Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 22:01:08 -0700
From: maa32 
Subject: (urth) lions of Ares

OK - if you say that the lion was the symbol of Ares, can we explain the 
memory house of Latro that he constructs in 28 of SoA: "What are these 
statues?"  "Lions with the faces of men."  At first, latro thinks that all the 
statues are lions.  then, he is corrected: the second statue is the sphinx, 
who says, "I am your mother, and your mother's mother."  Well, the Sphinx is 
the daughter of Hera.  Ares is the son of Hera.  If Latro is the daughter of 
the Sphinx, and the Sphinx is somehow contiguous with Hera, then Latro's 
mother is Hera.  Jeez.  Ares mother is Hera.

However, I am willing to accept that the man with the lance Latro runs into on 
the way to his seige on Thamyris was Ares, VERY incognito, on the basis of 
this lion stuff.  Remember that the black man's name is Seven Lions, and the 
man with a lance was kind of blackish.

Also, the advice of Hercules to Latro is easily followed by him: Latro has all 
the tools, he just doesn't know it because he has been stripped of his memory.
 Hercules tells him to lose, otherwise he would triumph easily. Most mortals, 
no matter how much knowledge they have, can't utilize fighting advice without 
the body to pull it off.  It's not Tyson's corner man that wins the fight - 
it's Tyson.  give the same advice to, let's say, me, and I wouldn't be able to 
knock out a heavyweight champion.  Latro lacks the memory of the warrior, but 
he knows all the right things to do with the simplest promptings, which 
indicates that his experience is great indeed.

Thamyris says that Pleistorus (Ares) has been missing for a long time.  Long 
enough to inhabit a mortal body and grow up, as the real God would later do in 
Christ?  Why aren't Latro's symbols wolves instead of lions, since his name is 
Lucius?  Why does Thamyris say Ares is missing?  Why does the rain start when 
Kotys challenges Latro, thus betraying his god Ares?

Unfortunately, lions are roaring all the time in the text.  When Latro fights 
Pasicrates on the shore, lions are showing up all over the place.  Remember 
that Ares sister is surrounded by lions when she commissions him to go get the 
horses of the sun, but Ares is nowhere around there, unless he's latro.

I don't think that one lion can clearly identify the black rider when latro is 
suffused with lion companions.  However, I maintain that there is a close 
relationship between Latro and Ares, and that Nike certainly follows him 
without appearing to him.

Here is the question: what clear evidence in the text is given that Polos is a 
centaur? he gallops and trots everywhere, and when he disappears a red haired 
roan appears.  He knows a lot about horses.

Latro embodies arete, and at the beginning of Part three of SofA, Hegistratus 
and Cimmon and company swear to protect Latro before he goes off to the 
Spartan ceremony of manumission, for no apparent reason.  It seems as if they 
are talking about how necessary Arete is for the survival of their cities, and 
their icon of arete has become Latro.  Why?  The name of Ares is in the word 
Arete.

Very good points - the man with the lance and the lion probably was Ares.

Marc Aramini



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