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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And today our Halloween offerings continue.

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Speaker 2: We're going to be talking about a story from Greek legend,

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Speaker 2: that has some surprising flavor of Camp Crystal Lake about it,

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Speaker 2: a little bit of Haddonfield action here. The story is

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Speaker 2: commonly known as The Six Labors of Theseus, but we've

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Speaker 2: been thinking about it as Theseus versus the Slashers from Hell.

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Speaker 2: There's a bit more slasheriness to this than you would expect.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, we're kind of giving it the grindhouse

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Speaker 1: treatment here with the title Theseus and the Slashers from Hell.

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Speaker 1: The hero is, of course, Theseus, perhaps best known certainly

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Speaker 1: to many of you, and I think widely in today's world,

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Speaker 1: as the slayer of the Minotaur. I think that's the

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Speaker 1: most famous tale involving this hero. But here he's going

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Speaker 1: up against six evildoers who are either mortals or largely

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Speaker 1: mortal in form, with a few caveats we'll get into.

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Speaker 1: We may loosely frame them as slashers, as sadistic warlords,

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Speaker 1: as bandits, as serial killers of antiquity, And yes, if

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Speaker 1: we're daring, individuals loosely associated with the underworld, because he's

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Speaker 1: going to be going up against the six different killers

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Speaker 1: of the Saronic Gulf, which is formed between the peninsulas

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Speaker 1: of Attica and Argolis and forms part of the Aegean Sea.

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Speaker 1: The sites of these killers snake around the Gulf on

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Speaker 1: the land road between the cities of Treason and Athens,

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Speaker 1: an area that is also riddled with caves and vents.

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Speaker 1: connected in some sources and works of scholarship to openings

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Speaker 1: to the underworld. So by some measures, yeah, we might

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Speaker 1: think of these six killers as manifestations of these adjacent

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Speaker 1: thresholds to another world. It's all a bit more nuanced

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Speaker 1: than this, as we'll get into. But yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: we can more or less embrace the grindhouse title of

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Speaker 1: Theseus and the Slashers from Hell.

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Speaker 2: Do you remember the Peplum movie we watched? I think

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Speaker 2: it was called Hercules in the Haunted World, the one

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Speaker 2: with Reg Park in it. As him playing Hercules in

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Speaker 2: this movie, it had a grossly misused Christopher Lee where

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Speaker 2: they dubbed his voice, but directed by Mario Bava, where

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Speaker 2: Hercules fights through the underworld and In that movie, they

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Speaker 2: put one of the villains from this legend just randomly

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Speaker 2: in hell. They take Procrustes, the guy, the bedtime mutilator,

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Speaker 2: who we'll talk about later, and they put him as

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Speaker 2: one of the villains that Hercules has to fight down

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Speaker 2: in the underworld.

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Speaker 1: I forgot about that entirely. I don't remember him being

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Speaker 1: measured for a bed at all.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't really... I don't remember how that scene

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Speaker 2: plays out. And I remember the Procrustes in the movie

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Speaker 2: is sort of this rock monster type thing. It seems

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Speaker 2: a little bit less human. I don't know if there's

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Speaker 2: any legendary or ancient text-based precedent for putting Procrustes in hell.

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Speaker 2: I somewhat doubt it. I think this is an earth-dwelling

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Speaker 2: killer in the stories that I know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not aware of any particular film treatment that

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Speaker 1: really gets into Theseus and these six evildoers. But I

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Speaker 1: think there's room there for exploration. If anyone out there

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Speaker 1: is looking to cash in on the post-Odyssey enthusiasm for

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Speaker 1: Greek mythology, yeah, dig into it. There's a lot of

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Speaker 1: stuff like this that hasn't received as much attention.

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Speaker 2: I can imagine a really good Robert Eggers take on

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Speaker 2: the Theseus tale, or, you know, the kind of dusty, nasty,

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Speaker 2: old-world look at Theseus going out to fight all the

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Speaker 2: blood spillers. But anyway, I wanted to talk for a

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Speaker 2: minute about source material. Uh, so as you can imagine, the,

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Speaker 2: the story of Theseus and his early six labors is

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Speaker 2: one that has featured in many different ancient texts. There

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Speaker 2: are many tellings of and references to this story or

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Speaker 2: parts of the story throughout the ancient world. Uh, and

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of differences between those tellings. So

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Speaker 2: we're going to feature different texts and quote from different

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Speaker 2: texts in this episode. I think, uh, One of our

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Speaker 2: major sources is going to be Plutarch's Life of Theseus,

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Speaker 2: especially for the prologue to the slasher part. But we

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Speaker 2: can pull details from other ancient texts as needed. And

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Speaker 2: when quoting from Plutarch, I'm actually going to use a

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Speaker 2: couple of different translations. The older John Dryden translation is

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Speaker 2: really great for how he phrases some things. But I'm

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Speaker 2: also going to feature the Bernadotte Perrin translation, which is

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Speaker 2: an earlier 20th century translation.

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Speaker 1: Excellent. And a source I'll be referring to a fair

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Speaker 1: amount here is Monsters and Monarchs, Serial Killers in Classic

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Speaker 1: Myth and History by Debbie Felton, the professor of classics

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Speaker 1: at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose work we also

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Speaker 1: referenced in our series on Haunted Houses of the Ancient World.

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Speaker 1: It's a really cool book, and it goes into a

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Speaker 1: lot more than just what we're talking about here today.

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Speaker 1: So if your pyramid of interests includes both Greek mythology

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Speaker 1: and true crime, definitely pick up that book. Totally.

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Speaker 2: I haven't read this one, but based on your references

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Speaker 2: to it in our notes and stuff, it seems like

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Speaker 2: a really great source. I do want to mention one

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Speaker 2: thing to avoid any confusion. So I know there's going

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Speaker 2: to be some true crime of the ancient world in

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Speaker 2: that book, but the stories we're talking about today are

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Speaker 2: not true crime. They are myth crime. So Theseus is

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Speaker 2: considered a legendary figure. He's Probably not a person who

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Speaker 2: really lived in history, but sort of interlocks with the

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Speaker 2: legendary history of Greece. And so we get references to

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Speaker 2: Theseus that have different levels of magical integration in them.

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Speaker 2: Like there are tellings of the Theseus story that are

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Speaker 2: more just like mythology. They're like any other myth you

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Speaker 2: would read about gods and monsters and stuff like that.

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Speaker 2: And then there are tellings of the Theseus story that

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Speaker 2: are more on the rationalistic history side of things. And

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Speaker 2: I think that's more what you get with Plutarch. Plutarch

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Speaker 2: was offering a kind of, I'm going to try to

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Speaker 2: strip down the story and tell it as if like

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Speaker 2: what I think probably really happened in the life of

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Speaker 2: this person.

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Speaker 1: So, yeah, there's definitely none of that, you know, the

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Speaker 1: flavor of portals to the underworld or anything. with Plutarch.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we are dealing with characters that when you

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Speaker 1: get into other sources, like, yeah, technically they're demigods. In

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Speaker 1: some cases, they are siblings or half-siblings to Theseus himself,

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Speaker 1: who is also the son of a god. But Plutarch's

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Speaker 1: approach to it, yeah, is more down to earth, maybe

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Speaker 1: stripped down budget-wise, if we're thinking of it as a

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Speaker 1: motion picture here, you know, relying less on spectacular special

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Speaker 1: effects and more on gritty, believable, like, touchable, practical effects.

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Speaker 2: Like, the references to mythical animals will mostly come from

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Speaker 2: the other sources. And Plutarch is going to try to

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Speaker 2: be like, eh, this monster pig, I think it was

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Speaker 2: really just a lady people didn't like.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: For the most part, we have just a hero, a

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Speaker 1: man with a great future ahead of him, who decides that, hey,

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Speaker 1: he's going to go out and challenge himself by taking

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Speaker 1: out some outlaws. So, yeah, almost like a Western in

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Speaker 1: some respects, I guess. Right. I also think of it

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Speaker 1: as kind of like a biker movie, you know.

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Speaker 2: Biker.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Like one good biker versus a lot of bad bikers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. On the road from one town to the next

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Speaker 1: and the lawless highway.

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Speaker 2: Oh, that's it. That's a theme I want to come

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Speaker 2: back to later. So when we I guess actually we

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Speaker 2: should start with some background. Talk about like who was

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Speaker 2: the CS according to these storytellers and get into the

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Speaker 2: background of the six laborers. And so, Rob, I'm going

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Speaker 2: to work from my notes here, but I know you've

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Speaker 2: got some stuff on this same part of the story.

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Speaker 2: So please stop me anywhere here and add whatever you've got.

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Speaker 2: So the action begins in a city called Treason, which

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Speaker 2: is on the Peloponnese southwest of Athens. And the king

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Speaker 2: and founder of Treason in this story is a guy

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Speaker 2: named Pythias. Pythias has a daughter named Aethra. And Aethra

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Speaker 2: conceives a child with a man named Aegis, who is

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Speaker 2: king of Athens. Plutarch writes, this is the Bernadotte Perrin translation, quote,

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Speaker 2: Learning that it was the daughter of Pythias with whom

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Speaker 2: he had consorted, and suspecting that she was with child

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Speaker 2: by him, he, meaning Aegis, left a sword and a

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Speaker 2: pair of sandals hidden under a great rock, which had

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Speaker 2: a hollow in it just large enough to receive these objects.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't say how he got them under the rock. I

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Speaker 2: assume he's got a bunch of people working for him.

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Speaker 2: But then Aegis tells Aethra that if she ever has

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Speaker 2: a son and if her son is able to lift

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Speaker 2: the rock and take the treasures from underneath it, that

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Speaker 2: her son should come see him in Athens to receive

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Speaker 2: his birthright as son of a king. But he also

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Speaker 2: says he should come in secret because he's going to

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Speaker 2: have many jealous enemies.

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Speaker 1: Hmm.

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Speaker 2: So later, Aethra does give birth to a son, and

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Speaker 2: she names her son Theseus. Theseus is raised by Pythias

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Speaker 2: and instructed by a tutor. It names the tutor, says

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Speaker 2: it's this guy named Conadus. And I think that's to

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Speaker 2: give us the idea that he's brought up right, like

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Speaker 2: he gets a proper education. He probably learns philosophy and

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Speaker 2: rhetoric and, you know, the kingly arts and all those things.

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Speaker 2: And it says he observes the proper rituals of a

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Speaker 2: young man, a martial young man, a man of war.

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Speaker 2: He goes to Delphi and he sacrifices some of his hair. Now,

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Speaker 2: all the time he's growing up, Aethra keeps the secret

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Speaker 2: of his father's identity from Theseus. Plutarch says that Pythias

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Speaker 2: intentionally spreads a rumor that his grandson was begotten not

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Speaker 2: by a king from some other city, not by the

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Speaker 2: king of Athens, but by Poseidon, god of the sea. Quote,

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Speaker 2: for Poseidon is highly honored by the people of treason,

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Speaker 2: and he is the patron god of their city. To

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Speaker 2: him they offer firstfruits in sacrifice, and they have his

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Speaker 2: trident as an emblem on their coinage. So Plutarch is

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Speaker 2: giving a rationalization. I think he may be kind of

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Speaker 2: explaining away other versions of the story of Theseus saying like, oh,

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Speaker 2: if you've heard that his father was Poseidon, that's because

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Speaker 2: King Pythias spread this rumor about him because everybody around

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Speaker 2: there liked Poseidon. So that's like a good thing to

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Speaker 2: be in treason. Because there are other versions of the

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Speaker 2: story in which Theseus has different fathers, right?

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Speaker 1: Right, right. Yeah, definitely this idea that Theseus is himself

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Speaker 1: a demigod, is a son of Poseidon, much in the

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Speaker 1: same way that Hercules is, of course, a son of Zeus.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that Felton stresses that, you know,

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Speaker 1: we should keep in mind with all things Theseus is

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Speaker 1: that he was for the longest kind of a regional

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Speaker 1: hero with popularity centered in his home city of Athens. And,

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Speaker 1: you know, certainly from our standpoint, you know, via the

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Speaker 1: tale of Theseus and the Minotaur, You know, he is

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Speaker 1: canonized in our understanding of Greek mythology and antiquity. And

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Speaker 1: we kind of see him more or less having equal

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Speaker 1: stature with Hercules. I was thinking about this. Like, if

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Speaker 1: you ask an average person on the street, name one

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Speaker 1: Greek hero, they're probably going to say Heracles or Hercules,

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Speaker 1: you know. But if you ask them, well, tell me

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Speaker 1: what Theseus slayed and tell me what Heracles slayed. they're probably,

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Speaker 1: if they're going to name any kind of monster, they're

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Speaker 1: going to name the Minotaur. Or at least that's my

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Speaker 1: guess anyway. I feel like Theseus and the Minotaur is,

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Speaker 1: you know, certainly together, they have this iconic stature that's

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Speaker 1: up there with anything else in Greek mythology.

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Speaker 2: With Heracles, you got so many slayings, they kind of

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Speaker 2: blur together. People remember maybe the Hydra.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. But then he has his cousin's help on that. But,

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Speaker 1: you know, in any story, there's going to be a

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Speaker 1: little bit of help, right? But yeah, it's kind of like,

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Speaker 1: We have Heracles at home, if home is Athens. That's

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Speaker 1: basically what's going on here. And so for the longest,

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Speaker 1: like Theseus' fandom was tied to Athens, to the city-state

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Speaker 1: of Athens, and is tied up as well with propaganda

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Speaker 1: about Athens and against the enemies of Athens. So we're

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Speaker 1: going to come back to elements of that as this

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Speaker 1: all plays out. But yeah, Heracles was widely popular throughout

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Speaker 1: the Greek world, while Theseus was, again, more of a

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Speaker 1: regional city-state Heracles. Both are mentioned in the writings of Homer, roughly,

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Speaker 1: you know, 8th century BCE. But Theseus wasn't really all

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Speaker 1: that popular in Athens till after 510 BCE. And the

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Speaker 1: sorts of things that we're seeing Theseus do in this story,

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Speaker 1: it's exactly the same sort of things that Heracles was

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Speaker 1: also up to. Heracles also slayed a whole bunch of

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Speaker 1: bandits and headhunters and skull crushers and so forth. So

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Speaker 1: there is a lot to this that is kind of like,

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Speaker 1: you know, generic Heracles adventure, but tied to a different city, um,

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Speaker 1: that eventually has equal stature with it. And I believe

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Speaker 1: Plutarch even kind of, you know, more or less alludes

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Speaker 1: to this as, uh, to some of this as well,

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Speaker 1: like pointing out, I was like, look, Heracles is great.

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Speaker 1: And he killed a lot of bandits, but he couldn't

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Speaker 1: kill all of them. There's some clever bandits, some clever

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Speaker 1: evildoers out there. Uh, you know, one hero can only

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Speaker 1: do some so much. Some of them hid from Heracles. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there are plenty of villains out there for, uh, You know,

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Speaker 1: lesser heroes like Theseus to deal with.

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Speaker 2: Totally. And the comparison between Theseus and Heracles is not

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Speaker 2: just something we're observing retrospectively. Like, it's there in the text. Like,

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Speaker 2: Plutarch says that Theseus is obsessed with Heracles. He's, you know,

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Speaker 2: he's all about him. I'll get to a quote about

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Speaker 2: that in just a minute. But anyway, just to continue

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Speaker 2: the story up to the beginning of the six labors.

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Speaker 2: So Theseus, yeah, he grows up to be a young man.

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Speaker 2: It says of strength and many virtues. He is strong

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Speaker 2: of body. He has skill and prowess. It says he

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Speaker 2: has firm spirit, intelligence and wisdom. So one day, Aethra

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Speaker 2: reveals the truth to Theseus about his father, that his

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Speaker 2: father is Aegis, the king of Athens. and about the

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Speaker 2: treasures that are waiting for him hidden under the rock. Remember,

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Speaker 2: he left those in the hollow under the rock. Theseus

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Speaker 2: goes to the rock. It says he easily lifts it up,

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Speaker 2: puts his shoulder to it. No problem. Just lifts that

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Speaker 2: rock right up there and retrieves the sword and the

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Speaker 2: sandals that were put there for him. And now Pythias

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Speaker 2: instructs Theseus to travel to Athens by sea. So we're

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Speaker 2: again talking about how even though the action of the

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Speaker 2: story does not begin in Athens, Theseus is going to

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Speaker 2: go on to become associated with the city of Athens.

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Speaker 2: He's sort of the natural, the national hero of Athens.

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Speaker 2: And he's got to get there before he can, can

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Speaker 2: become the patron of Athens.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. But how are you going to get there? Right.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, he advises him. He's like, look, The

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Speaker 1: land road to Athens is, of course, famously dangerous. It's

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Speaker 1: just a death trap. There are these six different evildoers,

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Speaker 1: bandits or warlords, however you want to think of them.

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Speaker 1: We'll get into the terminology here in a minute. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: they rule the land route. If you take the highway

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Speaker 1: to Athens, that's just a death sentence. So don't do that.

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Speaker 1: You want to just shoot straight across the Saronic Gulf.

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Speaker 1: You want to travel to Athens by boat. And you'll

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Speaker 1: get there faster and more to the point you'll get

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Speaker 1: there alive.

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Speaker 2: Now, it's funny that Plutarch explains the problem with overland

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Speaker 2: travel as not something just specific to Theseus, but like

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Speaker 2: a general problem. So I'm going to read from Plutarch here.

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Speaker 2: This is the Perrin translation. Quote, For verily that age

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Speaker 2: produced men who in work of hand and speed of

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Speaker 2: foot and vigor of body were extraordinary and indefatigable men.

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Speaker 2: But they applied their powers to nothing that was fitting

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Speaker 2: or useful. Nay, rather, they exulted in monstrous insolence and

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Speaker 2: reaped from their strength the harvest of cruelty and bitterness,

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Speaker 2: mastering and forcing and destroying everything that came in their path.

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Speaker 2: And as for reverence and righteousness, justice and humanity, they

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Speaker 2: thought that most men praised these qualities for lack of

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Speaker 2: courage to do wrong and for fear of being wronged.

