who come in. And it's the Mycenaean Period is really where the poems take place. So it's during this period that you know, Agamemnon is supposed to be the great Mycenaean King with his Citadel at Mycenae. And so it's— this is when the epic actually is supposed to take place.
AMANDA: Like the olden times for the contemporary audience.
LEXIE: Yes. This is very ancient times, because essentially, what you have is— when we think of— and— and it's very popular to talk about in history, Bronze Age collapse, right? When everything kind of just went dark.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And what you have is, yeah, this is before Dark Age Greece, and Dark Age Greece, we sort of roughly date it between, like, 1200. Some people will say 1100, but I'm gonna say 1200 to about 650. Some people say 650, some say 630. I'm gonna just say 1200 to 650. That's the Dark Age, right? So after everything collapsed, what you have is— it wasn't like the whole geographical region of Greece went dark, it's just for whatever reason, written records ended, and we have very little evidence. So what we do have is archaeological sites that have kind of worn down, but we can glean some looking at the material culture. After everything resumes, though, that is kind of when Homer was said to start crafting this tale, because I think this— this was crafted really in— we attribute it to the eighth century. And of course, dating is all off in this period, because no one can date correctly. So we're gonna say eight century, maybe not. But yeah, so by then, right, the Mycenaeans are ancient history. They didn't know how to read their writing systems, so we were kind of like, "Oh, I don't know what this is." So you would take this around and the point of, like, spreading this oral tradition is you would actually take it to the layman. And so it'd be like Shakespeare in the park, you would be like, "Imma—"
AMANDA: Hmm.
LEXIE: "—set up in this place, in this palace or city-state, and, you know, I'm going to recite, and you can come listen."
AMANDA: Teach them about our history-type situation?
LEXIE: Right. But, like, the more famous you got, kings might be like, "Oh, you know what? I hear you're great. I'm going to invite you to perform for my court." So it could— it could be a little of anything, but the point was to spread these tales to the— the populace and so you would—you would kind of want to travel around and say, "Alright, I'm gonna— I'm going to perform this, come listen."
JULIA: Man, what a job. Part of me is like, "Thank you. Now, that would be interesting." Certainly, like, you know, the, like, Broadway tour industry is very interesting in that sense. But now, I'm just like, "I like being in my house and telling stories. I don't know if I want to, like, go out into the world and tell stories.
LEXIE: It was a lot of traveling and it was a lot of being away from wherever your home was, because traveling around Greece is terrible.
JULIA: Also very dangerous.
LEXIE & AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: I mean—
JULIA: It was very dangerous.
LEXIE: —the Aegean to this day is said to be one of the roughest places you can sail and— I mean, you have like stories of— yeah. Like, oh, my theory was delayed by hours, because the wind was not safe and, like, yeah, imagine this but like times 20 in the ancient world when you don't have the massive ships that we do, so—
JULIA: And then imagine, like, Poseidon is pissed at you, so like, it takes you, like, way more time than it should to get home to your wife. And, like, there's a lot of other stuff going on, but it's dangerous to do.
LEXIE: Exactly, exactly.
AMANDA: Lexie, I'm really struck by how present you make this history feel, and hopefully, that's very common and it's not a huge deal to you. But, like, it really makes me want to learn more about these periods. What first got you interested in classics and classical history and texts? And what do you find so alive about them? Because it really comes through while you're speaking.
LEXIE: Oh, thank you. Well, I would say I have to attribute it to one of the greatest sixth-grade teachers I've ever had— I mean, like, in the world.
AMANDA: Love to hear it.
LEXIE: Yeah, she had a really interactive history class. I remember sitting there in sixth grade, and we got to the Greece and Egypt unit. And it was funny, because my entrance to this whole world of ancient history was actually through Egypt, which I like— I likened to sort of the gateway drug because you have the pyramids, and mummies, and all this gold, and mummies curses. So yeah, it was a really interactive class where we were allowed to, like, bring bedsheets to class, wear them as like a toga. And then you could choose like an ancient Greek or Egyptian name, and then our little, like, tables where you would sit with, like, five other people. She made them like ancient city-states, so she was like, "Yeah, you are Argos and you're Athens."
AMANDA: Incredible.
