do you ever think about the fact that an ancient greco-roman iliad fandom existed and you’re just wowed because people really have not changed that much over the course of the past 2500 years
like look at this and tell me that it’s any different from modern day tumblr fandom:
the shipping war about achilles and patroclus is pretty well-known at this point, but i just have to reiterate….plato, one of the most important writers in western philosophy, dedicated time in one of his philosophical works to talk about patrochilles headcanons…people argued over whether or not they were bffs or lovers…how are the ancients Real
later authors would just. quote the iliad for funsies. cicero does this in his letters to atticus sometimes. he literally sent his bff a quote from the iliad in the middle of a letter, that’s such a fanboy thing to do
alexander the great LITERALLY SLEPT WITH HIS COPY OF THE ILIAD UNDER HIS PILLOW
vergil’s aeneid, one of the greatest latin works ever written, is straight up iliad/odyssey crossover fanfic but with trojans as the main characters instead of the greeks, and if that doesn’t sound like an elaborate AU you’d see on AO3 then i don’t know what does
said iliad/odyssey fanfic was basically commissioned by the government of the roman empire
speaking of vergil, his biographical traditions state that he got in some hot water for plagiarizing from homer and other authors would quibble with him over it and write other works that subtly mock it which is basically the ancient literature fandom equivalent of discourse and vagueblogging
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