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Speaker 2: and considered them no concern of men who were strong

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Speaker 2: enough to get the upper hand. It's like, oh yeah,

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Speaker 2: people only do right because they're weak. You know, real

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Speaker 2: tough guys, they just take what they want. Anyway, continuing

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Speaker 2: from Plutarch, quote, some of these creatures Heracles cut off

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Speaker 2: and destroyed as he went about, but some escaped his

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Speaker 2: notice as he passed by, crouching down and shrinking back

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Speaker 2: and were overlooked in their abjectness. And when Heracles met

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Speaker 2: with calamity, and after the slaying of Iphidus, removed into Lydia,

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Speaker 2: and for a long time did slave service there in

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Speaker 2: the house of Umphali, then Lydia indeed obtained great peace

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Speaker 2: and security. But in the regions of Hellas the old

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Speaker 2: villainies burst forth and broke out anew, there being none

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Speaker 2: to rebuke and none to restrain them. Wow. So killers

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Speaker 2: are just everywhere. The old villainy broke forth. It's like

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Speaker 2: a flood spilling out. It had once been dammed up

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Speaker 2: by Hercules, but Hercules missed a few. And then they

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Speaker 2: just multiplied like cockroaches. Now they're just villains everywhere. And

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Speaker 2: so you can't take the land roads.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds kind of like a sequel spinoff. Like

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Speaker 1: he didn't get all the bad guys. There's some left

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Speaker 1: and we have this new character just as exciting as Heracles.

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Speaker 1: I think you guys in Athens are especially going to

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Speaker 1: like Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So Pythias tells Theseus to go by sea, but Theseus says, no,

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Speaker 2: I'm not going to do that. Instead, he says he's

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Speaker 2: going to travel by land and he's going to face

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Speaker 2: all of these bandits by himself in order to prove

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Speaker 2: his worth. And Plutarch says there are two reasons for this.

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Speaker 2: One is, again, that he is obsessed with Heracles, who

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Speaker 2: is a distant cousin of his. I think maybe they're

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Speaker 2: second cousins or something. or first cousins once removed. I

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Speaker 2: don't remember how that works out, but he's somehow cousins

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Speaker 2: with Heracles, and he wants to be a vanquisher of

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Speaker 2: evildoers just like his cousin. But also, he does not

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Speaker 2: want to appear before his father as a boy with

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Speaker 2: no great deeds to his name. There's a line about

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Speaker 2: how he doesn't want to show up with an unstained sword,

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Speaker 2: like this sword needs blood on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because he's grown up outside of Athens, but with, again,

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Speaker 1: kind of like an Athenian upbringing. He's been given all

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Speaker 1: of the educational and cultural advantages, but he is untested.

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Speaker 1: And so he wants to test himself.

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Speaker 2: Quote, in such a spirit and with such thoughts, he

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Speaker 2: set out determined to do no man any wrong, but

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Speaker 2: to punish those who offered him violence. So he's been warned.

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Speaker 2: It's dangerous. out there. You shouldn't do it. But he's

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Speaker 2: going anyway, and he's going to slash the slashers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Now, you know, we're using different terms for

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Speaker 1: these guys. Slashers, that's more what we're calling them. But

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Speaker 1: you also see them called just villains, robbers, bandits. As

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Speaker 1: Felton points out, Yeah, a lot of modern translations and

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Speaker 1: retellings are going to use words like robbers and bandits,

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Speaker 1: but most of the ancient Greek literary sources do not.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, they don't categorize them as anything on

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Speaker 1: the whole, often just referring to each individual by their

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Speaker 1: given name. There is a term that is frequently, that

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Speaker 1: is at least sometimes used in the ancient texts. She

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Speaker 1: points out kakorgos, which apparently means evildoer. So I think

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Speaker 1: if you're going to call them anything, as a group,

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Speaker 1: they are evildoers. And this is important when you get

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Speaker 1: into the details of, the overarching details of who they

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Speaker 1: are and what they do. Felton stresses that in each case,

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Speaker 1: you know, loot is not the primary motivation for these

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Speaker 1: different killers. You know, they are engaging, at least some

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Speaker 1: of them are engaging in some form of banditry as well.

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Speaker 1: But it seems that the cruelty, the murder, the mutilation

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Speaker 1: itself targeting innocent individuals on the whole, that is the

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Speaker 1: whole point of what they're up to. Uh, they're out

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Speaker 1: there in the wilds, um, you know, ungoverned, ungovernable, and

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Speaker 1: all they want to do is cause misery and mayhem.

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Speaker 2: With a couple of them, it feels like they're trying

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Speaker 2: to exert a kind of dominance or superiority over people

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Speaker 2: who travel through by, by beating them up or killing them.

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Speaker 2: I think you get that with paraffinities and something somewhat

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Speaker 2: with Circe on, um, And then with others, you get

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Speaker 2: more of a flavor of just criminal insanity. People doing

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Speaker 2: things that don't make any sense, but they just kill.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And so one of Felton's main focuses is to

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Speaker 1: compare them to serial killers. And she writes, quote, they

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Speaker 1: resemble modern serial killers in many ways. They kill primarily

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Speaker 1: for the pleasure they derive from it and only secondarily

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Speaker 1: for profit. They exhibited sadism and a consistent pattern in

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Speaker 1: the methods of killing. Their brutality far surpassed that of

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Speaker 1: the typical highway marauder. They not only robbed and killed,

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Speaker 1: but tortured and mutilated their victims. And as we'll see,

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Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think the serial killer comparison is

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Speaker 1: right on, especially if we compare it not so much

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Speaker 1: to real world serial killers, but the sort of sensational

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Speaker 1: fictional serial killers that you see in modern media, you know,

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Speaker 1: TV shows like Hannibal and so forth. As we've already

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Speaker 1: teased out, I think there's More than a little bit

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Speaker 1: of the slasher from the horror movie to be found

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Speaker 1: in many of these examples. And also just any kind

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Speaker 1: of modern media where you have kind of a no

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Speaker 1: man's land and some sort of like deranged individuals that

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Speaker 1: are enjoying the lawlessness. Like, again, my mind comes back

395
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Speaker 1: to 70s outlaw biker films about, you know, deranged anti

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Speaker 1: hippies who are killing people just for kicks.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely see that. Strangely, I kept thinking about

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Speaker 2: what slasher movies these stories most remind me of. And

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Speaker 2: more than anything, I was thinking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

400
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:13,660
Speaker 2: These get closer to TCM than any other slasher franchise

401
00:23:13,770 --> 00:23:14,480
Speaker 2: I could think of.

402
00:23:14,830 --> 00:23:20,570
Speaker 1: Yeah, the lawless rural spaces between the big cities. I

403
00:23:20,590 --> 00:23:23,890
Speaker 1: think they're both feeding on similar energy and similar anxieties.

404
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Speaker 1: Because A question inevitably arises in all of this. Okay,

405
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Speaker 1: we're reading these stories of these different warlords, these different

406
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Speaker 1: bandits or evildoers, and the dangers of traveling by road

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Speaker 1: from treason to Athens. And you have to ask, well,

408
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Speaker 1: was this for real? Was this, like, on any level true?

409
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Speaker 1: And Felton, you know, agrees that, yeah, this is one

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Speaker 1: of those places in myth where we're not supposed to

411
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Speaker 1: take things too literally. Because obviously, if the roads were

412
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Speaker 1: this dangerous, nobody would dare to travel them. Rather, these

413
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:06,340
Speaker 1: are likely best understood as representing societal concerns on the whole.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

415
00:24:08,380 --> 00:24:10,420
Speaker 1: However, she does stress that at this point in time,

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Speaker 1: this is like 6th century BCE, the Greek city-states are

417
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Speaker 1: still very much countries unto themselves. They're only really beginning

418
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Speaker 1: to communicate regularly with one another. And therefore, the highways

419
00:24:20,890 --> 00:24:24,850
Speaker 1: between these city-states were connected. well known to be dangerous

420
00:24:24,869 --> 00:24:29,810
Speaker 1: and unpatrolled. They were frequented by bandits. There were dangers

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Speaker 1: out there. And she says that some of the villains

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00:24:33,030 --> 00:24:36,550
Speaker 1: that Theseus tangles with may have been based on real

423
00:24:36,590 --> 00:24:39,400
Speaker 1: bandits or real people. We'll get into some specifics on that.

424
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,540
Speaker 1: But they might have, in other cases, been creations of

425
00:24:43,619 --> 00:24:47,220
Speaker 1: political propaganda, as we'll get into. But by and large,

426
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:50,739
Speaker 1: she stresses, they likely manifested the fears of They were

427
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,700
Speaker 1: considered by anyone who was even considering a journey by

428
00:24:53,780 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: land instead of taking the costlier sea road, particularly if

429
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,900
Speaker 1: you were going to travel to Athens, you know, across

430
00:25:02,180 --> 00:25:06,149
Speaker 1: the Gulf here. So I think that's worth keeping in mind.

431
00:25:06,230 --> 00:25:08,890
Speaker 1: And again, coming back to like TCM and everything else,

432
00:25:09,310 --> 00:25:12,130
Speaker 1: roads and highways have long had this flavor. You know,

433
00:25:12,170 --> 00:25:16,270
Speaker 1: you find this in folk traditions and mythology, horror stories

434
00:25:16,730 --> 00:25:20,300
Speaker 1: and also real accounts of crime and mayhem. all over

435
00:25:20,340 --> 00:25:23,920
Speaker 1: the world. When you have roads connecting places, those roads

436
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:26,540
Speaker 1: are not always well patrolled. They are the sorts of

437
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:31,250
Speaker 1: spaces where horrors and terrors can occur. And even in

438
00:25:31,310 --> 00:25:34,730
Speaker 1: our modern day, like, you know, these are places where

439
00:25:34,770 --> 00:25:36,970
Speaker 1: we often have our horror stories take place.

440
00:25:37,590 --> 00:25:41,170
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Though I will say, there is a more

441
00:25:41,310 --> 00:25:45,590
Speaker 2: palpable sense of the danger of overland travel. Um, and

442
00:25:45,670 --> 00:25:47,410
Speaker 2: in fact, I would say travel by sea as well,

443
00:25:47,530 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 2: actually in the ancient, in ancient sources, um, then you

444
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 2: would normally have and say people just talking about traveling

445
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,879
Speaker 2: between cities in the United States, you know, in, in

446
00:25:56,940 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 2: our context, there is more of a feeling of order

447
00:25:59,920 --> 00:26:04,609
Speaker 2: imposed in the spaces between, but actually this connected, uh,

448
00:26:05,230 --> 00:26:07,010
Speaker 2: to something I wanted to talk about later in the

449
00:26:07,050 --> 00:26:08,869
Speaker 2: episodes as we're talking about it. Now I figure it,

450
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 2: We can go ahead and open it up. So later

451
00:26:11,700 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 2: I wanted to discuss ways in which the story of

452
00:26:16,140 --> 00:26:20,530
Speaker 2: the labors of Theseus does or does not connect to

453
00:26:21,450 --> 00:26:25,270
Speaker 2: tropes you actually see in slasher movies. One of those

454
00:26:25,330 --> 00:26:30,590
Speaker 2: tropes is a general idea of spatial transgression, going where

455
00:26:30,770 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 2: one should not. So in a lot of slasher movies,

456
00:26:34,340 --> 00:26:39,360
Speaker 2: the victim... either actually trespasses, like goes onto a property

457
00:26:39,420 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 2: or into a house that is forbidden. You're not supposed

458
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:44,260
Speaker 2: to go there, and then they get in trouble. That

459
00:26:44,300 --> 00:26:45,940
Speaker 2: happens in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

460
00:26:45,980 --> 00:26:48,140
Speaker 1: You don't want to go messing around other folks' properties.

461
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:50,250
Speaker 1: Some folks don't like that, and they don't mind showing you.

462
00:26:51,390 --> 00:26:56,490
Speaker 2: That's right. Or it might not be specific trespassing. Maybe

463
00:26:56,510 --> 00:26:59,730
Speaker 2: you're going to a place you're technically allowed to go,

464
00:27:00,109 --> 00:27:02,400
Speaker 2: but you have been warned it is dangerous.

465
00:27:02,420 --> 00:27:02,660
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

466
00:27:03,330 --> 00:27:06,310
Speaker 2: And you go, anyway, you, you disobey, do not heed

467
00:27:06,350 --> 00:27:09,490
Speaker 2: the warnings. You get this in say the, uh, Friday

468
00:27:09,510 --> 00:27:12,970
Speaker 2: the 13th franchise with a crazy Ralph saying you can't

469
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:14,919
Speaker 2: go to that camp. It's got a death curse.

470
00:27:15,100 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I just rewatched the first one. Yeah.

471
00:27:17,540 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, and so there can be. Actually, I was

472
00:27:21,020 --> 00:27:23,900
Speaker 2: thinking about it in there, two different versions of spatial

473
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 2: transgression and slasher movies. I was thinking about it as

474
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:32,010
Speaker 2: going out and going in. So. Going in is entering

475
00:27:32,070 --> 00:27:34,889
Speaker 2: a place of danger. This place has a death curse

476
00:27:34,950 --> 00:27:39,050
Speaker 2: and you go there anyway versus going out like you're

477
00:27:39,170 --> 00:27:42,939
Speaker 2: leaving a place of safety. Maybe you leave the city

478
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,540
Speaker 2: or you leave civilization and you go out into the

479
00:27:45,580 --> 00:27:49,379
Speaker 2: wilderness or you go out into rural America, you know,

480
00:27:49,460 --> 00:27:52,109
Speaker 2: and there's like rural weirdness. Who knows what's going on

481
00:27:52,170 --> 00:27:56,250
Speaker 2: out there? And while I had trouble finding real evidence

482
00:27:56,290 --> 00:28:00,669
Speaker 2: of the other slasher movie tropes prefigured by the story

483
00:28:00,710 --> 00:28:03,530
Speaker 2: of Theseus, this one I really did say, this kind

484
00:28:03,690 --> 00:28:07,140
Speaker 2: of lines up. Theseus is warned of the danger. Again,

485
00:28:07,180 --> 00:28:10,780
Speaker 2: according to Plutarch, his grandfather's like, you don't go by road.

486
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you about the six different slashers

487
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,600
Speaker 2: that are on the road. And he doesn't pay any mind.

488
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:20,260
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm young. I'm brave. I can do it. Yeah. Uh,

489
00:28:20,540 --> 00:28:23,100
Speaker 2: and I was also thinking, is this a going in

490
00:28:23,180 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 2: or going out danger? I guess it's kind of both,

491
00:28:26,260 --> 00:28:29,940
Speaker 2: but it's more going out, right? Like in the context

492
00:28:30,060 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 2: of the. Both to some degree in real ancient history

493
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 2: and certainly in the mythic context of the story, the

494
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 2: population centers, the ancient city states are a, are a

495
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:46,090
Speaker 2: place of safety and civilization. When you go out, you

496
00:28:46,130 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 2: go outside of those populated areas where there is authority

497
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:54,100
Speaker 2: and structure and protection, you go into places of danger

498
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,270
Speaker 2: and murder. And that does have some significance because I

499
00:28:57,310 --> 00:29:01,070
Speaker 2: think the going in transgression horror movies versus the going

500
00:29:01,190 --> 00:29:05,330
Speaker 2: out transgression movies is are somewhat different. Like the ones

501
00:29:05,430 --> 00:29:07,990
Speaker 2: that are about the dangers of going out, I think

502
00:29:08,050 --> 00:29:11,620
Speaker 2: are more generally paranoid. They have more of a view

503
00:29:11,670 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 2: of a dangerous world. And that's the version we're getting here.

504
00:29:16,060 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 2: We're getting the more paranoid, generalized danger view of the world. Yeah.

505
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: Don't go into the rural countryside. Don't go into the

506
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:26,020
Speaker 1: outback and so forth.

507
00:29:26,060 --> 00:29:26,180
Speaker 2: Yeah.

508
00:29:26,220 --> 00:29:27,180
Speaker 1: Don't go into the jungle.

509
00:29:28,140 --> 00:29:30,550
Speaker 2: Another thing I wanted to pick up on is something

510
00:29:30,620 --> 00:29:33,220
Speaker 2: that you were saying a minute ago. about the real

511
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:35,900
Speaker 2: dangers of travel in the ancient world. I was looking

512
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:38,590
Speaker 2: for statistics on this and I couldn't find anything very

513
00:29:38,630 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 2: good about what are the real probabilities of danger in,

514
00:29:43,170 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 2: you know, traveling over land in the ancient world. I

515
00:29:45,500 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 2: don't know if there's really any way to calculate that.

516
00:29:48,740 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 2: But I'll at least say it's true based on my

517
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:57,110
Speaker 2: general reading about ancient Greece that that traveling between population

518
00:29:57,170 --> 00:30:01,810
Speaker 2: centers by yourself was considered dangerous. Like this, like multiple

519
00:30:01,990 --> 00:30:07,530
Speaker 2: ancient authors talk about banditry on isolated roads and that,

520
00:30:07,610 --> 00:30:11,420
Speaker 2: that going between inhabited areas was a recognized danger. Uh,

521
00:30:12,220 --> 00:30:15,340
Speaker 2: they mentioned risks of being robbed, of being killed or

522
00:30:15,420 --> 00:30:20,820
Speaker 2: abducted on often like mountain passes and stuff. Um, And

523
00:30:21,220 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 2: I think there are a couple of different ways to

524
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 2: think about this. One is, like, you were talking about, like,

525
00:30:25,460 --> 00:30:28,510
Speaker 2: the absence of authority. In some places that are far

526
00:30:28,590 --> 00:30:32,770
Speaker 2: away from authorities, there was little that could or would

527
00:30:32,830 --> 00:30:36,590
Speaker 2: be done about it. Like, maybe there's nobody in particular

528
00:30:36,710 --> 00:30:39,630
Speaker 2: whose job it is to make sure this long stretch

529
00:30:39,670 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 2: of uninhabited country is safe. So, you know, a bandit

530
00:30:43,140 --> 00:30:45,380
Speaker 2: wants to post up there, who's going to do anything

531
00:30:45,420 --> 00:30:45,700
Speaker 2: about it?