LEXIE: I was Argos, which at the time, I was like, "Oh, that's lame. I want to be Athens or Sparta." But, you know, Argos is cool. So I was that crazy kid who then came home one day and was like, "Mom, guess what I'm going to do?" And she's like, "What?" I was like, "I'm gonna study the ancient world for the rest of my life." And she was like, "I don't know how one does that, but like, I support you, so good luck."
AMANDA: Cute.
JULIA: Shout out to your mom, who was not like, "You sure you don't want to be like a marine biologist or something? Like a normal thing that kids your age probably want to be?"
LEXIE: Yeah. I was— I was really, like, struck by how she didn't throw out more opposition, but she was like, "You know what, honey? I want you to follow your passion. Just be happy. Do what you want to do."
AMANDA: Love that.
LEXIE: So that was pretty lucky. And then, yeah, I think— I mean, there were no formal classics courses, obviously, most places don't have them in high school. And I didn't even know it was a major. So I got to college, and I think the closest I got was like anthropology, which is a normal thing I've learned and talking to a lot of people in the field, they start somewhere else. And so I started in anthro. And I remember my first day of undergrad, I had a friend who was complaining bitterly about how she was forced to take a random humanities credit, and so she was taking classical mythology. And I said, "Well, I didn't know there was a class here, can I sneak in with you?" And she was like, "Oh, my God, please." So I went in and I took the class, and I met someone who'd become one of my best friends from college. And she was a junior at the time. And so I kind of started to pick her brain, and I was like, "Okay. I want to stay in this class. How do I find more?" So she just said, "Okay, go talk to the professor. He was, like, set you straight." And so yeah, I— I ended up talking to the professor, and he was like, "You can stay in my class. Here are some other classes I suggest for my department. I'm in the classics department." And I said, "Okay, cool. I don't know what that is, but I'll look into it." So then I went to my first, like, undergrad advising appointment, and I essentially just described what I wanted to study and what I wanted to do, and the advisor just went, "Yeah, that's not us here. Go to classics, here's the name of the advisor." And so I went, and I talked to him, and that was it, I was just in classics, and I loved it. And I've always been a history person, but I think what I loved most was thinking about the ancient world, not as some like weird, old relic. Because at the end of the day, they're us, just an ancient version.
JULIA: Yeah.
LEXIE: But when I realized there's a lot of similarities between the issues and the things that they dealt with are the exact same things we do, but we get the benefit of hindsight if we study the ancient world. And, you know, I combine this with— I also had a really big love of modern politics. And so I didn't want to just be a polsci major, because that would have been overwhelming. And I didn't really like a lot of the modern sort of political history. And so I kind of went at it with looking at the ancient world through a sort of political lens, and I took a lot of classes on, like, ancient political thought, and it just ended up being the— the best mix. And so, yeah, I've always just really loved being able to sort of think about the human condition, let's say.
AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: But through a very ancient lens, because it— it helps me to sort of have that degree of separation. Yeah, I've always loved how they're connected.
AMANDA: Great answer.
JULIA: I'm so thrown off by your roommate being like, "Ugh. I have to take a classic mythology class. Ugh. God."
AMANDA: Medusa, who cares about that bitch?
JULIA: "Why would I have to do that?"
AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: I mean, she hated it. It was so weird. She ended up, like, dropping the class.
JULIA: Oh, my God.
LEXIE: Like, I was like, "Why?"
JULIA: Well, it left room for you, so, like, that's fine. You know? It's like, "Oh, good, another—another spot opened up."
AMANDA: Here's my sit. Thank you.
LEXIE: Yeah. Exactly.
JULIA: What an incredible, like, journey, too. And what did your transition from, like, undergrad to, like, higher education look like? In terms of like— alright. You know you're going to do classics in undergrad and then moving up, what was that experience like?
LEXIE: It was uneven and it was hard. And it was a lot of tears in my professors' office hours is what it was.
JULIA: Yup.
LEXIE: And that's kind of like the—
AMANDA: Hmm.
LEXIE: —sad, unvarnished truth for what I feel like is a lot of people, but—
AMANDA: Oh, we need it. Yeah.
LEXIE: So the thing about classics and— and sort of any of the ancient fields is you do really need to pick up and have a lot of language training. And so kind of real talk here, if you don't come out senior year with four languages, because you need— well, actually, you need five, but you can get away with four.
AMANDA: Damn, dude.
