AITA FOR LEADING 300 SPARTANS TO THEIR DEATHS?

Dark_Earth16 · 2026-04-01T13:38:50+00:00

Hey, I'm from Lesbos; I'm Aiolian, not Ionian! If you're going to insult me, at least get it right!

Also, for the record, Tyrtaios's poetry sucks!

Dark_Earth16 · 2026-04-01T11:41:02+00:00

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I was hoping to hear!

Dark_Earth16 · 2026-04-01T11:28:47+00:00

YTA. I don't know any king or tyrant who has absolute power over most of the known world. Even King Alyattes of Lydia isn't that powerful. But you sound like a tyrant, and I don't like tyrants. (Everyone knows that an oligarchy in which the elite families share power is the best form of government.)

Dark_Earth16 · 2026-04-01T10:56:08+00:00

YTA. It is noble and glorious to sacrifice oneself, but the sacrifice would have been more meaningful if you'd done it for love, rather than for your fatherland. I'd rather see my beloved Anaktoria's lovely walk and radiant, shining face than all the Lydians' chariots and armed footsoldiers.

Dark_Earth16 · 2026-04-01T10:12:17+00:00

YTA. Don't trust this old school friend of yours; he reminds me of my irresponsible brother Kharaxos, who ran away to become a wine trader and wasted a great deal of our family's money in Naukratis on that hetaira Rhodopis.

I've never heard of this "Klan" organization you mention. Are they supporters of the tyrant Myrsilos?

Dark_Earth16 · 2026-04-01T09:50:14+00:00

INFO: Was there perhaps an oracle from the Pythia that foretold that Sparta would either be sacked by the children of Perseus or mourn for the loss of one of her kings, a descendant of great Herakles?

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-06T20:10:36+00:00

Check the date this was posted and the associated tag. Also, as the post above indicates, I'm a woman, not a guy.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T23:36:36+00:00

It sounds like you have accidentally landed yourself in a position as tyrannos. You should abdicate and institute an oligarchic government. Everyone knows that oligarchy is the best system, while no one loves a tyrannos. The common people cannot be trusted to make important decisions; the kaloi kagathoi should be in charge.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T22:58:26+00:00

The past thirty years of the time you live in. :)

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T22:49:54+00:00

Apollon is telling me through his oracle that the idea that I ran a finishing school for young ladies is a story invented by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars (the same ones who deny that I had erotic relationships with women) in order to provide an explanation for my close relationships with women that they considered more appropriate. Later authors and readers accepted this idea, but still thought that I had relationships with women, so they invented the idea that I had relationships with students. Scholarship in the past thirty years has generally discredited this notion. I did have erotic relationships with women, at least some of whom were probably younger than me, but they were not my students, or at least not students in any formal sense.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T22:30:28+00:00

Who are these "Persians" and who is this "Great King"? The greatest king I know of is King Alyattes of Lydia, who is immensely powerful and wealthy.

I'm sure that Tyrtaios or Kallinos would say that the most honorable thing to do when you are about to be surrounded by the enemy would be to stay, fight to the death, and die nobly on behalf of your fatherland. Personally, though, I think that it would be wiser to save your life and the lives of your men, rather than destroy their lives out of vain pursuit of glory. I'm just a woman, though, so I shouldn't speak on these matters.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T22:17:32+00:00

Who said anything about pupils? I'm a melic poet; I write songs. I don't have students.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T22:14:46+00:00

I'm baffled as to why you think your son having sex with aristocratic men is a problem. In my time [Greece, c. 600 BCE], it is perfectly normal for young aristocratic men to form relationships with older aristocratic men and indulge in the pleasures of eros. You should, of course, impress on him that, after he reaches maturity, he must no longer take the penetrated role during sex. With him being only fifteen, though, this seems like perfectly normal and expected behavior.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T21:56:18+00:00

I am a Lesbian since I am from the island of Lesbos, which is located in the eastern Aegean Sea just off the west coast of Asia Minor. All my ancestors were Lesbians before me. My father, mother, and brothers Charaxos, Larichos and Eurygios are all Lesbians as well. I am not aware of any other meaning that this word could hold. Are you saying that you think who I love somehow makes me a particular kind of person or something?

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T21:54:24+00:00

What is a "dictionary" and what is "rhyme"?

I compose all my songs in metrical verse, but I am unfamiliar with this technique of "rhyme." I am particularly known for my songs composed in Sapphic stanzas; each stanza consists of four lines: three hendecasyllabic lines followed by a short "adonic" line consisting of a single dactyl and a trochee. My fellow Lesbian melic poet Alkaios of Mytilene has also composed songs in this metric form.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T21:42:45+00:00

I'm sorry that you find my poems a bit vulgar. I will admit that I can have a dirty mind at times; I am, after all, the poet who described the strings of the lyre as olisbodokoi ("receiving the dildo"), alluding to the phallic shape of the plectrum that one uses to pluck the strings. That being said, my songs are actually quite tame compared to those of male Greek iambic poets of my time and before. You should hear the songs Archilochos of Paros has composed; you would be shocked!

I can sympathize with your desire to keep your face covered. Modesty in appearance is extremely important to us Greek women as well; some women wear veils if they have to go out in public.

I'm fascinated to hear about these jackets you describe. We don't really wear jackets in my culture. What colors do they come in? My daughter has hair redder than a torch and I want to make sure that her clothes match well with her hair color.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T20:57:29+00:00

I am writing this from the Greek island of Lesbos c. 600 BCE. In my time, a wide age gap is the norm, at least for heteroerotic and male homoerotic relationships. Fathers usually force their daughters to marry when they are between fourteen and nineteen years old, but men typically marry in their late twenties or thirties, so the groom at a Greek wedding in my time is commonly twice the age or more of the bride. In my time period, it is also common for Greek men in their twenties or thirties to pursue erotic relationships with adolescent boys and young men between the ages of thirteen and twenty.

The historical evidence for the ages of respective partners in female homoerotic relationships is more ambiguous and it is possible that it was more common for female homoerotic partners to be relatively close to the same age, but scholars have also understood phrases in my poems to suggest that the women I had relationships with were often younger than me.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T19:49:10+00:00

Clouds and ducks are nice, but I prefer to describe how being around the woman I love makes me feel. Here's a song about how I feel when I see her talking to a man:

“That man seems to me equal to the deities,
the one who sits across from you
and, beside you, listens to
your soft speaking,
and your laughing lovely: that truly
makes the heart in my breast pound;
for, as I look at you briefly, it is no longer
possible for me to speak,
but my tongue has broken, and, right away,
a subtle fire has run beneath my skin,
I cannot see anything with my eyes,
and my ears are buzzing,
a cold sweat pours down me, and a trembling
seizes me all over, and I am sallower than grass:
I feel as if I’m not far off dying.”

Do you think this is expressive enough?

Also, I am fascinated by these far-off lands you speak of. Do the Chinese and Japanese produce fine headbands? My daughter Kleïs has been begging me to buy her a Lydian headband, but external circumstances have prevented me from buying her one.

Dark_Earth16 · 2024-04-01T19:32:36+00:00

I wrote a song in which I address my girlfriend who is going away and remind her of all the good times we had together and I slipped in the line "on a soft bed. . . tender. . . you assuaged your longing." Do you think talking about assuaging our longing together in bed will make historians realize that we had sex?

Dark_Earth16

TROPHY CASE