532
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:49,060
Speaker 1: Right, right. Like a city-state may lay claim to that land,

533
00:30:49,100 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean they have a presence there.

534
00:30:51,340 --> 00:30:54,660
Speaker 2: Yeah. In other places, I think you may just get

535
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:59,980
Speaker 2: the fact that local inhabitants may have seen it as like,

536
00:31:00,380 --> 00:31:04,330
Speaker 2: you know, our job is essentially to raid travelers passing through. Like,

537
00:31:04,390 --> 00:31:07,209
Speaker 2: this is our place. You're coming through here. And you

538
00:31:07,270 --> 00:31:10,370
Speaker 2: might have something like a very blurry line between toll

539
00:31:10,450 --> 00:31:12,010
Speaker 2: collection and banditry.

540
00:31:12,970 --> 00:31:14,950
Speaker 1: And when does one become the other, right? What's the

541
00:31:15,010 --> 00:31:18,210
Speaker 1: line between the two? And then add storytelling and myth-making

542
00:31:18,270 --> 00:31:18,850
Speaker 1: on top of that.

543
00:31:19,310 --> 00:31:22,690
Speaker 2: That's right. So I think it's interesting how this one

544
00:31:22,770 --> 00:31:25,610
Speaker 2: really kind of does line up with tropes we see

545
00:31:25,650 --> 00:31:27,950
Speaker 2: in slasher movies, unlike some of the other tropes we're

546
00:31:27,970 --> 00:31:29,810
Speaker 2: going to get into later, where if you want to

547
00:31:29,830 --> 00:31:32,090
Speaker 2: see any connection, it's a lot more of a stretch.

548
00:31:34,030 --> 00:31:36,510
Speaker 2: Theseus is warned, you don't want to go down that road,

549
00:31:36,610 --> 00:31:39,020
Speaker 2: it's really dangerous, but he goes anyway. Because he wants

550
00:31:39,060 --> 00:31:41,820
Speaker 2: to be like Heracles, and he believes he's young and invincible.

551
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: And so that's exactly what we're going to get. A

552
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:47,970
Speaker 1: string of six encounters. like sub-bosses in a video game,

553
00:31:48,570 --> 00:31:52,090
Speaker 1: as our hero makes his way to Athens to meet

554
00:31:52,130 --> 00:31:55,650
Speaker 1: his father for the first time, at least his mortal father.

555
00:31:56,650 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to do for the next

556
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,180
Speaker 1: large chunk of the podcast here, is just go through

557
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: one by one, talk about the slasher, evildoer, bandit king

558
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: he encounters, what's written about them, what we might tease

559
00:32:10,780 --> 00:32:13,360
Speaker 1: apart regarding this individual, and then we'll move on to

560
00:32:13,380 --> 00:32:13,830
Speaker 1: the next one.

561
00:32:14,620 --> 00:32:20,940
Speaker 2: Okay, first killer. Periphetes, the basher with bronze. Okay, I'm

562
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 2: going to read from Plutarch. This is the Peron translation.

563
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:28,680
Speaker 2: And so in the first place, in Epidaria, when Periphetes,

564
00:32:29,060 --> 00:32:32,610
Speaker 2: who used a club as his weapon and on this

565
00:32:32,670 --> 00:32:36,530
Speaker 2: account was called club-bearer, laid hold of him and tried

566
00:32:36,590 --> 00:32:39,930
Speaker 2: to stop his progress, he grappled with him and slew him.

567
00:32:40,530 --> 00:32:43,030
Speaker 2: And being pleased with the club, he took it and

568
00:32:43,090 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 2: made it his weapon and continued to use it just

569
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:50,660
Speaker 2: as Heracles did with the lion's skin. That hero wore

570
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:53,590
Speaker 2: the skin to prove how great a wild beast he

571
00:32:53,630 --> 00:32:57,450
Speaker 2: had mastered, and so Theseus carried the club to show

572
00:32:57,490 --> 00:33:00,410
Speaker 2: that although it had been vanquished by him, in his

573
00:33:00,510 --> 00:33:05,900
Speaker 2: own hands it was invincible. Mm-hmm. And then another phrasing

574
00:33:05,980 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 2: I also wanted to draw from a different telling of

575
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:11,100
Speaker 2: the story. This is the version that appears in the

576
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:17,750
Speaker 2: bibliotheca or library of Apollodorus, sometimes called Pseudo-Apollodorus. Basically, this

577
00:33:17,850 --> 00:33:21,450
Speaker 2: is a compilation of myths and legends that was once

578
00:33:21,510 --> 00:33:26,690
Speaker 2: attributed to the 2nd century BCE Greek author Apollodorus of Athens.

579
00:33:27,670 --> 00:33:31,830
Speaker 2: Scholars have established that it cannot be by this guy,

580
00:33:31,890 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 2: by Apollodorus of Athens because of anachronisms. It's actually probably

581
00:33:35,540 --> 00:33:38,660
Speaker 2: from the first or second century CE, real author unknown.

582
00:33:38,700 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 2: So it's called pseudo Apollodorus, like false Apollodorus. And this

583
00:33:42,820 --> 00:33:47,040
Speaker 2: is the Fraser translation. Again, it's talking about the story.

584
00:33:47,060 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 2: It says he comes to Epidaurus. He slays Periphetes, quote,

585
00:33:52,820 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 2: who was surnamed the club man from the club, which

586
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:59,780
Speaker 2: he carried. For being crazy on his legs, he carried

587
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 2: an iron club with which he dispatched the passersby. That

588
00:34:04,380 --> 00:34:07,870
Speaker 2: club Theseus wrested from him and continued to carry about.

589
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,730
Speaker 2: I wanted to include that because he's the club man

590
00:34:10,750 --> 00:34:14,030
Speaker 2: and also because it says he's crazy on his legs.

591
00:34:14,210 --> 00:34:19,450
Speaker 2: Some sources say that Periphetes was lame in one leg.

592
00:34:19,530 --> 00:34:21,549
Speaker 2: And so I wonder, could that be what Fraser is

593
00:34:21,610 --> 00:34:23,879
Speaker 2: translating with crazy on his legs here?

594
00:34:24,680 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: That's what I assume, because that is something that Felton

595
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:32,950
Speaker 1: also gets into, talking about how in some tellings, Periphetes

596
00:34:33,030 --> 00:34:35,850
Speaker 1: is said to be a son of Hephaestus, and therefore

597
00:34:35,870 --> 00:34:39,890
Speaker 1: a crippled demigod himself, who at times uses the club

598
00:34:39,950 --> 00:34:42,129
Speaker 1: as a walking stick, as well as a way to

599
00:34:42,790 --> 00:34:49,259
Speaker 1: bash in the people he wishes to subjugate. And in this,

600
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:53,260
Speaker 1: we have very much a blunt force adversary here. He's

601
00:34:53,300 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: got a single weapon gimmick and he's defeated. And that gimmick,

602
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 1: the weapon is then taken as a trophy by Theseus

603
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:05,030
Speaker 1: and then used as his weapon. And also, you know,

604
00:35:05,410 --> 00:35:07,290
Speaker 1: to show just how tough he is. Like, yeah, yeah,

605
00:35:07,390 --> 00:35:09,989
Speaker 1: I took out the club man. Now I'm the club man.

606
00:35:11,790 --> 00:35:13,010
Speaker 2: Who's the club man now?

607
00:35:13,250 --> 00:35:13,489
Speaker 1: Yeah.

608
00:35:14,570 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 2: You know, almost all of these encounters have something of

609
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:22,859
Speaker 2: a turnabout in them. Either Theseus uses the person's own

610
00:35:22,980 --> 00:35:25,950
Speaker 2: method of violence back against them, or there's some other

611
00:35:25,969 --> 00:35:28,850
Speaker 2: kind of reversal like that. In this case, he takes

612
00:35:28,910 --> 00:35:31,109
Speaker 2: the club from the club man and becomes the new

613
00:35:31,150 --> 00:35:31,969
Speaker 2: club man, yeah.

614
00:35:32,270 --> 00:35:34,069
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that's something you would generally want

615
00:35:34,110 --> 00:35:36,290
Speaker 1: to see in a slasher movie. You know, you want

616
00:35:36,310 --> 00:35:38,170
Speaker 1: to see Jason get his head cut off or run

617
00:35:38,190 --> 00:35:40,810
Speaker 1: through on something. You don't want to see him, I

618
00:35:40,830 --> 00:35:45,420
Speaker 1: don't know, just shot or... Or arrested. That's not a

619
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 1: fitting end to a Friday the 13th movie.

620
00:35:48,660 --> 00:35:50,810
Speaker 2: That would be funny, putting the cuffs on Jason.

621
00:35:51,070 --> 00:35:53,790
Speaker 1: Yeah, there needs to be a proper reversal. And we

622
00:35:53,830 --> 00:35:56,850
Speaker 1: get almost a literal reversal in most of these encounters,

623
00:35:56,910 --> 00:35:59,350
Speaker 1: including this one. He who bashes with the club is

624
00:35:59,410 --> 00:36:04,310
Speaker 1: bashed himself. Speaking of that club, Felton mentions that it's

625
00:36:04,390 --> 00:36:07,390
Speaker 1: usually wooden in tellings, but other times it's bronze or iron.

626
00:36:08,050 --> 00:36:11,170
Speaker 1: And there's at least one version of it where He's

627
00:36:11,190 --> 00:36:14,670
Speaker 1: going to bash in Theseus with this, Periphetes is. And

628
00:36:14,690 --> 00:36:17,069
Speaker 1: then Theseus is like, hey, can I take a look

629
00:36:17,110 --> 00:36:18,969
Speaker 1: at that club of yours? I've heard it's made out

630
00:36:18,989 --> 00:36:21,489
Speaker 1: of bronze. And he's like, oh, sure, take a look.

631
00:36:21,570 --> 00:36:23,430
Speaker 1: And then, you know, he kills him with it.

632
00:36:23,850 --> 00:36:24,710
Speaker 2: Very Bugs Bunny.

633
00:36:24,930 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, or certainly reminded me of Jack Frost that, oh,

634
00:36:28,469 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: but I don't know how to sit on a shovel.

635
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:33,759
Speaker 1: You'll have to show me. So he just hands it over.

636
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 1: But Felton does mention that via this connection to Hephaestus,

637
00:36:39,910 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: there is this idea that he is on some level

638
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:47,180
Speaker 1: maybe a deformed killer. A trope in its modern form

639
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:53,279
Speaker 1: that Felton connects to debunked pseudosciences like criminal anthropology. And

640
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 1: of course, we recognize that this is a familiar trope

641
00:36:57,320 --> 00:36:59,989
Speaker 1: in horror fiction and all sorts of fiction. Just the

642
00:37:00,090 --> 00:37:03,410
Speaker 1: idea that some sort of inner distortion of the soul

643
00:37:03,810 --> 00:37:07,770
Speaker 1: has to be manifested in a physical, visual distortion of

644
00:37:07,810 --> 00:37:08,370
Speaker 1: the character.

645
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:09,279
Speaker 2: Yeah.

646
00:37:09,500 --> 00:37:11,820
Speaker 1: Which, you know, and we see this all over the

647
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,610
Speaker 1: place with slashers, right? Like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and,

648
00:37:15,710 --> 00:37:18,489
Speaker 1: you know, any number of slasher, right? There's some sort

649
00:37:18,530 --> 00:37:22,350
Speaker 1: of injury that they sustained, some sort of physical ailment

650
00:37:22,590 --> 00:37:24,450
Speaker 1: that hints at some sort of inner ailment.

651
00:37:24,860 --> 00:37:29,090
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's also part of the Sort of the

652
00:37:29,150 --> 00:37:32,410
Speaker 2: monstrousness that is hidden to later be revealed. Like a

653
00:37:32,530 --> 00:37:35,930
Speaker 2: common trope is the masked killer. Sometimes the mask is

654
00:37:35,969 --> 00:37:38,970
Speaker 2: to hide the killer's identity, but other times the killer's

655
00:37:39,050 --> 00:37:41,950
Speaker 2: identity is known. And what the mask hides is what

656
00:37:42,010 --> 00:37:46,469
Speaker 2: their face looks like. There's something inherently like just unusual

657
00:37:46,530 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 2: about the face. In the case of Jason Voorhees, he

658
00:37:49,700 --> 00:37:52,500
Speaker 2: is somebody who has a facial deformity. And at the

659
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:54,739
Speaker 2: end of each movie, the mask comes off and you

660
00:37:54,780 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 2: see what his face really looks like.

661
00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:00,609
Speaker 1: Yeah. Here, we have no mask. And there's a lot

662
00:38:00,630 --> 00:38:02,810
Speaker 1: to make of that. I think you could get into

663
00:38:02,910 --> 00:38:07,940
Speaker 1: ideas of how the ancient Greeks viewed masks and certainly

664
00:38:08,060 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: focused on their importance as a transformative act in ritual

665
00:38:13,260 --> 00:38:17,779
Speaker 1: and in theater, of course. And certainly there are theatrics

666
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 1: to the murders here. There are ritualistic aspects to the

667
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:24,620
Speaker 1: murders here, but they're not really theater or ritual in

668
00:38:24,660 --> 00:38:28,509
Speaker 1: the deeper ancient Greek sense of the word. So I

669
00:38:28,530 --> 00:38:30,930
Speaker 1: almost get a sense like they just wouldn't, like they

670
00:38:30,969 --> 00:38:32,980
Speaker 1: didn't think about masks in the same way that we

671
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,260
Speaker 1: think of them. They didn't emphasize them. And then also

672
00:38:36,620 --> 00:38:40,620
Speaker 1: on the lawless highway between city-states, why wear a mask?

673
00:38:40,900 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: You don't have to. Like this is a world where

674
00:38:44,180 --> 00:38:45,720
Speaker 1: you can be the monster that you are.

675
00:38:46,330 --> 00:38:49,150
Speaker 2: You almost get the sense that most of Theseus' enemies

676
00:38:49,210 --> 00:38:51,930
Speaker 2: in the story are proud of what they're doing. There's nothing,

677
00:38:52,090 --> 00:38:53,930
Speaker 2: there's no reason to hide.

678
00:38:54,390 --> 00:38:55,370
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

679
00:38:55,390 --> 00:38:55,469
Speaker 2: Yeah.

680
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:09,219
Speaker 1: All right, so that's one down, five to go. Who's next?

681
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 2: Next is Sinus, also known as Pideocamptes, meaning the pine

682
00:39:14,780 --> 00:39:19,800
Speaker 2: bender or he who bends pines or bends trees. Here,

683
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:24,629
Speaker 2: the Plutarch text does not give us much to work

684
00:39:24,690 --> 00:39:28,620
Speaker 2: with on the mechanics of this slashing or the conflict itself.

685
00:39:29,500 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 2: It just says that Theseus slew Cenus, the bender of pines,

686
00:39:33,540 --> 00:39:36,340
Speaker 2: after the same manner in which he himself had destroyed

687
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 2: many others before. But there is a bit more grisly

688
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 2: detail in some other sources. So I'm going to start

689
00:39:42,020 --> 00:39:46,259
Speaker 2: with those others. So here I'm quoting from Pausanias in

690
00:39:46,340 --> 00:39:49,240
Speaker 2: his book, The Description of Greece. This is an ancient

691
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:53,660
Speaker 2: travel guide. by the Greek author and geographer Pausanias, 2nd

692
00:39:53,700 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 2: century CE. This is the translation by Jones and Ormerod. Quote,

693
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 2: At the beginning of the Isthmus is the place where

694
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 2: the brigand Cenus used to take hold of pine trees

695
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:09,540
Speaker 2: and draw them down. Okay, so he's bending down pine trees.

696
00:40:10,340 --> 00:40:13,819
Speaker 2: All those whom he overcame in fight, he used to

697
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 2: tie to the trees and then allow them to swing

698
00:40:18,020 --> 00:40:22,030
Speaker 2: up again. Thereupon, each of the pines used to drag

699
00:40:22,130 --> 00:40:25,910
Speaker 2: to itself the bound man. And as the bond gave

700
00:40:25,989 --> 00:40:29,990
Speaker 2: way in neither direction, but was stretched equally in both,

701
00:40:30,230 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 2: he was torn in two. This was the way in

702
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:35,620
Speaker 2: which Zenos himself was slain by Theseus.

703
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:40,220
Speaker 1: All right. So we have an elaborate method of torture

704
00:40:40,260 --> 00:40:45,590
Speaker 1: slash execution, uh, involving bent pine trees, um, in, in,

705
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:48,430
Speaker 1: in a way, very cartoonish in its own right. Um,

706
00:40:49,670 --> 00:40:51,410
Speaker 1: I mean, except for being torn in half. That's the

707
00:40:51,469 --> 00:40:55,550
Speaker 1: rather grisly detail. But as Felton discusses it, there's at

708
00:40:55,610 --> 00:40:58,270
Speaker 1: least some versions of this where only one tree is used.

709
00:40:58,670 --> 00:41:01,250
Speaker 1: And he's just launching people into the air like a

710
00:41:01,290 --> 00:41:04,330
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny trap. But then I think in the vast

711
00:41:04,370 --> 00:41:06,359
Speaker 1: majority of the tellings, yeah, there's an idea that like

712
00:41:06,390 --> 00:41:09,460
Speaker 1: two trees are used, like strapped to two different legs

713
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:13,900
Speaker 1: and then catapulted into two pieces, a bisection of the individual.

714
00:41:14,390 --> 00:41:16,930
Speaker 2: Okay, so that clears up. I was getting confused because

715
00:41:16,969 --> 00:41:19,090
Speaker 2: when I was reading different versions of this, it sounded

716
00:41:19,130 --> 00:41:21,129
Speaker 2: like they were describing different things. And so I guess

717
00:41:21,150 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 2: they are. Like some versions, you're just getting launched into

718
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:27,940
Speaker 2: the sky. In other versions, the bent trees are ripping

719
00:41:27,980 --> 00:41:32,020
Speaker 2: you apart. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So man, Sinus has to

720
00:41:32,060 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 2: be pretty strong to bend these trees down like he does.