LEXIE: But you essentially need English, right, if we're in the US or Canada. But essentially, you need French and German, they are essential, because those are the original languages of archeology, along with English, because all the original expeditions and stuff, they were led by French teams, German teams, or from the UK. So you need at least a reading level, right? You don't need to speak them, but you need to read and be able to read professional articles, which is really hard. Luckily, there's classes that teach you sort of how to read academic French, and German, but they're still really hard.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And then if you want to go on and graduate studies, you're going to need at least three years of both Greek and Latin. And then when you go on, then you can sort of choose. And then depending on what time period you choose, you might need to add on another one. So depending if you do late period, like Hellenistic, then you can go down until sort of like Hellenistic Egypt, in which case you'd want to pick up some, like, middle Egyptian maybe, like who knows? Or some of these later periods. Or if you want to go into, like, sort of biblical archaeology, then you could pick up like Aramaic or Biblical Hebrew. Some people want to go into the Byzantine period, in which case you'll need like Byzantine Greek. There's a lot of languages you can pile on. And the thing is what makes people in my field really impressive, is that most people have command of five or six languages because they need it.
AMANDA: That's unfathomable to me.
JULIA: Lexie, you just explained perfectly why I did not go to grad school for any sort of classics, it's because I could barely pass Italian, a language that my family spoke.
LEXIE: I mean, you know what? There's no shame because everyone knows languages are a really tough nut to crack.
JULIA: Yeah.
LEXIE: And you know what? There are some people who've kind of tried to cheat the system and skip a little because there are some people who know and are very driven like, "I only wanted to study Latin Text, or I only want to study material culture from this Century Greece." And then maybe some people are like, "And only from Athens." Those people can kind of cheat because you can just take Ancient Greek and then you can get away with your passable reading French and German, right? And so then you don't—
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: —even have to take Latin if you know you don't want to do it. So you can kind of— depending on where you want to go, you can do that. But I mean, so much of the field is interdisciplinary. So, every advisor will tell you, "Well, it would behoove you that if you try to study this or that, in addition, you know, that will help you in your language training."
AMANDA: You exhausted 22 being like, "Ugh. This is not a good conversation."
JULIA: You were like, "But—but why do I need to know Byzantine French, what?"
LEXIE: Greek.
JULIA: Okay. Oh, Byzantine Ger— God, I can't even name the fucking languages, like that's how ridiculous it seems to me, but—
LEXIE: Oh, yeah, no, it's—
JULIA: —I get it, I get it.
LEXIE: —it's hard. So— yeah. So I mean, I knew that I was not cut out because I was not going to have the language training— because the thing is, if you're lucky, in high school, maybe you'll have, you know, exposure to one, usually not two, and you don't have time to take two. So it's very rare that people would come out having more than one foreign language. But essentially, if you were gonna go that route, the minute you get to college, you need to start one and two language, and you need to essentially start another modern. And then you essentially would be taking at least two different languages every single year. And that's a really aggressive schedule, especially with language courses, especially since like language courses were, like, 6 credit hours, so that could really hurt your GPA.
JULIA: Uh, yeah.
LEXIE: So— yeah. Uh-uh.
AMANDA: Lexie, per your earlier point, the way— the vast majority of us access these stories, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, are in translation, or in adaptation, which I know is something of a particular interest of yours. Can you tell us about some of your favorite adaptations of Homer's work?
LEXIE: Sure. So I try to watch a lot of Greek mythology films and TV shows just because I like them, but also in recent years, because I do a podcast on— on reviewing them. But I would say in the past year, I've read or watched many books, and films, TV shows. And I would say the Netflix, Troy: Fall of the City is a particularly good adaptation.
AMANDA: Hmm.
LEXIE: Because it included a lot of nuggets both for classicists and things for more layman audience. And it was interesting because I actually made the decision to watch the Brad Pitt Troy, and then immediately watch the Netflix Fall of the City, so I could sort of analyze them back-to-back. And what I found was the reason that it's so hard to Homer especially, is because no one knows what to do with the gods, right? Because you have these gods as these omnipresent, like, beings who— essentially, they are the drivers of everything that happens, right? We think it's all the human, it's not. Like, it's the gods' fault, so how do you in, like, an hour-and-a-half to two-hour movie, let's say— not even a series. How do you show that Helen being stolen or voluntarily leaving when she had a daughter, a family, like a husband and she was queen, she was comfortable? Like, how do you show that she left voluntarily? Because no one likes to think of a mother leave— voluntarily just being like, "Yeah, I'm leaving my kid. Bye."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Right.
