sadlikeknives | Classics Geek, Who, Me?

I spent about an hour tonight screaming at the History Channel about the Trojan Horse. Namely, about their theories that it was actually a battering ram or a metaphor for an earthquake.

Me: It was a giant freaking HORSE! With PEOPLE in it!
Mom: You're scaring the cat!

Then I showed my true Classics Geek colors when I attempted to explain the timeline of the Big Deaths of the Trojan war to her.

Me: Okay, so Achilles got in a snit because someone--I think it was Agamemnon--stole his slave girl, Brisket.
Mom: Her name was not Brisket.
Me: Well, let's pretend it was.
Mom: So she was pork?
Me: Yes. So he refused to go fight, but the Greeks were screwed if the Trojans figured out Achilles wasn't fighting. So his um, boy, Patroclus, went to fight in his armor and Hector killed him dead. This, understandably, pissed off Achilles, as now he had neither a slave girl nor a boy toy. So he went and killed Hector, and presumably as an expression of his sexual frustration, dragged his body around the walls behind his chariot. This pissed off Hector's brother Paris, the prat who started all this in the first place, so he shot him in the heel.
Mom: I know this part. It killed him, right?
Me: Yeah. Kind of a sucky way to die. Though you could argue that the whole thing was because of the pork girl.

My obsession with Alexander the Great is starting to worry my mom, I think. As a matter of fact, she's offered to buy me books if I'll just not talk about the true love of Alexander and Hephaestion in front of my grandparents. "They're not ready to hear about gay Macedonian generals. You'll give them strokes."

Me: He was bi!

It'll get better once the movie comes out. But until then, she has to hear me rant about Bagoas. And Bucephalus. But I like Bucephalus, unlike Bagoas...little girly eunuch.

Mom: If you could also not mention the bit about them considering casting a transsexual as the Persian boy you apparently hate in front of your grandparents, that'd be good, too.
Me: Well, what can I talk about?
Mom: The horse. Wait. Did he sleep with the horse?
Me: No, but he named a city after it when it died.
Mom: Well, that's okay, then. You can talk about the horse.