721
00:41:36,010 --> 00:41:38,730
Speaker 2: But you get the idea that he also may be

722
00:41:38,850 --> 00:41:42,770
Speaker 2: using some kind of mechanism or device to bend the

723
00:41:42,830 --> 00:41:47,770
Speaker 2: trees that way. because there is a line after the

724
00:41:47,790 --> 00:41:51,990
Speaker 2: part I read in Plutarch. So it says that Theseus

725
00:41:52,030 --> 00:41:55,469
Speaker 2: comes along and then destroyed Sinus in the same way

726
00:41:55,550 --> 00:41:59,469
Speaker 2: that Sinus had destroyed others that came before, quote, and

727
00:41:59,530 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 2: this he did without having either practiced or ever learned

728
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,320
Speaker 2: the art of bending these trees to show that natural

729
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:11,940
Speaker 2: strength is above all art. So maybe there's some kind

730
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:15,549
Speaker 2: of technique involved there that Cenus was able to do

731
00:42:15,590 --> 00:42:18,720
Speaker 2: it because he'd figured out the system for bending the trees.

732
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:20,660
Speaker 2: Theseus was just that strong.

733
00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:25,170
Speaker 1: Hmm. Now Felton notes that in, in some sources, uh,

734
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:28,450
Speaker 1: Cenus is himself also a demigod and therefore I guess

735
00:42:28,489 --> 00:42:31,529
Speaker 1: maybe has access to that kind of strength as well. Uh,

736
00:42:31,570 --> 00:42:33,469
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's supposed to be a son of Poseidon

737
00:42:33,969 --> 00:42:36,610
Speaker 1: and some of these tellings, which would make him, uh,

738
00:42:36,770 --> 00:42:41,590
Speaker 1: Theseus is half brother. Uh, and, uh, it is, Felton

739
00:42:41,690 --> 00:42:44,430
Speaker 1: discusses the possible connection here to be made between the

740
00:42:44,489 --> 00:42:48,830
Speaker 1: splitting of a person into two. This is when it's

741
00:42:49,170 --> 00:42:52,900
Speaker 1: used in ancient Greece. There's like a theme of duality

742
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:55,940
Speaker 1: within oneself that is often explored. And, you know, we

743
00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:02,980
Speaker 1: see that throughout human storytelling. But there's something to be

744
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,310
Speaker 1: had here with the idea that they are sort of

745
00:43:06,350 --> 00:43:09,330
Speaker 1: like two different sides of the same coin. Like they're

746
00:43:09,350 --> 00:43:12,720
Speaker 1: half-brothers here. One is good and noble, one is evil,

747
00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:16,540
Speaker 1: and then they're pitted against each other. And we get this,

748
00:43:16,900 --> 00:43:19,609
Speaker 1: in at least one version of the story, we have

749
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:25,330
Speaker 1: Theseus having to ritually cleanse himself after slaying Cenus, after

750
00:43:25,850 --> 00:43:28,450
Speaker 1: strapping Cenus to the pines and splitting him in two

751
00:43:28,510 --> 00:43:31,690
Speaker 1: or launching him into the sky or whatever, which Felton

752
00:43:31,710 --> 00:43:36,750
Speaker 1: describes as a, quote, spiritual atonement for the blood pollution. So, yeah,

753
00:43:36,770 --> 00:43:41,180
Speaker 1: some possible connections here, duality, physical bisection. two sides of

754
00:43:41,219 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 1: the same coin with these two characters, both sons of

755
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:47,240
Speaker 1: the same God. And then Theseus needing to like cleanse

756
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:50,020
Speaker 1: himself of what he has had to do to defeat

757
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: this guy.

758
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 2: It's interesting the idea that there would need to be

759
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:56,320
Speaker 2: a cleansing after this one, but not after the others.

760
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:57,700
Speaker 2: Am I understanding that right?

761
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:01,550
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's predominantly when there is an element

762
00:44:01,570 --> 00:44:04,430
Speaker 1: of cleansing, it's going to take place after all six

763
00:44:04,610 --> 00:44:07,489
Speaker 1: before he can enter Athens. And we'll come back to that.

764
00:44:07,550 --> 00:44:09,650
Speaker 1: But there's at least one telling where the cleansing has

765
00:44:09,670 --> 00:44:12,410
Speaker 1: to happen now. And maybe that is tied more to

766
00:44:12,450 --> 00:44:15,750
Speaker 1: the idea that this guy is, is like his dark double.

767
00:44:16,170 --> 00:44:18,910
Speaker 1: And there's like, somehow it's more personal. But I think

768
00:44:19,260 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: the more common trope is after all six murders have

769
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:25,700
Speaker 1: been murdered, he has to cleanse himself of that murder.

770
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,779
Speaker 2: Well, I was curious because in Plutarch's telling, there's a

771
00:44:28,820 --> 00:44:33,790
Speaker 2: whole other subplot after this encounter where, uh, Cenus has

772
00:44:33,810 --> 00:44:38,630
Speaker 2: a daughter who then has a son with Theseus. So

773
00:44:38,730 --> 00:44:41,770
Speaker 2: it says like Theseus and the daughter, like Theseus tells

774
00:44:41,830 --> 00:44:44,069
Speaker 2: the daughter he's not going to harm her. And then

775
00:44:44,410 --> 00:44:47,620
Speaker 2: they have sex and then she becomes pregnant and she

776
00:44:47,660 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 2: has a son named Melanippus. And then that character goes

777
00:44:52,780 --> 00:44:55,820
Speaker 2: on to found like a colony of Greeks living somewhere.

778
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:58,610
Speaker 2: And it uses this story to explain why they have

779
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:02,069
Speaker 2: certain customs with regard to like how they treat Melanippus.

780
00:45:02,430 --> 00:45:05,470
Speaker 2: certain flora, like asparagus thorn and stuff.

781
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's my understanding that the pine tree aspect of

782
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:13,360
Speaker 1: this is tied to actual flora in this area. And

783
00:45:13,380 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: maybe there's sort of like a sinister interpretation of the flora. Like, oh,

784
00:45:16,580 --> 00:45:18,580
Speaker 1: you're traveling through that area with all those pine trees.

785
00:45:18,980 --> 00:45:21,299
Speaker 1: You know what they do with those pine trees? They

786
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:22,800
Speaker 1: split people in half with them.

787
00:45:23,340 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 2: Yeah.

788
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:25,820
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then, of course, you know, to be clear...

789
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,319
Speaker 1: There are plenty of grisly examples from throughout history of

790
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:31,489
Speaker 1: people being split in half, and we're not going to

791
00:45:31,530 --> 00:45:33,790
Speaker 1: go down the road of exploring all of those. But

792
00:45:33,830 --> 00:45:37,690
Speaker 1: it also definitely factors into our horror fiction.

793
00:45:37,710 --> 00:45:37,969
Speaker 2: And, I.

794
00:45:39,510 --> 00:45:41,629
Speaker 1: Mean, it also made me think of Goldfinger, you know?

795
00:45:42,190 --> 00:45:43,170
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

796
00:45:43,310 --> 00:45:45,450
Speaker 1: Lay James Bond out on the table, and then you're

797
00:45:45,469 --> 00:45:47,009
Speaker 1: going to threaten to cut him right up the middle

798
00:45:47,050 --> 00:45:50,320
Speaker 1: with a laser beam. You know, that's where my mind

799
00:45:50,380 --> 00:45:52,780
Speaker 1: went here. So it's sort of a Bond villain aspect

800
00:45:53,780 --> 00:45:56,380
Speaker 1: to this evildoer as well. Yeah.

801
00:45:56,580 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 2: Man, that's a slow-moving laser, though.

802
00:45:58,620 --> 00:46:01,529
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the trees, at least, would be, I guess,

803
00:46:01,590 --> 00:46:02,049
Speaker 1: pretty quick.

804
00:46:02,550 --> 00:46:06,569
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think about horror movies. I'm mainly just

805
00:46:06,610 --> 00:46:09,630
Speaker 2: thinking about Fulci in Conquest with the werewolves.

806
00:46:09,969 --> 00:46:12,710
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, the tarot, A Lady in Half, yeah. That's

807
00:46:12,750 --> 00:46:14,660
Speaker 1: probably the best one. I think there are plenty of

808
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 1: other examples, but you're getting into some pretty grisly territory.

809
00:46:18,500 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 2: Okay, you ready for the next encounter?

810
00:46:20,380 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 1: Let's do it. We're going to get more animalistic with

811
00:46:23,180 --> 00:46:23,450
Speaker 1: this one.

812
00:46:23,750 --> 00:46:27,830
Speaker 2: That's right. So next we come to the Cromionian sow,

813
00:46:28,310 --> 00:46:30,589
Speaker 2: who I was thinking of as the hog of the forsaken,

814
00:46:30,650 --> 00:46:31,630
Speaker 2: the pork of crime.

815
00:46:32,010 --> 00:46:32,290
Speaker 1: Nice.

816
00:46:32,790 --> 00:46:35,210
Speaker 2: So this is the only one of the slashers that

817
00:46:35,370 --> 00:46:40,350
Speaker 2: is possibly not human, possibly not human, because there are

818
00:46:40,450 --> 00:46:44,090
Speaker 2: at least two versions of this story, even within Plutarch.

819
00:46:44,140 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 2: And then there are different versions in other ancient tellings

820
00:46:46,780 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 2: as well. So in Plutarch, So one version of the

821
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 2: story is the Cromionian sow is a monster pig. And

822
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 2: the other version is a nasty lady who kills people

823
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 2: on the road. The pig was sometimes said to have

824
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:05,540
Speaker 2: been owned by a witch named Fia. Some sources said

825
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 2: that Fia was actually the pig's name or that they

826
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:10,590
Speaker 2: were both named to that. So the witch is named pig.

827
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:12,739
Speaker 2: She has or the witch is named Fia. And then

828
00:47:12,820 --> 00:47:14,190
Speaker 2: Fia has a pig named Fia.

829
00:47:14,510 --> 00:47:17,649
Speaker 1: OK, so either a monster pig. A monster pig owned

830
00:47:17,670 --> 00:47:19,130
Speaker 1: by a lady or just a lady?

831
00:47:19,430 --> 00:47:22,989
Speaker 2: Just a lady. Okay, so here's the Dryden translation of

832
00:47:23,030 --> 00:47:27,710
Speaker 2: the Plutarch on the Cromionian sow. Quote, the Cromionian sow,

833
00:47:28,030 --> 00:47:33,090
Speaker 2: by Crom, Crom, the Cromionian sow, which they called Phea,

834
00:47:33,510 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 2: was a savage and formidable wild beast, by no means

835
00:47:37,260 --> 00:47:39,879
Speaker 2: an enemy to be despised. I think that means not

836
00:47:39,910 --> 00:47:44,860
Speaker 2: an enemy to be disrespected or discounted, like a worthy adversary.

837
00:47:45,860 --> 00:47:49,120
Speaker 2: Theseus killed her, going out of his way on purpose

838
00:47:49,180 --> 00:47:51,690
Speaker 2: to meet and engage her, so that he might not

839
00:47:51,770 --> 00:47:55,350
Speaker 2: seem to perform all his great exploits out of mere necessity,

840
00:47:55,770 --> 00:47:58,330
Speaker 2: being also of opinion that it was the part of

841
00:47:58,370 --> 00:48:01,390
Speaker 2: a brave man to chastise villainous and wicked men when

842
00:48:01,430 --> 00:48:05,259
Speaker 2: attacked by them, but to seek out and overcome the

843
00:48:05,300 --> 00:48:09,900
Speaker 2: more noble wild beasts. Others relate that Thea was a woman,

844
00:48:10,060 --> 00:48:14,280
Speaker 2: a robber full of cruelty and lust, that lived in Cromyon,

845
00:48:14,810 --> 00:48:17,509
Speaker 2: And had the name of sow given her from the

846
00:48:17,610 --> 00:48:21,110
Speaker 2: foulness of her life and manners and afterwards was killed

847
00:48:21,170 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 2: by Theseus. And then a very short other version. This

848
00:48:26,020 --> 00:48:31,860
Speaker 2: is from, again, Apollodorus, the library of Apollodorus or Pseudo-Apollodorus. Quote, third,

849
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:35,089
Speaker 2: he slew at Chromion the sow that was called Phea

850
00:48:35,300 --> 00:48:38,770
Speaker 2: after the old woman who bred it. That sow, some say,

851
00:48:38,850 --> 00:48:42,469
Speaker 2: was the offspring of Echidna and Typhon. So there you get,

852
00:48:42,590 --> 00:48:46,450
Speaker 2: it's her sow. She bred it. And gets its name

853
00:48:46,489 --> 00:48:46,890
Speaker 2: from her.

854
00:48:47,910 --> 00:48:50,410
Speaker 1: So he kills the monster pig. If the monster pig

855
00:48:50,450 --> 00:48:52,590
Speaker 1: is working for an old lady, we don't know what

856
00:48:52,610 --> 00:48:54,310
Speaker 1: happens to the old lady. I guess she's fine. Maybe

857
00:48:54,350 --> 00:48:56,880
Speaker 1: her power is removed if her monster pig is taken

858
00:48:56,910 --> 00:48:57,430
Speaker 1: out of action.

859
00:48:57,860 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 2: Right. Or it's just a woman who kills people on

860
00:49:00,739 --> 00:49:03,540
Speaker 2: the road and Theseus kills her. But I like how

861
00:49:03,580 --> 00:49:06,900
Speaker 2: Plutarch gives explanations either way and says in this one,

862
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:10,660
Speaker 2: the killer did not stop him on the road. Whether

863
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:13,069
Speaker 2: it be pig or lady, he sought them out and

864
00:49:13,110 --> 00:49:13,609
Speaker 2: killed them.

865
00:49:13,630 --> 00:49:17,819
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the hunter, I mean, the hunted has become

866
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:18,779
Speaker 1: the hunter in this case.

867
00:49:18,860 --> 00:49:19,219
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

868
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,319
Speaker 1: Felton points out something interesting here with the connection to

869
00:49:24,500 --> 00:49:29,210
Speaker 1: serial killers in the modern sense. And that is that, yeah,

870
00:49:30,030 --> 00:49:31,969
Speaker 1: depending on the telling you're looking at, we have a

871
00:49:32,210 --> 00:49:36,680
Speaker 1: female killer here, a female evildoer. And she writes, quote,

872
00:49:36,780 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: The Greeks clearly believed that not only men but also women,

873
00:49:40,180 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: and not merely mythological women like Medea and Clytemnestra, were

874
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:48,109
Speaker 1: capable of using not just secretive methods of killing, such

875
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:52,730
Speaker 1: as poisoning, but also committing violent mutilation murder. Today, an

876
00:49:53,090 --> 00:49:55,989
Speaker 1: average of one out of every six serial killers is

877
00:49:56,050 --> 00:50:00,930
Speaker 1: a woman, a ratio coincidentally represented in Theseus' encounters.

878
00:50:01,510 --> 00:50:02,290
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting.

879
00:50:02,450 --> 00:50:03,049
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think.

880
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:06,219
Speaker 2: If it's a pig and not, wait, no, sorry. If

881
00:50:06,260 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 2: it's not a pig, but it is a woman.

882
00:50:07,860 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 1: Yeah. If it is a pig, no serial killers in

883
00:50:11,110 --> 00:50:13,890
Speaker 1: today's world are actually monster pigs. So it's, it's meaningless

884
00:50:13,910 --> 00:50:14,549
Speaker 1: if that's the case.

885
00:50:15,770 --> 00:50:18,610
Speaker 2: A little unclear in Plutarch's version where if it's a pig,

886
00:50:19,230 --> 00:50:21,690
Speaker 2: is it a monster pig or just like a big

887
00:50:21,750 --> 00:50:25,350
Speaker 2: dangerous pig? I would guess the latter because I don't know,

888
00:50:25,630 --> 00:50:27,750
Speaker 2: you know, this is the more rationalistic telling.

889
00:50:27,930 --> 00:50:31,390
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you're going rationalistic, it's just a wild pig

890
00:50:31,430 --> 00:50:34,299
Speaker 1: that can certainly be dangerous. But you can also lean

891
00:50:34,340 --> 00:50:36,779
Speaker 1: more into, oh, it's the offspring of Echidna. It is

892
00:50:36,860 --> 00:50:41,100
Speaker 1: a monster like the rest of her monstrous offspring. But

893
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:43,759
Speaker 1: as we've discussed on the show before, we certainly have

894
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:48,780
Speaker 1: counterparts in horror cinema, perhaps most notably to us anyway,

895
00:50:48,860 --> 00:50:50,140
Speaker 1: Razorback from 1984, right?

896
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

897
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:56,750
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. That's a monster, what, monster hog in the outback? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

898
00:50:56,810 --> 00:51:00,830
Speaker 2: Yeah, by Russell Mulcahy, the director of Highlander.

899
00:51:00,850 --> 00:51:01,669
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

900
00:51:01,730 --> 00:51:03,739
Speaker 2: Also made this movie. Yeah.

901
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:07,180
Speaker 1: So that's probably the most direct comparison to be made.

902
00:51:07,260 --> 00:51:11,700
Speaker 1: I was also reminded of Mason Verger's revenge plot against

903
00:51:11,739 --> 00:51:15,800
Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal, where he's going to feed Hannibal

904
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:18,980
Speaker 1: to Sardinian boars. So that's a case where you have

905
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:23,870
Speaker 1: a villain who has essentially monster pigs at his disposal

906
00:51:23,910 --> 00:51:26,050
Speaker 1: that he's using to carry out his evil deeds.

907
00:51:26,810 --> 00:51:30,790
Speaker 2: It's not a lot of slasher movie killers have pets.

908
00:51:31,810 --> 00:51:34,790
Speaker 2: Usually they're kind of solo. They're working alone.

909
00:51:34,810 --> 00:51:39,130
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, having a pet can tend to humanize

910
00:51:39,150 --> 00:51:42,609
Speaker 1: them too much, right? Like, they're not likable fellas. That's

911
00:51:42,630 --> 00:51:43,250
Speaker 1: their whole deal.

912
00:51:44,250 --> 00:51:45,870
Speaker 2: Okay, killer number four. You ready?