LEXIE: And it's hard to show this. And so one thing that the series, I believe, did well was showing— because it did include the gods. And a lot of adaptations don't want to do that, because it's too hard to explain, and I totally get that.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: But they have the gods, they show you kind of the reason behind— I still don't like how it came out, because, well, I'm picky. But like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: —they do a better job than most. What you see is just a really artful way of showing what happens, like when the plague comes, when Chryseis needs to be returned. What you have is like a rouged man touching the cheek of a Greek, and then suddenly you see, oh, that's him giving them the plague. Like, they mastered that element, which I love. And then they also include a lot of characters that you don't see in other adaptations because you don't have time to include them. And, like, one of my biggest complaints is I love the duel between Achilles and Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: You don't have that in the Brad Pitt Troy, there's no time. But what you do have time for in the series, is you do have time to introduce who Penthesilea is, you have a little background, why she sides with Paris and the Trojans. Like, it's really well done. And I would say it has my favorite portrayal of Achilles. I don't love him as this sort of— I mean, he is a whiny baby. He's a strumpet, but at the same time—
JULIA: Which he is.
LEXIE: —when— like, I'm thinking about my favorite versions of Achilles and how I— I imagined him being played. I like him to be this strong, silent, sort of philosopher king type who will not do things on principle, while also being kind of strumpet-ish, but, like, not just whiny baby, because that sort of makes him into this rah-rah character that you can't really relate with, then you're just like, "I don't get it." So I— I do like the depths provided, so that was one of the best adaptations. There— there are a lot more that are decent, but no, that one was definitely my favorite. And I will quickly mention The Odyssey, we also had the chance to review a lot of Odyssey adaptations. And—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: —a favorite of mine is actually the 1954, I believe.
JULIA: Ooh.
LEXIE: Kirk Douglas, Ulysses. Now, I don't like it because it uses all the Italian versions of the names.
AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: I like Ulysses but Kirk Douglas is in it. It's a British-Italian production. It's amazing, it's beautiful, and it has that kind of retro charm that I do enjoy. So that also is a really good one as well. But it's impossible to include everything in an adaptation. So—
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: Unless you want to read it the way that it was intended and— and that's, I guess, an adaptation, but not really. That's just, you know, a production.
LEXIE: That's the best way, honestly.
JULIA: Yeah.
LEXIE: If you want the best of Homer, just read the original. There's so many great translations, I have personally read 10 different translations of The Odyssey and about 5 or 6 different ones of The Odyssey— oh, sorry, the Iliad and the Odyssey. So I've also read The Iliad, I don't like it, but I've read it— I've read at least two or three different adaptations. Yeah, they all kind of blend together when you've been doing them for so long. But—
AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: Yeah. There are some translations that are better than others, but you know, that's up for debate.
JULIA: If you were going to suggest a good translation for our audience, who I wouldn't call layman, but perhaps are not scholars, what would you recommend in terms of, like, the best one that you read that is also readable, I suppose?
LEXIE: My training was with the Robert Fagles translation of both epics. It's accessible, it keeps enough of the original artistry in, and I generally like the way he's translated certain words where you— you know, if you know the ancient Greek word, then you can kind of really see, "Okay, what is he using?" If you like audiobooks, Ian McKellen read the audiobook version of The Odyssey—
AMANDA: Whoa.
LEXIE: —of the Fagles translation, so you can have Gandalf reading it to you, which is really cool.
AMANDA: Wow, best of both!
JULIA: Best of both worlds.
LEXIE: So it's amazing, and I highly recommend that. But I will say because one is out and one is not, Emily Wilson, she's a professor of Classics at Princeton. She translated The Odyssey a couple of years ago, and it was like a revolutionary—
JULIA: Yes!
LEXIE: Exactly, it's a revolutionary on translation—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. That's one that I have. Yeah.
LEXIE: —and it's fantastic. And she just finished translating the Iliad, and that will be out. I know, friends of mine have gotten advanced copies, and I'm just champing at the bit to—
JULIA: Soon.
LEXIE: —get my hands on it. But I think it'll be released, I think, like next week or something.
JULIA: Oh, okay. So by the time this episode is out, you can buy it.
AMANDA: Yeah.