913
00:51:45,890 --> 00:51:47,110
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're halfway through.

914
00:51:47,190 --> 00:51:50,690
Speaker 2: What's next? This is Skiron. I'm thinking of Skiron as

915
00:51:50,750 --> 00:51:56,250
Speaker 2: the cliff kicker or the turtle fattener. Here's the Dryden translation.

916
00:51:57,190 --> 00:52:01,520
Speaker 2: He also slew Skiron upon the borders of Megara. casting

917
00:52:01,580 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 2: him down from the rocks being as most report, a

918
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:09,790
Speaker 2: notorious robber of all passengers. And as others add accustomed

919
00:52:10,110 --> 00:52:14,310
Speaker 2: out of insolence and wantonness to stretch forth his feet

920
00:52:14,570 --> 00:52:18,950
Speaker 2: to strangers, commanding them to wash them. And then while

921
00:52:18,989 --> 00:52:21,850
Speaker 2: they did it with a kick to send them down

922
00:52:21,910 --> 00:52:25,140
Speaker 2: the rock into the sea. Okay. You getting that there?

923
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:28,239
Speaker 2: So he holds out his feet. He says, wash my feet. Uh,

924
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:31,940
Speaker 2: We can get into exactly what this means and why

925
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:36,009
Speaker 2: people would actually wash his feet when commanded. But he says,

926
00:52:36,070 --> 00:52:38,049
Speaker 2: wash my feet. They say, OK, I'm going to wash

927
00:52:38,070 --> 00:52:40,190
Speaker 2: your feet. And then he kicks them with the foot

928
00:52:40,290 --> 00:52:42,650
Speaker 2: and sends them over the cliff into the rocks below

929
00:52:42,710 --> 00:52:43,169
Speaker 2: in the sea.

930
00:52:44,090 --> 00:52:47,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's a this guy sounds at least on

931
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:49,660
Speaker 1: the surface like a little bit of a freak. He's

932
00:52:49,700 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 1: also clearly there's a power trip involved here. But also

933
00:52:53,500 --> 00:52:59,360
Speaker 1: he is a clearly a betrayer of of custom. Because

934
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:01,700
Speaker 1: once someone has said, okay, I will wash your feet,

935
00:53:01,980 --> 00:53:05,419
Speaker 1: like the idea is like, okay, this is a sign

936
00:53:05,460 --> 00:53:08,020
Speaker 1: of honor that I'm showing you. You're not going to

937
00:53:08,300 --> 00:53:10,460
Speaker 1: kick me into the ocean where I might be eaten

938
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: by a monster or something. Like you've betrayed all the

939
00:53:14,980 --> 00:53:16,460
Speaker 1: laws of hospitality here.

940
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:20,180
Speaker 2: So you mentioned being eaten by a monster. That actually

941
00:53:20,219 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 2: does come in. So Plutarch just says kicked down the

942
00:53:23,180 --> 00:53:26,779
Speaker 2: rock into the sea. Other accounts feature a giant turtle.

943
00:53:27,350 --> 00:53:30,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, a giant sea turtle, which we'll come back to,

944
00:53:30,489 --> 00:53:33,250
Speaker 1: but I found this also just very puzzling.

945
00:53:33,790 --> 00:53:39,629
Speaker 2: This quote is from, again, Pseudo-Apollodorus, the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus,

946
00:53:39,670 --> 00:53:44,040
Speaker 2: the Fraser translation. Quote, Fourth, he slew Scyron, the Corinthian,

947
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,839
Speaker 2: son of Pelops, or, as some say, of Poseidon. Oh,

948
00:53:47,900 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 2: another possible son of Poseidon.

949
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, another half-brother.

950
00:53:51,219 --> 00:53:54,939
Speaker 2: He, in the Megarian territory, held the rocks called after

951
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,620
Speaker 2: him Scyronian. and compelled passersby to wash his feet. And

952
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:03,089
Speaker 2: in the act of washing, he kicked them into the

953
00:54:03,219 --> 00:54:07,029
Speaker 2: deep to be the prey of a huge turtle. But

954
00:54:07,090 --> 00:54:10,529
Speaker 2: Theseus seized him by the feet and threw him into

955
00:54:10,570 --> 00:54:13,330
Speaker 2: the sea. So it doesn't say if the turtle ate him.

956
00:54:13,910 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: I mean, I would hope so. That's exactly the comeuppance

957
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:20,340
Speaker 1: you see in various stories where there's some sort of

958
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 1: evildoer who keeps some sort of a monstrous pet that

959
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: he feeds people to.

960
00:54:24,540 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, you shouldn't throw people into a pit of piranhas

961
00:54:26,940 --> 00:54:28,310
Speaker 2: because you're going to end up in that pit.

962
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:30,060
Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah.

963
00:54:30,140 --> 00:54:32,820
Speaker 2: And then a little more detail from Pausanias, description of

964
00:54:32,860 --> 00:54:38,950
Speaker 2: Greece again. Pausanias says, quote, the Molurian dock they thought

965
00:54:39,030 --> 00:54:43,230
Speaker 2: sacred to Leucothea and Palimon, but those after it they

966
00:54:43,270 --> 00:54:47,529
Speaker 2: considered accursed in that Scyron, who dwelt by them, used

967
00:54:47,570 --> 00:54:50,290
Speaker 2: to cast into the sea all the strangers he met.

968
00:54:50,780 --> 00:54:54,470
Speaker 2: A tortoise used to swim under the rocks to seize

969
00:54:54,550 --> 00:54:58,410
Speaker 2: those that fell in. Sea tortoises are like land tortoises,

970
00:54:58,530 --> 00:55:01,250
Speaker 2: except in size and for their feet, which are like

971
00:55:01,310 --> 00:55:05,950
Speaker 2: those of seals. Retribution for those deeds overtook Scyron, for

972
00:55:05,989 --> 00:55:10,049
Speaker 2: he was cast into the same sea by Theseus. This

973
00:55:10,110 --> 00:55:14,049
Speaker 2: is followed up by Plutarch with conflicting accounts of who

974
00:55:14,090 --> 00:55:18,530
Speaker 2: Scyron was and what exactly happened with him. By some accounts,

975
00:55:18,610 --> 00:55:21,630
Speaker 2: he was not a bandit, not a murderer, but the

976
00:55:21,650 --> 00:55:24,509
Speaker 2: exact opposite. He was sort of a vigilante hero who

977
00:55:24,590 --> 00:55:29,390
Speaker 2: punished evildoers, much like Theseus is doing here. Also, Plutarch

978
00:55:29,469 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 2: notes accounts describing Theseus as killing Scyron much later in

979
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:39,680
Speaker 2: his life, like slaying Scyron in battle during a war

980
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:42,259
Speaker 2: in which he would conquer the city of Eleusis.

981
00:55:44,700 --> 00:55:49,680
Speaker 1: Felton... writes a little bit about this whole hero-villain thing, writing, quote, Historically,

982
00:55:49,860 --> 00:55:54,049
Speaker 1: Athens and Megara were embroiled in territorial disputes in the

983
00:55:54,090 --> 00:55:58,230
Speaker 1: late 6th century, at the time when the Theseus myths coalesced.

984
00:55:58,610 --> 00:56:01,870
Speaker 1: So the appearance of Scyron in them as a villain

985
00:56:01,969 --> 00:56:07,550
Speaker 1: strongly suggests a political motivation for his characterization here. So

986
00:56:07,630 --> 00:56:10,879
Speaker 1: this may be, this is arguably an example of political

987
00:56:10,930 --> 00:56:15,020
Speaker 1: propaganda in the telling of Theseus and his labors.

988
00:56:15,690 --> 00:56:18,609
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's like, imagine your country is at war

989
00:56:18,660 --> 00:56:21,089
Speaker 2: with somebody, and then you say, the president of that

990
00:56:21,160 --> 00:56:25,420
Speaker 2: other country, he's actually somebody who, he has stinky feet,

991
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 2: and he asks people to wash them, and then he

992
00:56:27,700 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 2: kicks them into a turtle's mouth.

993
00:56:29,420 --> 00:56:33,900
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I was really wondering, though, why a sea turtle?

994
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:35,980
Speaker 1: And I guess one answer is, okay, if you're leaning

995
00:56:36,020 --> 00:56:39,000
Speaker 1: into the idea that Ski-Ron is yet another son of Poseidon,

996
00:56:39,820 --> 00:56:42,040
Speaker 1: you know, then the sea turtle is a sea monster

997
00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:45,370
Speaker 1: of Poseidon, and I guess that makes sense. But... If

998
00:56:45,410 --> 00:56:47,770
Speaker 1: you know anything about sea turtles, and I guess we

999
00:56:47,810 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 1: have to address that in the ancient world, they knew

1000
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:54,020
Speaker 1: some things, but not everything. And, you know, the undersea

1001
00:56:54,060 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: world is a place of mystery and danger. But we

1002
00:56:58,260 --> 00:57:02,259
Speaker 1: know today that all extant forms of sea turtle are

1003
00:57:02,540 --> 00:57:06,219
Speaker 1: no physical threat to humans, no direct physical threat. I've

1004
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:10,210
Speaker 1: swam with some species myself, keeping a respectful distance. And

1005
00:57:10,250 --> 00:57:12,730
Speaker 1: it's my general understanding that you'd really have to go

1006
00:57:12,790 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: out of your way or be in the wrong position

1007
00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:18,090
Speaker 1: at the wrong time to earn even a bite from

1008
00:57:18,340 --> 00:57:21,760
Speaker 1: one of these guys. Furthermore, the green sea turtle is

1009
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:27,500
Speaker 1: an herbivore, and the leatherback is a gelatinivore, just eating jellyfish,

1010
00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:30,840
Speaker 1: sea jelly. So you couldn't get any further from the

1011
00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:33,420
Speaker 1: truth with those two. There is, as far as I

1012
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:36,940
Speaker 1: can tell, no credible example of a sea turtle that

1013
00:57:36,980 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: would eat people thrown into the sea by a bandit.

1014
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:42,580
Speaker 1: or that would even eat like the corpses of people

1015
00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: thrown into the sea by a bandit.

1016
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:48,060
Speaker 2: If a leatherback sea turtle were big enough to eat

1017
00:57:48,100 --> 00:57:50,690
Speaker 2: you and wanted to eat you, a peek inside its

1018
00:57:50,770 --> 00:57:52,510
Speaker 2: mouth would make it very scary.

1019
00:57:52,770 --> 00:57:54,890
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does have a very scary mouth because it

1020
00:57:55,450 --> 00:57:59,470
Speaker 1: has that evolutionary development where it's like, how do you

1021
00:57:59,510 --> 00:58:02,300
Speaker 1: keep the sea jellies you're swallowing from just sliding right

1022
00:58:02,340 --> 00:58:06,380
Speaker 1: back up? Well, you have backward-facing spikes in your throat,

1023
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:08,580
Speaker 1: and that just keeps them caged in there.

1024
00:58:08,840 --> 00:58:10,220
Speaker 2: It's like a sarlacc mouth.

1025
00:58:10,400 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. Maybe there's some lost

1026
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,140
Speaker 1: connection or symbolism to the sea turtle here. But it

1027
00:58:16,180 --> 00:58:20,540
Speaker 1: makes for, yeah, certainly a crazy encounter here. A madman

1028
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:25,600
Speaker 1: on a power trip who is a terrible host and

1029
00:58:25,620 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: then is throwing people down to a monster. But he

1030
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:31,180
Speaker 1: gets his comeuppance. Theseus throws him into the water with

1031
00:58:31,220 --> 00:58:33,830
Speaker 1: the monster. And again, we can only presume and maybe

1032
00:58:33,890 --> 00:58:36,790
Speaker 1: hope that the sea monster eats Skiron as well.

1033
00:58:47,740 --> 00:58:51,660
Speaker 2: Okay, next labor. This is going to be Circeon, the

1034
00:58:51,740 --> 00:58:53,040
Speaker 2: murder wrestler king.

1035
00:58:54,820 --> 00:58:54,990
Speaker 1: So.

1036
00:58:55,580 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 2: Not a lot of detail on this one in most tellings.

1037
00:58:58,380 --> 00:59:02,600
Speaker 2: Plutarch says, this is the Peron translation, in Eleusis, moreover,

1038
00:59:02,740 --> 00:59:07,590
Speaker 2: he outwrestled Circeon, the Arcadian, and killed him. Not much

1039
00:59:07,650 --> 00:59:12,420
Speaker 2: detail there. Looking at a pseudo-apocalyptic we get, fifth, in

1040
00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 2: Elusis he slew Circeon, son of Bronchus and a nymph, Argiope.

1041
00:59:18,870 --> 00:59:25,050
Speaker 2: This Circeon compelled passersby to wrestle and in wrestling killed them.

1042
00:59:25,530 --> 00:59:29,470
Speaker 2: But Theseus lifted him up on high and dashed him

1043
00:59:29,570 --> 00:59:33,090
Speaker 2: to the ground. That's the whole account. Not a lot there,

1044
00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:36,440
Speaker 2: but I do like that detail. So Theseus doesn't just

1045
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 2: like whip out the sword and cut this guy's head off.

1046
00:59:38,860 --> 00:59:41,760
Speaker 2: The guy kills people by wrestling them to death. And

1047
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 2: so Theseus kills him with a wrestling move.

1048
00:59:44,590 --> 00:59:48,170
Speaker 1: Yeah, out-wrestles him, and maybe, like I was imagining it

1049
00:59:48,230 --> 00:59:51,050
Speaker 1: as being some sort of a suplex, like he's clever,

1050
00:59:51,110 --> 00:59:54,280
Speaker 1: he ducks and shifts in just the right way, and again,

1051
00:59:54,320 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 1: to this telling, lifts him up and then dashes him down.

1052
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:01,340
Speaker 1: And I was digging a little deeper, and I think

1053
01:00:01,740 --> 01:00:04,930
Speaker 1: a suplex or a suplex-like takedown is totally what is

1054
01:00:04,990 --> 01:00:09,610
Speaker 1: implied here, because Theseus is sometimes held as the inventor

1055
01:00:09,790 --> 01:00:15,030
Speaker 1: of Greek technical wrestling. Other times it's Heracles or, of course, Hermes,

1056
01:00:15,110 --> 01:00:17,490
Speaker 1: as we recently discussed on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

1057
01:00:18,150 --> 01:00:20,290
Speaker 1: But yeah, sometimes Theseus is held up as, oh, yeah,

1058
01:00:20,310 --> 01:00:24,010
Speaker 1: he's the guy who invented the superior Greek form of grappling.

1059
01:00:25,810 --> 01:00:27,770
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about what that form is, but

1060
01:00:27,810 --> 01:00:30,640
Speaker 2: would that involve actually moves where you lift somebody up

1061
01:00:30,700 --> 01:00:32,440
Speaker 2: in the air and slam them down?

1062
01:00:33,940 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: I'm not enough of an expert on it by any means.

1063
01:00:36,980 --> 01:00:38,740
Speaker 1: I don't know if it would be as theatrical as

1064
01:00:38,780 --> 01:00:40,640
Speaker 1: the kind of things you see in pro wrestling and

1065
01:00:40,660 --> 01:00:43,860
Speaker 1: lucha libre, but. I mean, you know, I think any

1066
01:00:43,900 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 1: time of any kind of like actual like legitimate, you know,

1067
01:00:48,020 --> 01:00:50,660
Speaker 1: combat sport where there's grappling, sometimes you're going to have

1068
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:54,230
Speaker 1: that shift in momentum where someone can get somebody up

1069
01:00:54,270 --> 01:00:58,270
Speaker 1: in the air. And certainly if the practitioner, if the

1070
01:00:58,310 --> 01:01:01,810
Speaker 1: guy executing the throw is himself a demigod, then, yeah,

1071
01:01:01,850 --> 01:01:03,450
Speaker 1: he might be able to get some height on that move.

1072
01:01:03,850 --> 01:01:06,490
Speaker 2: Now, forgive my ignorance here. Am I correct that a

1073
01:01:06,590 --> 01:01:09,740
Speaker 2: suplex is like. Kind of like you grapple somebody at

1074
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:13,340
Speaker 2: the shoulders and then you flip their body up upside

1075
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:15,980
Speaker 2: down so the legs are sticking up in the air

1076
01:01:16,060 --> 01:01:17,840
Speaker 2: and you've got them up vertically.

1077
01:01:17,860 --> 01:01:22,110
Speaker 1: Yeah, generally. Like an example that you see in a

1078
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:25,030
Speaker 1: lot of non-wrestling media is coming up behind somebody, grabbing

1079
01:01:25,050 --> 01:01:28,510
Speaker 1: them by the waist, and then bridging backwards and dropping

1080
01:01:28,530 --> 01:01:30,790
Speaker 1: them on their head, like a German suplex.

1081
01:01:31,110 --> 01:01:31,750
Speaker 2: Okay.

1082
01:01:32,210 --> 01:01:33,390
Speaker 1: That sort of thing, yeah.

1083
01:01:33,810 --> 01:01:36,970
Speaker 2: Okay. Is there any, I mean, I don't know. This

1084
01:01:37,010 --> 01:01:40,250
Speaker 2: seems kind of technically difficult unless there's a major size

1085
01:01:40,290 --> 01:01:43,370
Speaker 2: difference in the wrestlers. But is there anything where it's

1086
01:01:43,410 --> 01:01:46,810
Speaker 2: like what I first pictured where I was imagining Theseus

1087
01:01:46,890 --> 01:01:51,200
Speaker 2: basically overhead pressing this guy like horizontally and then smashing

1088
01:01:51,240 --> 01:01:51,740
Speaker 2: him down?

1089
01:01:51,760 --> 01:01:54,280
Speaker 1: I mean, does that happen? I don't know if that

1090
01:01:54,300 --> 01:01:58,220
Speaker 1: happens in like legitimate like Greco-Roman wrestling and so forth.