LEXIE: From the early, you know, feedback on it, people are saying it also is— it's really going to change how people look at it. Yeah. I mean, now, no translation comes without, you know, some big kerfuffle in the community because we just inherently like to argue. And so there's been a lot of criticism, because some people will say, "Oh, she's too feminist. She's too— you're not translating it and you're not maintaining sort of the— the spirit of the original." I'm like, "Okay. Who cares?" Because it's an— it's an amazing translation and—and I think from what I remember reading, the most revolutionary thing coming out is that she— what normally is translated as sort of devourer of men in the ori— well, that's the closest we can get to.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LEXIE: And that's what a lot of like Fagles and stuff, they sort of make reference to devourer of men. And when talking about Agamemnon, she actually translates it as Cannibal King.
JULIA & AMANDA: Whoa.
LEXIE: And that really changes the essence of it. And no, I don't have any context beyond that, but that was kind of going around Twitter. And people were talking about it, and of course, there's some criticism saying that's completely wrong, and there's other people saying, "I love it." So I hope that I land on the I love it, and I probably will. But, yeah, so Emily Wilson's are good, but yeah, if you want sort of a more tradition— I don't— I hate that word, but traditional reading of it, yeah, Fagles is really good, and I really liked that. Yup.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: Amazing. Well, Lexie, thank you so much for joining us. This has been so insightful, and so wonderful, and I really appreciate it. Can you tell people where they can find you and your work online, including your podcast? Which you dropped before, but didn't name and I—I need you to name it for us now.
AMANDA: Like a classy podcaster, but now's the time, yeah.
LEXIE: Sure. I'm— I don't mind vamping for a little bit. Yes. So you can find me— if you just Google Lexie Henning, I feel like a lot of my stuff will pop up. But essentially, I have two soon-to-be three podcasts that I'm doing. And the third one is kind of an accident. But the first one started as a pandemic baby project in 2020, it's called Ancient Office Hours, and that one's a bit more academic. It's where I interview professors from kind of all-around who do all or any of the ancient fields. But also I do have guests from sort of the entertainment sphere on it to talk about how they're influenced by mythology. So it's kind of a little sprinkle of fun. So, yeah, I hope that will be sort of informative listen. It's just to teach people about, you know, some of the cool people who are in the field and then research, and so hopefully, it'll be the beginning of a deep dive. The second podcast I started was with a friend of mine who actually is a serologist by trade.
AMANDA: Ooh.
LEXIE: But she did get her Bachelor's in Classics, so we have that in common. And that one is called The Reading Party Podcast, and that is the one where we essentially— we just finished our first season. The second season, we're hoping to drop in January. But essentially, it'll be sort of seasons by theme. So the first season was Iliad and Odyssey, because we thought, "Let's just get that out of the way." So we just read books, and watch TV shows, and films, and talk about them. Our second season will be Egypt.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: Ooh.
LEXIE: So we're very excited about that, and we're gonna have some cool guest hosts who are subject matter experts. So hopefully, that'll be enjoyable. And we encourage people to read along or watch along with us, and then hear us talk about it. So that's the second one. And then I will have a third one that is for work, so that will be called Legacies of Ancient Persia. I was asked to set that up for the center that I work for, and it will be very similar to my first show, Office Hours, in that I will interview people who study Iranian Studies, and we're going to learn a lot more about the field of Iranian studies and Ancient Persia. So that is the work podcast that is very official. But otherwise, yes, you can find me on all those things. And the podcasts are attached to my nonprofit, The Ozymandias Project. We do a lot of different things. We have Archaeogaming and some other really cool initiatives. So I encourage people to check that out. We have a website. And, yeah, if you want to see my professional stuff, well, I am around, I'm findable on UCLA's website, on my academia page. Like I'm on the internet. It's not very hard to find me.
AMANDA: You are online.
LEXIE: I am online.
AMANDA: Online.
LEXIE: And all my social medias are either @theozymandiasproject or @lexie_henning, like all across the board.
AMANDA: I imagine you're gonna have a lot of new followers and listeners after this. But Lexie, thank you again for sharing your passion and expertise. And I imagine we're going to be sending a lot of folks to start picking up more copies, and more books, and more movies and series so they can feel the presence and the immediacy of these stories.
LEXIE: Oh, I hope so. I hope you all enjoy. And if you don't like my suggestions, well, please, don't tell me. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
JULIA: Well, listeners, next time you're at a party and someone stands up on a table drunk and says, "So about Achilles," stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
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