1091
01:01:58,260 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: But but certainly like if you watched any if any

1092
01:02:01,180 --> 01:02:02,960
Speaker 1: of you out there watched any of the Olympic wrestling

1093
01:02:02,980 --> 01:02:04,800
Speaker 1: and I watched a little bit of it. The more

1094
01:02:04,880 --> 01:02:07,330
Speaker 1: dynamic throws like that you're going to see are when

1095
01:02:07,350 --> 01:02:10,630
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a skill mismatch. Like this match

1096
01:02:10,690 --> 01:02:14,570
Speaker 1: shouldn't have actually happened because maybe these two competitors were

1097
01:02:14,710 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 1: rather unevenly assigned each other. And so in my limited

1098
01:02:20,580 --> 01:02:24,020
Speaker 1: experience watching like legitimate grappling, like, yeah, that's where you're

1099
01:02:24,040 --> 01:02:25,760
Speaker 1: going to see something crazy like that happen. And maybe

1100
01:02:25,780 --> 01:02:28,740
Speaker 1: that's what happens when you tackle, you lock up with

1101
01:02:28,780 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 1: someone like Theseus.

1102
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:33,690
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, but this sorry, I was just going to

1103
01:02:33,730 --> 01:02:35,970
Speaker 2: say this guy seems like a great example of somebody

1104
01:02:36,010 --> 01:02:39,550
Speaker 2: who's clearly just trying to exert dominance over people who

1105
01:02:39,590 --> 01:02:43,110
Speaker 2: come through. It's like, hey, wrestle me. Yeah. What people

1106
01:02:43,160 --> 01:02:44,740
Speaker 2: are just trying to come by on the road. And

1107
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:48,360
Speaker 2: he says, wrestle me. And then he wrestles them to death. Yeah. Yeah.

1108
01:02:49,200 --> 01:02:51,500
Speaker 1: So Felton doesn't have much to say about the wrestling

1109
01:02:51,540 --> 01:02:53,880
Speaker 1: per se. But she does point out that this is

1110
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:59,250
Speaker 1: another case of likely political propaganda because Circe on was

1111
01:02:59,290 --> 01:03:03,360
Speaker 1: a hero or possibly a king. in Eleusis is around

1112
01:03:03,360 --> 01:03:06,980
Speaker 1: 21 kilometers outside of Athens. And it was part of

1113
01:03:07,020 --> 01:03:10,660
Speaker 1: this Megarid territory that had territory disputes with Athens in

1114
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:14,620
Speaker 1: the late sixth century BCE. So another case where it's like,

1115
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:18,530
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, the guy, the hero they have there

1116
01:03:18,610 --> 01:03:20,990
Speaker 1: or the king they have there. Yeah. Theseus took him out,

1117
01:03:21,050 --> 01:03:22,170
Speaker 1: just wrestled the heck out of him.

1118
01:03:22,210 --> 01:03:26,830
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. What a chump. Now, do we get anything

1119
01:03:26,870 --> 01:03:29,350
Speaker 2: like this in slasher movies? Usually not a lot of

1120
01:03:29,790 --> 01:03:34,130
Speaker 2: like wrestling oriented slasher movies, but there are, there are

1121
01:03:34,170 --> 01:03:38,290
Speaker 2: some slasher villains who sometimes kill people with like bare

1122
01:03:38,350 --> 01:03:41,890
Speaker 2: hand or just body moves without using a, a bladed weapon, right?

1123
01:03:41,910 --> 01:03:46,110
Speaker 2: Like sometimes there'll be crushings or kind of, I'm thinking

1124
01:03:46,190 --> 01:03:49,110
Speaker 2: Jason Voorhees at one point kind of break somebody's back

1125
01:03:49,210 --> 01:03:49,740
Speaker 2: on his knee.

1126
01:03:49,760 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I, I looked this up, um, and it,

1127
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:55,640
Speaker 1: it does happen occasionally with Jason. Um, there, of course the,

1128
01:03:56,040 --> 01:04:00,210
Speaker 1: the sleeping bag murders in, uh, Jason X, um, But

1129
01:04:00,740 --> 01:04:02,220
Speaker 1: those were, I guess, in a holodeck. I'm not sure

1130
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:03,180
Speaker 1: if that really happened.

1131
01:04:03,220 --> 01:04:06,430
Speaker 2: Well, that's modeled on an earlier murder from Friday the 13th,

1132
01:04:06,460 --> 01:04:10,220
Speaker 2: Part 7, in which he attacks a campsite and he

1133
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:12,540
Speaker 2: picks up somebody in a sleeping bag and whacks them

1134
01:04:12,580 --> 01:04:13,300
Speaker 2: against a tree.

1135
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:16,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess sometimes it's barehanded. Sometimes it's barehanded with

1136
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:18,120
Speaker 1: some sort of environmental factor.

1137
01:04:18,140 --> 01:04:18,880
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1138
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:22,650
Speaker 1: So I guess you do see it. I imagine that

1139
01:04:22,890 --> 01:04:25,710
Speaker 1: when it comes to wrestling moves, your average slasher is

1140
01:04:25,730 --> 01:04:27,740
Speaker 1: going to be limited, right? They're going to do a

1141
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:30,800
Speaker 1: single-handed choke or a double-handed choke, maybe a bear hug,

1142
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,480
Speaker 1: they're not going to really get into the technical maneuvers

1143
01:04:33,540 --> 01:04:33,959
Speaker 1: so much.

1144
01:04:34,380 --> 01:04:36,780
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, you ready for the next one?

1145
01:04:37,140 --> 01:04:38,910
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is going to be number six, right? This

1146
01:04:38,990 --> 01:04:40,450
Speaker 1: is going to be the final boss.

1147
01:04:40,710 --> 01:04:45,170
Speaker 2: The final one. This is Procrustes, the bedtime mutilator. So

1148
01:04:45,190 --> 01:04:48,550
Speaker 2: I'll start with the Dryden translation of Plutarch. Quote, And

1149
01:04:48,590 --> 01:04:52,860
Speaker 2: going a little farther, in Irenaeus he slew Damastes, otherwise

1150
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:56,700
Speaker 2: called Procrustes, forcing his body to the size of his

1151
01:04:56,800 --> 01:05:00,140
Speaker 2: own bed, as he himself was used to do with

1152
01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:04,530
Speaker 2: all strangers. This he did in imitation of Hercules, who

1153
01:05:04,610 --> 01:05:07,850
Speaker 2: always returned upon his assailants the same sort of violence

1154
01:05:07,950 --> 01:05:11,070
Speaker 2: that they offered to him. Feels a little like we

1155
01:05:11,110 --> 01:05:12,450
Speaker 2: need a little more description there.

1156
01:05:12,470 --> 01:05:15,150
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like killed him by putting him to bed,

1157
01:05:15,270 --> 01:05:18,310
Speaker 1: as he put others to bed. More details required.

1158
01:05:18,890 --> 01:05:24,510
Speaker 2: So some better detail appears in, again, Pseudo-Apollodorus, uh, So

1159
01:05:24,930 --> 01:05:30,410
Speaker 2: Fraser translates, quote, Sixth he slew Damastes, whom some call Polypemon.

1160
01:05:31,490 --> 01:05:34,590
Speaker 2: He had his dwelling beside the road, and he made

1161
01:05:34,650 --> 01:05:38,210
Speaker 2: up two beds, one small and the other big. And

1162
01:05:38,370 --> 01:05:43,010
Speaker 2: offering hospitality to the passersby, he laid the short men

1163
01:05:43,190 --> 01:05:46,010
Speaker 2: on the big bed and hammered them to make them

1164
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:49,100
Speaker 2: fit the bed. But the tall men he laid on

1165
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:52,000
Speaker 2: the little bed and sawed off the portions of the

1166
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 2: body that projected beyond it. OK, there you go. So

1167
01:05:56,590 --> 01:06:00,700
Speaker 2: this is the story of the Procrustean bed. So Procrustean

1168
01:06:00,840 --> 01:06:03,820
Speaker 2: is a bad host. He has two beds in his house.

1169
01:06:04,180 --> 01:06:06,780
Speaker 2: They are poorly built beds. One is way too long.

1170
01:06:06,900 --> 01:06:10,110
Speaker 2: The other is way too short. People come into the house.

1171
01:06:10,550 --> 01:06:12,330
Speaker 2: If you're tall, he puts you in the short bed

1172
01:06:12,390 --> 01:06:14,550
Speaker 2: to cut cuts off the parts of your body that

1173
01:06:14,590 --> 01:06:16,390
Speaker 2: hang over the side. I guess that means cutting your

1174
01:06:16,410 --> 01:06:20,030
Speaker 2: feet off or maybe your head. And then if you

1175
01:06:20,250 --> 01:06:22,450
Speaker 2: are short, he puts you on the long bed and

1176
01:06:22,470 --> 01:06:25,160
Speaker 2: he smashes you until you are spread out to the

1177
01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:25,960
Speaker 2: length of the bed.

1178
01:06:25,980 --> 01:06:29,940
Speaker 1: And we're just left to wonder what happens if someone

1179
01:06:29,980 --> 01:06:32,220
Speaker 1: comes in and they're just the right size. Do they

1180
01:06:32,240 --> 01:06:34,940
Speaker 1: get a good night's sleep? They end up, you get

1181
01:06:34,960 --> 01:06:37,220
Speaker 1: a good Yelp review for the place at this point.

1182
01:06:38,420 --> 01:06:41,020
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like the fix is in though.

1183
01:06:41,140 --> 01:06:44,860
Speaker 1: Because if you're short, if you're tall, it doesn't matter.

1184
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:47,230
Speaker 1: He's got a bed that's not going to fit just right.

1185
01:06:47,650 --> 01:06:49,510
Speaker 1: And he's going to murder and torture you to make

1186
01:06:49,570 --> 01:06:50,150
Speaker 1: you fit it.

1187
01:06:50,570 --> 01:06:54,940
Speaker 2: That's right. And so it says that Theseus did to

1188
01:06:54,980 --> 01:06:57,340
Speaker 2: him what he had done to his guests. So I

1189
01:06:57,360 --> 01:06:59,360
Speaker 2: guess these I don't it doesn't say which bed he

1190
01:06:59,380 --> 01:06:59,959
Speaker 2: put him in, though.

1191
01:07:01,120 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is this guy short? Is this guy tall? I

1192
01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:05,340
Speaker 1: don't know. He found a way to make it hurt, though,

1193
01:07:05,410 --> 01:07:09,830
Speaker 1: and to make sure this guy got received some payback.

1194
01:07:11,650 --> 01:07:15,080
Speaker 1: I guess the the main thing that the. to mention

1195
01:07:15,120 --> 01:07:18,300
Speaker 1: here is that this is where we get the term Procrustean, um,

1196
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:23,340
Speaker 1: which you will occasionally see used concerning something a little

1197
01:07:23,380 --> 01:07:26,260
Speaker 1: more deliberate. Like I was looking around to say, okay,

1198
01:07:26,280 --> 01:07:28,370
Speaker 1: where are some places, are there any cases where people

1199
01:07:28,450 --> 01:07:31,689
Speaker 1: are using this word to talk about airline seating? Um,

1200
01:07:31,790 --> 01:07:34,630
Speaker 1: this was on my mind since I just flew. And, uh,

1201
01:07:34,830 --> 01:07:38,450
Speaker 1: sure enough, you will find people complaining about airline seating

1202
01:07:38,490 --> 01:07:40,250
Speaker 1: and they will use the term Procrustean.

1203
01:07:40,650 --> 01:07:43,310
Speaker 2: Hmm. So that would be, there are a couple of

1204
01:07:43,390 --> 01:07:46,030
Speaker 2: different ways I think this term is used. One is

1205
01:07:47,050 --> 01:07:51,220
Speaker 2: just talking about a, like a sort of one size

1206
01:07:51,280 --> 01:07:55,220
Speaker 2: fits all approach that does not, that does not accommodate

1207
01:07:55,280 --> 01:08:01,060
Speaker 2: difference as well. The other version of Procrustean is it's

1208
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:07,370
Speaker 2: sometimes used to refer to any logically backwards process of fitting.

1209
01:08:07,950 --> 01:08:12,140
Speaker 2: So much like Procrustes does in the story, it would

1210
01:08:12,180 --> 01:08:17,510
Speaker 2: be cases of resolving a mismatch by adjusting the wrong element,

1211
01:08:17,830 --> 01:08:21,250
Speaker 2: like adjusting the less intuitive or more difficult of the

1212
01:08:21,290 --> 01:08:27,849
Speaker 2: mismatched elements. So you often see, I've seen procrastinism talked

1213
01:08:27,870 --> 01:08:32,010
Speaker 2: about in the context of bad scientific theories or pseudoscience.

1214
01:08:32,610 --> 01:08:36,179
Speaker 2: Sometimes these are procrastinian in the sense that they ask

1215
01:08:36,220 --> 01:08:39,600
Speaker 2: you to ignore the results of experiments and or to

1216
01:08:39,740 --> 01:08:44,530
Speaker 2: throw out well-established knowledge because it would contradict your pet

1217
01:08:44,670 --> 01:08:48,350
Speaker 2: theory instead of just realizing actually the simpler thing to

1218
01:08:48,390 --> 01:08:49,910
Speaker 2: do is throw out the bad theory.

1219
01:08:49,930 --> 01:08:52,990
Speaker 1: So mutilating the truth to make it fit the bed

1220
01:08:53,010 --> 01:08:54,260
Speaker 1: of your theory. Right.

1221
01:08:54,340 --> 01:08:54,780
Speaker 2: Exactly.

1222
01:08:56,040 --> 01:08:58,820
Speaker 1: So this one is an interesting encounter because on one

1223
01:08:58,860 --> 01:09:02,970
Speaker 1: level it, whereas other ones feel more like, to me anyway,

1224
01:09:03,030 --> 01:09:07,170
Speaker 1: to a modern interpreter, they feel like cases of, okay, yeah,

1225
01:09:07,210 --> 01:09:10,030
Speaker 1: madman in the wilderness that's doing crimes and getting away

1226
01:09:10,070 --> 01:09:12,050
Speaker 1: with it. This one also, this one kind of feels

1227
01:09:12,110 --> 01:09:15,750
Speaker 1: more like a horrific parody of a guy that just

1228
01:09:15,790 --> 01:09:18,360
Speaker 1: runs a crappy inn. Where it's like, oh, yeah, that

1229
01:09:18,470 --> 01:09:21,050
Speaker 1: in none of the beds fit anybody. I think he

1230
01:09:21,170 --> 01:09:24,229
Speaker 1: has he has two different beds. And if you're tall,

1231
01:09:24,290 --> 01:09:26,170
Speaker 1: he gives you the little one. And if you're little,

1232
01:09:26,210 --> 01:09:28,090
Speaker 1: he gives you the tall one. And either way, you're

1233
01:09:28,110 --> 01:09:31,150
Speaker 1: in for a torturous night's sleep. And then they're like, yeah,

1234
01:09:31,189 --> 01:09:34,350
Speaker 1: Theseus finally got the guy who runs that crappy in.

1235
01:09:35,830 --> 01:09:38,830
Speaker 2: It is hard to tell exactly what tone to take

1236
01:09:38,870 --> 01:09:40,929
Speaker 2: this story in. Like, is it supposed to be funny

1237
01:09:40,950 --> 01:09:43,110
Speaker 2: or is it supposed to be horrifying?

1238
01:09:43,140 --> 01:09:46,330
Speaker 1: I think it. at least in the versions that have survived,

1239
01:09:46,370 --> 01:09:49,370
Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be horrifying because that's what

1240
01:09:49,430 --> 01:09:54,490
Speaker 1: Felton mostly touches on here. She points out that Procrustes

1241
01:09:55,110 --> 01:09:58,299
Speaker 1: is the most like a modern serial killer among the six.

1242
01:09:59,060 --> 01:10:02,800
Speaker 1: She argues that, okay, he uses weapons or tools and

1243
01:10:02,840 --> 01:10:08,470
Speaker 1: his method of killing is, quote, detailed, torturous, ritualistic, and personal.

1244
01:10:09,170 --> 01:10:12,610
Speaker 1: He's also manipulative. He seems to set a trap based

1245
01:10:12,670 --> 01:10:15,810
Speaker 1: on the rights of hospitality and then, of course, viciously

1246
01:10:15,850 --> 01:10:22,410
Speaker 1: betrays those rights. Yeah. And it's elaborate and over the top, which, again,

1247
01:10:22,770 --> 01:10:26,320
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't fit the real life serial murders, but certainly

1248
01:10:26,380 --> 01:10:30,300
Speaker 1: fits that kind of overly theatrical, you know, Hannibal TV

1249
01:10:30,340 --> 01:10:33,200
Speaker 1: series sort of serial killer, you know, where there's some

1250
01:10:33,220 --> 01:10:36,599
Speaker 1: sort of like crazy scheme they're doing. And it has

1251
01:10:36,640 --> 01:10:38,500
Speaker 1: to be this way. It has to be killing people

1252
01:10:38,860 --> 01:10:39,860
Speaker 1: in a weird torture bed.

1253
01:10:40,320 --> 01:10:41,790
Speaker 2: It's like a jigsaw trap.

1254
01:10:41,850 --> 01:10:45,670
Speaker 1: Yeah, or jigsaw. I think jigsaw is another great example here. Like, wow,

1255
01:10:45,689 --> 01:10:48,010
Speaker 1: you really put a lot of thought into this one,

1256
01:10:48,570 --> 01:10:50,170
Speaker 1: and we're going to follow this one through to the end.

1257
01:10:51,090 --> 01:10:53,130
Speaker 1: All right, so at this point, Theseus is in the clear.

1258
01:10:53,770 --> 01:10:57,330
Speaker 1: He's killed all six bandits, all six evildoers, all six slashers,

1259
01:10:57,390 --> 01:11:00,849
Speaker 1: and gets to enter Athens. But as we mentioned earlier,

1260
01:11:01,189 --> 01:11:04,710
Speaker 1: there's at least one telling where after he slays Cenus,

1261
01:11:05,110 --> 01:11:08,070
Speaker 1: he has to ritually purify himself before he can keep going.

1262
01:11:08,479 --> 01:11:12,599
Speaker 1: But in other tellings, he has to ritually purify himself

1263
01:11:13,140 --> 01:11:16,560
Speaker 1: after killing all six before he can enter Athens itself.

1264
01:11:17,290 --> 01:11:20,590
Speaker 1: And I found this very interesting because it's like Theseus

1265
01:11:20,630 --> 01:11:26,349
Speaker 1: has set out into the ungoverned wild lands here. He

1266
01:11:26,410 --> 01:11:31,349
Speaker 1: has tangled with murderers, with evildoers, and in doing so

1267
01:11:31,439 --> 01:11:35,280
Speaker 1: has bloodied himself. He has become less pure because he

1268
01:11:35,320 --> 01:11:38,340
Speaker 1: has had to enact the signature murder of each murderer

1269
01:11:38,939 --> 01:11:41,600
Speaker 1: in order to take them out. And by the time

1270
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:46,670
Speaker 1: he reaches Athens, it's like he's more seasoned now. He

1271
01:11:46,970 --> 01:11:50,230
Speaker 1: has bloodied his sword, but he's also bloodied his soul

1272
01:11:50,250 --> 01:11:52,849
Speaker 1: to some extent. And so he has to cleanse himself

1273
01:11:52,910 --> 01:11:57,309
Speaker 1: of that in order to re-enter civil society and be

1274
01:11:57,380 --> 01:11:59,000
Speaker 1: a part of the city-state once more.

1275
01:11:59,660 --> 01:12:02,750
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because, at least as I read it,

1276
01:12:02,800 --> 01:12:06,719
Speaker 2: I don't sense a lot of doubt or regret in

1277
01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:09,179
Speaker 2: theseus about this kind of stuff it's not like there

1278
01:12:09,420 --> 01:12:12,140
Speaker 2: are passages where he's like you know deeply troubled in

1279
01:12:12,200 --> 01:12:14,580
Speaker 2: his soul that he's having to do this violence it

1280
01:12:14,600 --> 01:12:18,040
Speaker 2: seems like he's he's very resolute and this is you

1281
01:12:18,080 --> 01:12:19,940
Speaker 2: know there is a view that this is just the

1282
01:12:20,000 --> 01:12:22,420
Speaker 2: right thing to do to kill all these killers and

1283
01:12:22,439 --> 01:12:25,000
Speaker 2: i'm going to do it and prove my worth uh

1284
01:12:25,060 --> 01:12:28,240
Speaker 2: so there's one sense in which it's very straightforward like

1285
01:12:28,280 --> 01:12:30,939
Speaker 2: that and you don't see a lot of explicit acknowledgement

1286
01:12:31,020 --> 01:12:35,480
Speaker 2: of of uh of doubt or regret or or feelings

1287
01:12:35,520 --> 01:12:37,780
Speaker 2: of impurity like that. But on the other hand, it

1288
01:12:38,020 --> 01:12:40,880
Speaker 2: is notable that he has to become like the killers.

1289
01:12:40,939 --> 01:12:44,340
Speaker 2: He can't even just fight them off. He uses their

1290
01:12:44,560 --> 01:12:47,990
Speaker 2: own methods of murder back against them, which really does

1291
01:12:48,050 --> 01:12:51,950
Speaker 2: thematically suggest there's some element of him becoming like them.

1292
01:12:52,050 --> 01:12:56,490
Speaker 2: Like he has to, he has to change somehow. He's doing,

1293
01:12:56,729 --> 01:13:00,900
Speaker 2: something is happening in him because it's one thing to,

1294
01:13:00,920 --> 01:13:05,049
Speaker 2: you know, when we see, uh, heroes triumph over villains

1295
01:13:05,090 --> 01:13:08,710
Speaker 2: in our storytelling today, it is not normal for the

1296
01:13:08,810 --> 01:13:14,430
Speaker 2: heroes to inflict violent, torturous mutilation on the killers. But

1297
01:13:14,470 --> 01:13:17,469
Speaker 2: like it says, that's what he does to Procrustes. Yeah.

1298
01:13:17,910 --> 01:13:20,689
Speaker 2: Even though, you know, you get the sense Procrustes deserved

1299
01:13:20,810 --> 01:13:22,830
Speaker 2: it in some sense, he, that's what he was doing

1300
01:13:22,870 --> 01:13:26,070
Speaker 2: to innocent people all these years, but it still doesn't

1301
01:13:26,220 --> 01:13:29,760
Speaker 2: feel at least in our modern sensibilities, like that's what

1302
01:13:29,800 --> 01:13:33,689
Speaker 2: a hero should do. But in this case, that's how

1303
01:13:33,729 --> 01:13:35,769
Speaker 2: the story works. So it's like you've got to sort

1304
01:13:35,810 --> 01:13:38,410
Speaker 2: of become a serial killer to beat the serial killers.

1305
01:13:38,910 --> 01:13:41,310
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we can think of so many situations

1306
01:13:41,340 --> 01:13:43,860
Speaker 1: where we go to great lengths to keep our heroes pure.

1307
01:13:44,300 --> 01:13:45,979
Speaker 1: Where they do the thing where it's like, okay, villain,

1308
01:13:46,000 --> 01:13:47,480
Speaker 1: I'm going to let you go with a warning. And

1309
01:13:47,520 --> 01:13:49,620
Speaker 1: then villain comes with going to do a pot shot

1310
01:13:49,660 --> 01:13:52,500
Speaker 1: or a tricky shoot in the back kind of a thing.

1311
01:13:52,840 --> 01:13:55,620
Speaker 1: And then that forces the hero to kill them. But,

1312
01:13:55,640 --> 01:13:57,400
Speaker 1: you know, you go to great lengths to prevent your

1313
01:13:57,439 --> 01:14:00,110
Speaker 1: hero from killing people in cold blood, much less torturing

1314
01:14:00,130 --> 01:14:04,550
Speaker 1: them to death. Um, but, uh, but as Felton points out,

1315
01:14:04,570 --> 01:14:06,710
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of becoming a killer to hunt

1316
01:14:06,770 --> 01:14:09,360
Speaker 1: a killer, like we see that in a lot of our, our, um,

1317
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:12,639
Speaker 1: you know, our more contemporary, uh, serial killer media, like

1318
01:14:13,100 --> 01:14:16,599
Speaker 1: Thomas Harris's Red Dragon. Um, and of course the Michael

1319
01:14:16,620 --> 01:14:21,189
Speaker 1: Mann adaptation, Manhunter. Um, she also brings up, uh, Dexter

1320
01:14:21,410 --> 01:14:23,830
Speaker 1: as a possible comparison, though does point out that like

1321
01:14:23,850 --> 01:14:29,370
Speaker 1: with Dexter, you have a serial murderer who, um, kills

1322
01:14:29,410 --> 01:14:32,930
Speaker 1: other serial murderers so as to safely follow his impulses.

1323
01:14:33,189 --> 01:14:35,939
Speaker 1: That's not what we see with Theseus. Theseus isn't killing

1324
01:14:35,979 --> 01:14:38,460
Speaker 1: for kicks here. This is a nobler mission.

1325
01:14:39,020 --> 01:14:44,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. And I would say another difference is

1326
01:14:44,540 --> 01:14:48,889
Speaker 2: that even in Red Dragon, the character who has to

1327
01:14:48,979 --> 01:14:52,490
Speaker 2: get in the mind of serial killers in order to

1328
01:14:52,689 --> 01:14:56,710
Speaker 2: defeat them That's for investigative purposes. Like he has to

1329
01:14:56,750 --> 01:14:58,809
Speaker 2: get in the mind of the serial killer to figure

1330
01:14:58,910 --> 01:15:01,410
Speaker 2: out who the serial killer is and how to find

1331
01:15:01,470 --> 01:15:04,190
Speaker 2: and stop them. It's not like, oh, we already know

1332
01:15:04,229 --> 01:15:06,559
Speaker 2: who this person is and know exactly where they are.

1333
01:15:06,580 --> 01:15:09,160
Speaker 2: And you've just got to act like them once you

1334
01:15:09,200 --> 01:15:10,100
Speaker 2: meet them, you know?

1335
01:15:10,220 --> 01:15:10,500
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1336
01:15:12,160 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1337
01:15:13,260 --> 01:15:16,299
Speaker 1: It did remind me, though, once more of Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

1338
01:15:16,320 --> 01:15:23,469
Speaker 1: specifically TCM2. Yes. Stretch. Yeah. Stretch played by Caroline Williams.

1339
01:15:24,040 --> 01:15:26,929
Speaker 1: At the end of that, she has battled her way

1340
01:15:26,979 --> 01:15:31,210
Speaker 1: through the Sawyer family. Chainsaw in hand. And I think

1341
01:15:31,250 --> 01:15:34,770
Speaker 1: the coolest shot in the whole film emerges on the

1342
01:15:34,830 --> 01:15:39,309
Speaker 1: top of this mountain. This kind of man-made structure. And

1343
01:15:39,350 --> 01:15:42,809
Speaker 1: she brandishes the chainsaw on high. And she's covered with blood.

1344
01:15:42,850 --> 01:15:46,349
Speaker 1: And she emits a primal scream. But it's like she's

1345
01:15:46,390 --> 01:15:50,500
Speaker 1: almost become... a member of the Sawyer family in vanquishing

1346
01:15:50,540 --> 01:15:54,410
Speaker 1: the Sawyer family. And so she feels unfit to return

1347
01:15:54,450 --> 01:15:58,010
Speaker 1: to Athens or Dallas-Fort Worth or whatever the case may be.

1348
01:15:58,590 --> 01:16:01,010
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's holding the chainsaw up in the air, having

1349
01:16:01,070 --> 01:16:04,170
Speaker 2: beaten the chainsaw wielders. I'm the club man now, yeah.

1350
01:16:04,210 --> 01:16:09,520
Speaker 2: But she absolutely has elements of that. That's good.

1351
01:16:09,530 --> 01:16:11,880
Speaker 1: And there are probably some other examples of that as

1352
01:16:11,939 --> 01:16:14,019
Speaker 1: well that I'm not thinking of, but that's the one

1353
01:16:14,060 --> 01:16:16,620
Speaker 1: that sticks in my head for sure. Oh, man. Yeah.

1354
01:16:17,160 --> 01:16:21,140
Speaker 2: TCM2 is pretty great. Really burned my beans.

1355
01:16:22,260 --> 01:16:24,479
Speaker 1: You know, it reminded me of this in another way.

1356
01:16:25,400 --> 01:16:28,310
Speaker 1: We were chatting about this in the notes a bit,

1357
01:16:28,850 --> 01:16:31,950
Speaker 1: about whether Theseus is kind of like the ultimate final girl.

1358
01:16:33,150 --> 01:16:36,630
Speaker 1: But he reminds me a lot of Lefty in TCM2,

1359
01:16:36,670 --> 01:16:40,670
Speaker 1: the Dennis Hopper character. He is the hero who is

1360
01:16:40,750 --> 01:16:44,340
Speaker 1: setting out into the rural wildlands in order to hunt

1361
01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:45,200
Speaker 1: down the killers.

1362
01:16:55,620 --> 01:16:57,780
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that should go ahead and pull us into

1363
01:16:58,280 --> 01:17:00,599
Speaker 2: the last thing I wanted to talk about here, which

1364
01:17:00,660 --> 01:17:05,379
Speaker 2: was looking at some major thematic features of modern slasher

1365
01:17:05,420 --> 01:17:08,660
Speaker 2: movies to see if there's any interesting overlap or interaction

1366
01:17:08,680 --> 01:17:11,299
Speaker 2: with the Theseus tale. I think, really, in most cases,

1367
01:17:11,360 --> 01:17:14,180
Speaker 2: it's pretty different, but there are some kind of interesting

1368
01:17:14,220 --> 01:17:18,300
Speaker 2: little overlaps. One thing I was thinking about was the

1369
01:17:18,340 --> 01:17:22,920
Speaker 2: punishment of taboos. It's been widely observed by you know,

1370
01:17:22,979 --> 01:17:26,720
Speaker 2: casual viewers and film scholars alike, that the victims in

1371
01:17:27,100 --> 01:17:31,939
Speaker 2: slasher movies are often teenagers and young adults who engage

1372
01:17:32,000 --> 01:17:36,830
Speaker 2: in socially prohibited behaviors like partaking in drugs, alcohol, and

1373
01:17:36,910 --> 01:17:41,850
Speaker 2: premarital sex. This is famously observed in Scream. You know,

1374
01:17:42,090 --> 01:17:45,150
Speaker 2: these movies, especially the early movies in the slasher genre

1375
01:17:45,170 --> 01:17:50,610
Speaker 2: from the 1980s, imply this causal relationship between taboo breaking

1376
01:17:50,710 --> 01:17:54,070
Speaker 2: and death. So you have characters who sin, and then

1377
01:17:54,210 --> 01:17:57,850
Speaker 2: immediately afterward, they are isolated and murdered by the villain

1378
01:17:57,910 --> 01:18:01,630
Speaker 2: or the monster, as if they're being punished. And I

1379
01:18:01,670 --> 01:18:04,410
Speaker 2: think this has come up on the show plenty of

1380
01:18:04,430 --> 01:18:06,969
Speaker 2: times before, and I think it's an interesting thing because

1381
01:18:07,070 --> 01:18:11,540
Speaker 2: the unspoken implication of sin and punishment is a major

1382
01:18:11,600 --> 01:18:15,000
Speaker 2: part of the feeling of these movies, even though I

1383
01:18:15,060 --> 01:18:18,480
Speaker 2: think often the people who enjoy these movies would not

1384
01:18:18,910 --> 01:18:22,350
Speaker 2: share the explicit belief that these are behaviors that need

1385
01:18:22,370 --> 01:18:24,950
Speaker 2: to be punished with death. It's kind of interesting. It's

1386
01:18:25,030 --> 01:18:28,700
Speaker 2: just like, it's just part somehow of what the genre

1387
01:18:28,900 --> 01:18:32,700
Speaker 2: is and how it's enjoyed, even though people don't necessarily

1388
01:18:33,080 --> 01:18:37,269
Speaker 2: think that, you know, like underage drinking should end in punishment.

1389
01:18:38,170 --> 01:18:41,990
Speaker 2: But anyway, does this have any relevance to these, uh,

1390
01:18:42,030 --> 01:18:46,030
Speaker 2: these killers in the Theseus story? thinking about it and

1391
01:18:46,260 --> 01:18:50,400
Speaker 2: not really at least in part because the television of

1392
01:18:50,439 --> 01:18:53,880
Speaker 2: the story available to us do not focus much on

1393
01:18:53,900 --> 01:18:57,349
Speaker 2: the previous victims of the Greek slashers. Like, we don't

1394
01:18:57,510 --> 01:19:01,570
Speaker 2: see them at work on other victims before Theseus, and

1395
01:19:01,630 --> 01:19:04,370
Speaker 2: we only get the barest descriptions of what they did

1396
01:19:04,450 --> 01:19:07,860
Speaker 2: to these other people. And then once Theseus arrives, he

1397
01:19:08,120 --> 01:19:11,560
Speaker 2: is the opposite of a sinful victim who is implicitly

1398
01:19:11,620 --> 01:19:14,500
Speaker 2: punished for his crimes. Rather, he is the hero and

1399
01:19:14,979 --> 01:19:18,480
Speaker 2: he does the punishing. He kills the slashers for their crimes.

1400
01:19:18,860 --> 01:19:22,590
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's righteous. Or at least you could say he's

1401
01:19:22,650 --> 01:19:25,269
Speaker 1: righteous or he is more than willing to get his

1402
01:19:25,310 --> 01:19:28,190
Speaker 1: hands dirty and give it right back to the killer.

1403
01:19:28,310 --> 01:19:31,610
Speaker 1: So the general idea seems to be that these evildoers

1404
01:19:31,670 --> 01:19:35,090
Speaker 1: are preying on innocents. in a sense, like you, the

1405
01:19:35,150 --> 01:19:39,129
Speaker 1: intended reader in ancient Greece. Because again, if this is really,

1406
01:19:39,290 --> 01:19:41,830
Speaker 1: in large part, if this is like playing on general

1407
01:19:41,930 --> 01:19:45,130
Speaker 1: anxieties about travel in the ancient world, then, you know,

1408
01:19:45,170 --> 01:19:51,000
Speaker 1: that's the intended reader, the intended listener to the tale.

1409
01:19:51,140 --> 01:19:54,420
Speaker 1: That's the person who is going to imagine themselves becoming

1410
01:19:54,439 --> 01:19:55,020
Speaker 1: the victim here.

1411
01:19:55,840 --> 01:19:57,939
Speaker 2: The one variation on this where I did see a

1412
01:19:58,020 --> 01:20:01,690
Speaker 2: possible connection is that you might be able to see

1413
01:20:02,680 --> 01:20:06,440
Speaker 2: Punishment for the violation of social taboos going in the

1414
01:20:06,479 --> 01:20:10,960
Speaker 2: other direction. So apart from the fact that they kill people,

1415
01:20:11,200 --> 01:20:16,209
Speaker 2: the Greek slashers here do cross some other important cultural lines.

1416
01:20:17,130 --> 01:20:19,269
Speaker 2: And one that seems obvious to me, you pointed this

1417
01:20:19,350 --> 01:20:22,390
Speaker 2: out earlier in the episode, Rob, is the violation of

1418
01:20:22,490 --> 01:20:26,420
Speaker 2: what was known as Xenia, the Greek concept of ritual

1419
01:20:26,500 --> 01:20:31,330
Speaker 2: hospitality and guest friendships. And so you can see that

1420
01:20:31,550 --> 01:20:37,830
Speaker 2: some of these killers, especially Procrustes, explicitly violates that kind

1421
01:20:37,870 --> 01:20:43,230
Speaker 2: of social expectation. So in some tellings, Procrustes offers hospitality

1422
01:20:43,300 --> 01:20:45,740
Speaker 2: to his victims. There are people traveling on the road,

1423
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:48,179
Speaker 2: says he has a house by the road. He invites

1424
01:20:48,260 --> 01:20:50,600
Speaker 2: them into his house as a host. So they're supposed

1425
01:20:50,640 --> 01:20:55,240
Speaker 2: to be protected guests. And custom dictates that when you

1426
01:20:55,300 --> 01:20:58,360
Speaker 2: have a guest at your house, you should ensure their safety.

1427
01:20:58,420 --> 01:21:00,200
Speaker 2: You're supposed to offer them a meal. There are all

1428
01:21:00,220 --> 01:21:04,000
Speaker 2: kinds of kind of steps here for how you treat

1429
01:21:04,020 --> 01:21:06,759
Speaker 2: a guest well and for how guests are also supposed

1430
01:21:06,800 --> 01:21:09,920
Speaker 2: to treat their hosts well. But instead of this, he

1431
01:21:09,960 --> 01:21:14,160
Speaker 2: kills them. He betrays his guests. And this seems, based

1432
01:21:14,220 --> 01:21:18,120
Speaker 2: on what I've read, like a profound cultural taboo violation.

1433
01:21:18,400 --> 01:21:21,530
Speaker 2: And he is punished for it by Theseus. So it's

1434
01:21:21,610 --> 01:21:24,870
Speaker 2: kind of like the punishment that we see in slasher movies,

1435
01:21:24,910 --> 01:21:27,380
Speaker 2: but it's going the other way. We see the slasher

1436
01:21:28,020 --> 01:21:31,360
Speaker 2: themselves being punished for something that they do wrong that

1437
01:21:31,420 --> 01:21:35,540
Speaker 2: violates cultural expectations apart from just the general violence they commit.

1438
01:21:36,260 --> 01:21:38,880
Speaker 1: To quote the dad in Troll 2, you can't piss

1439
01:21:38,939 --> 01:21:39,800
Speaker 1: on hospitality.

1440
01:21:40,420 --> 01:21:46,120
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. Orthesius will kill you and he'll pee

1441
01:21:46,160 --> 01:21:47,320
Speaker 2: right back on you. Yeah.

1442
01:21:47,380 --> 01:21:47,520
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1443
01:21:48,750 --> 01:21:50,610
Speaker 2: As far as my other notes on this, yeah, I

1444
01:21:50,630 --> 01:21:53,790
Speaker 2: briefly had a thing about the final girl. You know,

1445
01:21:53,910 --> 01:21:56,450
Speaker 2: of course, while in slasher movies we see the sinful

1446
01:21:56,490 --> 01:22:00,740
Speaker 2: characters get punished, there is usually one female character among

1447
01:22:00,780 --> 01:22:03,939
Speaker 2: all the others who is virtuous and intelligent. She alone

1448
01:22:04,000 --> 01:22:06,560
Speaker 2: is able to keep her wits about her, survive the

1449
01:22:06,580 --> 01:22:09,439
Speaker 2: killer's attack, and then unmask and defeat the killer in

1450
01:22:09,479 --> 01:22:15,120
Speaker 2: the end. Is Theseus a six-time final girl character? Uh, yeah,

1451
01:22:15,220 --> 01:22:17,960
Speaker 2: kind of like we do get this description of that,

1452
01:22:18,080 --> 01:22:21,720
Speaker 2: like it is something about Theseus's virtue, which allows him

1453
01:22:21,780 --> 01:22:24,970
Speaker 2: to prevail over the killers. There's something that makes him

1454
01:22:25,130 --> 01:22:29,230
Speaker 2: special and different that allows him to win. And that's

1455
01:22:29,290 --> 01:22:31,250
Speaker 2: often the sense we get about the final girl in

1456
01:22:31,310 --> 01:22:34,370
Speaker 2: the slasher movie is that like, she's special, she's different.

1457
01:22:34,670 --> 01:22:36,990
Speaker 2: She's better than all of the other people who are

1458
01:22:37,030 --> 01:22:37,730
Speaker 2: the victims.

1459
01:22:38,160 --> 01:22:42,300
Speaker 1: But she's also transformed by her circumstances into becoming this,

1460
01:22:42,540 --> 01:22:46,940
Speaker 1: this hair, this hero. Whereas Theseus has been he's been

1461
01:22:47,060 --> 01:22:49,920
Speaker 1: idolizing Heracles the whole time. He's like, get me out there.

1462
01:22:50,280 --> 01:22:55,160
Speaker 1: There's some skull crushers and some and some bandits and

1463
01:22:55,200 --> 01:22:57,780
Speaker 1: some evildoers out there. And I want a piece of them.

1464
01:22:57,900 --> 01:23:00,520
Speaker 1: So he's he's he's been waiting for this.

1465
01:23:01,000 --> 01:23:03,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a very good point. A lot of the

1466
01:23:03,240 --> 01:23:06,519
Speaker 2: academic literature on the final girl is about transformation, like

1467
01:23:07,020 --> 01:23:10,190
Speaker 2: going from becoming a kind of unassuming or modest person

1468
01:23:10,229 --> 01:23:13,189
Speaker 2: to a person of action who. has to fight in

1469
01:23:13,229 --> 01:23:13,590
Speaker 2: the end.

1470
01:23:13,750 --> 01:23:15,330
Speaker 1: Yeah. And like we were saying, you know, there are

1471
01:23:15,350 --> 01:23:18,610
Speaker 1: no masks. If we're looking at the Greek idea of

1472
01:23:18,650 --> 01:23:23,469
Speaker 1: the mask as a way of transforming the theater or ritual,

1473
01:23:23,830 --> 01:23:26,759
Speaker 1: like nobody in these stories is transforming. Theseus is already

1474
01:23:26,990 --> 01:23:30,280
Speaker 1: everything that he is. And these villains are all, you know,

1475
01:23:30,460 --> 01:23:34,180
Speaker 1: they're out and awful in their own way. And yeah,

1476
01:23:34,220 --> 01:23:35,520
Speaker 1: so nobody's hiding.

1477
01:23:35,200 --> 01:23:35,720
Speaker 2: Who they are.

1478
01:23:36,460 --> 01:23:39,680
Speaker 1: They're just doing what they do. I mean, they are

1479
01:23:39,760 --> 01:23:41,320
Speaker 1: hiding who they are in the sense that there is

1480
01:23:41,380 --> 01:23:42,760
Speaker 1: deception Yes, I.

1481
01:23:42,740 --> 01:23:45,080
Speaker 2: Was going to say that. So there are no masks,

1482
01:23:45,160 --> 01:23:48,820
Speaker 2: there's no face to hide, but they are engaging in trickery.

1483
01:23:48,900 --> 01:23:52,570
Speaker 2: Maybe not all of them, but like, I think, you know, Paraphetes,

1484
01:23:52,630 --> 01:23:54,110
Speaker 2: I think he just walks up to you and kills

1485
01:23:54,130 --> 01:23:56,550
Speaker 2: you with the club. So they're not all engaged. He's honest,

1486
01:23:56,610 --> 01:24:01,720
Speaker 2: at least. you do get the feeling that they in,

1487
01:24:01,920 --> 01:24:05,760
Speaker 2: they approach people with false, with pretenses, you know, they,

1488
01:24:05,820 --> 01:24:08,840
Speaker 2: they approach like a, certainly Procrustes says, you know, I'm

1489
01:24:08,860 --> 01:24:10,729
Speaker 2: going to be a good host. You come to my house,

1490
01:24:10,780 --> 01:24:12,830
Speaker 2: you stay here in the bed, you'll, you'll be safe

1491
01:24:12,850 --> 01:24:15,809
Speaker 2: for the night. And then he cuts you apart. Uh,

1492
01:24:15,970 --> 01:24:18,390
Speaker 2: so that's not exactly the same as a mask, but

1493
01:24:18,410 --> 01:24:22,170
Speaker 2: they are hiding their intentions and feigning harmlessness on, on

1494
01:24:22,250 --> 01:24:25,920
Speaker 2: first encounter, which seems to, it has some overlap there.

1495
01:24:25,979 --> 01:24:29,740
Speaker 2: And that's a big part of a lot of slasher movies.

1496
01:24:31,320 --> 01:24:35,849
Speaker 2: do derive a lot of their horror, actually, from ambiguous situations. Like,

1497
01:24:35,970 --> 01:24:40,330
Speaker 2: even in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, before the chainsaws come out,

1498
01:24:40,890 --> 01:24:46,400
Speaker 2: there are just a number of creepy, unpleasant, ambiguous encounters

1499
01:24:46,450 --> 01:24:50,660
Speaker 2: with people who you can't quite tell how dangerous they are. And, yeah,

1500
01:24:52,460 --> 01:24:54,160
Speaker 2: so I think the same thing is going on here.

1501
01:24:54,180 --> 01:24:57,280
Speaker 2: What do you think about Circeon, though? Is he approaching

1502
01:24:57,320 --> 01:25:00,349
Speaker 2: with false... Is he approaching, like, let's have a friendly

1503
01:25:00,410 --> 01:25:03,150
Speaker 2: wrestling match, and then he just surprises you by killing

1504
01:25:03,189 --> 01:25:05,550
Speaker 2: you with the wrestling? Or is it clear from the

1505
01:25:05,590 --> 01:25:08,430
Speaker 2: beginning that this wrestling match is going to be to

1506
01:25:08,450 --> 01:25:08,910
Speaker 2: the death?

1507
01:25:10,030 --> 01:25:11,900
Speaker 1: That is a good point. I didn't think about this

1508
01:25:11,960 --> 01:25:14,420
Speaker 1: as much, but of course we have other stories from

1509
01:25:14,540 --> 01:25:19,620
Speaker 1: antiquity where what is thought to be an honorable wrestling

1510
01:25:19,660 --> 01:25:24,060
Speaker 1: match ends in assassination. And so that does seem to

1511
01:25:24,100 --> 01:25:27,040
Speaker 1: be an existent trope of the time. So that could

1512
01:25:27,060 --> 01:25:28,870
Speaker 1: be the case, yeah, where it's like, hey, Because I

1513
01:25:28,910 --> 01:25:32,210
Speaker 1: think in these tellings, when he comes at you, you're

1514
01:25:32,229 --> 01:25:34,390
Speaker 1: given the chance. He's like, hey, you can either wrestle

1515
01:25:34,430 --> 01:25:37,410
Speaker 1: me or you're going to be murdered. So, of course,

1516
01:25:37,439 --> 01:25:41,600
Speaker 1: you're going to choose the wrestling. And wrestling has rules.

1517
01:25:41,820 --> 01:25:43,440
Speaker 1: I mean, there are things you're allowed to do and

1518
01:25:43,460 --> 01:25:45,320
Speaker 1: things you're not to do. He's not challenging you to

1519
01:25:45,360 --> 01:25:50,230
Speaker 1: just an eye-gouging battle to the death. It would seem

1520
01:25:50,250 --> 01:25:52,450
Speaker 1: like there maybe is some idea that there are going

1521
01:25:52,470 --> 01:25:55,970
Speaker 1: to be rules involved. And then he goes for the kill. So, yeah,

1522
01:25:56,010 --> 01:25:57,990
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. There may be a

1523
01:25:58,030 --> 01:26:03,690
Speaker 1: betrayal of norms and laws here as well. But we're

1524
01:26:03,729 --> 01:26:05,900
Speaker 1: in a land of no laws, where even wrestling has

1525
01:26:05,960 --> 01:26:07,599
Speaker 1: no rules, I guess. No refs.

1526
01:26:08,700 --> 01:26:09,840
Speaker 2: Okay, that's all I've got.

1527
01:26:10,400 --> 01:26:13,940
Speaker 1: All right. Well, there you have it. Theseus and the

1528
01:26:13,979 --> 01:26:18,190
Speaker 1: slashers from hell. These were not labors that I knew

1529
01:26:18,229 --> 01:26:21,170
Speaker 1: a lot about until I was digging around and honestly

1530
01:26:21,189 --> 01:26:25,210
Speaker 1: getting into some of Felton's work and kind of discovered

1531
01:26:25,229 --> 01:26:29,410
Speaker 1: these for my own part. And I thought they were fascinating.

1532
01:26:29,490 --> 01:26:32,390
Speaker 1: And again, I think if anyone out there is like, yeah,

1533
01:26:32,510 --> 01:26:34,990
Speaker 1: I need something from Greek mythology. I want to adapt

1534
01:26:35,030 --> 01:26:38,480
Speaker 1: it into a comic book or a movie or some

1535
01:26:38,520 --> 01:26:41,360
Speaker 1: sort of a work of horror fiction. Consider this. There

1536
01:26:41,380 --> 01:26:44,260
Speaker 1: might be something there. Something that could be expanded on

1537
01:26:44,340 --> 01:26:48,979
Speaker 1: and explored. Put it in a contemporary setting or throw

1538
01:26:49,020 --> 01:26:52,400
Speaker 1: some contemporary ideas back into an historic setting. I think

1539
01:26:52,439 --> 01:26:54,790
Speaker 1: there's some material there. Totally.

1540
01:26:55,640 --> 01:26:59,380
Speaker 2: Oh, wait, should we do casting now? Who are we

1541
01:26:59,400 --> 01:27:03,439
Speaker 2: thinking of? Which one should George Eastman have played? I

1542
01:27:03,460 --> 01:27:04,940
Speaker 2: know we've missed that chance, but.

1543
01:27:05,530 --> 01:27:09,350
Speaker 1: Ooh, I think, yeah, Cerseion, the wrestler for sure.

1544
01:27:09,370 --> 01:27:10,650
Speaker 2: The wrestler king, yeah.

1545
01:27:10,689 --> 01:27:15,309
Speaker 1: Though he could have played the club man as well. Yeah,

1546
01:27:15,390 --> 01:27:19,820
Speaker 1: there's room here for, you know, some of your typical

1547
01:27:19,880 --> 01:27:22,990
Speaker 1: types of horror players, you know, the. The more direct

1548
01:27:23,050 --> 01:27:29,439
Speaker 1: physical threats and then the more sinister, creepy, and deceptive types. Yeah,

1549
01:27:29,490 --> 01:27:31,439
Speaker 1: there's some fun here. And then, of course, we want

1550
01:27:31,479 --> 01:27:34,900
Speaker 1: a big puppet for the boar, of course. Oh, yeah.

1551
01:27:35,479 --> 01:27:40,720
Speaker 2: Let's see. Procrustes. Who's the person offering the false hospitality?

1552
01:27:45,020 --> 01:27:49,809
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure offhand. I mean, false hospitality. You

1553
01:27:49,820 --> 01:27:52,990
Speaker 1: need somebody that can really... play both types who can

1554
01:27:53,030 --> 01:27:56,330
Speaker 1: really uh you know twist it um who can be

1555
01:27:56,370 --> 01:27:59,820
Speaker 1: believable as a gentle host but then become this monstrous

1556
01:27:59,880 --> 01:28:00,220
Speaker 1: killer i.

1557
01:28:01,479 --> 01:28:03,860
Speaker 2: Feel like john saxon's got to be one of these right.

1558
01:28:04,280 --> 01:28:07,900
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah saxon could have you know i'm also

1559
01:28:07,939 --> 01:28:10,520
Speaker 1: now that we're talking about like what it entails i'm

1560
01:28:10,560 --> 01:28:14,309
Speaker 1: reminded of uh the 2022 movie the menu with ralph

1561
01:28:14,350 --> 01:28:19,570
Speaker 1: fines uh playing the um the guy who runs the

1562
01:28:19,650 --> 01:28:26,840
Speaker 1: high star, three Michelin star restaurant. He's not cutting people's

1563
01:28:26,860 --> 01:28:30,180
Speaker 1: feet off, but he is murdering everybody. So he's engaging

1564
01:28:30,380 --> 01:28:35,050
Speaker 1: in a betrayal of the trust that you give to

1565
01:28:35,070 --> 01:28:38,570
Speaker 1: a restaurant and to a head chef. Um, but, uh,

1566
01:28:38,720 --> 01:28:41,060
Speaker 1: but then again, I guess he's kind of in general

1567
01:28:41,120 --> 01:28:44,380
Speaker 1: kind of cold on both sides. Um, whereas maybe what

1568
01:28:44,400 --> 01:28:47,640
Speaker 1: you need here is someone who's outwardly warm, but then

1569
01:28:48,100 --> 01:28:49,280
Speaker 1: they reveal their true face.

1570
01:28:50,360 --> 01:28:53,280
Speaker 2: Barbara Steele is Fia. I know we're mixing up our

1571
01:28:53,300 --> 01:28:53,920
Speaker 2: time period.

1572
01:28:55,700 --> 01:28:59,510
Speaker 1: Yeah. All's fair in, um, in the fan casting of

1573
01:28:59,550 --> 01:29:03,719
Speaker 1: things like this. You can just pull from whenever. Because inevitably, yeah,

1574
01:29:03,740 --> 01:29:05,220
Speaker 1: you're going to have to, you're going to be drawn

1575
01:29:05,260 --> 01:29:07,220
Speaker 1: from some actors who are no longer young enough for

1576
01:29:07,240 --> 01:29:10,700
Speaker 1: the roles or no longer alive. Shouldn't stop you.

1577
01:29:11,420 --> 01:29:12,620
Speaker 2: Okay, that's all I've got.

1578
01:29:13,939 --> 01:29:15,520
Speaker 1: All right, we'll go ahead and close it out there.

1579
01:29:15,540 --> 01:29:16,860
Speaker 1: But we'd love to hear from anyone out there if

1580
01:29:16,880 --> 01:29:20,730
Speaker 1: you have thoughts on the myth itself or some of

1581
01:29:20,770 --> 01:29:25,050
Speaker 1: the horror films, slasher movie comparisons that we've made here.

1582
01:29:25,070 --> 01:29:28,360
Speaker 1: Write in. We would love to hear from you. Just

1583
01:29:28,380 --> 01:29:30,439
Speaker 1: a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow

1584
01:29:30,460 --> 01:29:33,860
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with

1585
01:29:34,120 --> 01:29:37,800
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short-form episodes on Wednesdays,

1586
01:29:37,840 --> 01:29:40,350
Speaker 1: and then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns

1587
01:29:40,360 --> 01:29:42,929
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1588
01:29:43,750 --> 01:29:47,250
Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.

1589
01:29:47,689 --> 01:29:49,070
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

1590
01:29:49,110 --> 01:29:51,490
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1591
01:29:51,530 --> 01:29:53,549
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1592
01:29:53,610 --> 01:30:05,740
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to

1593
01:30:05,760 --> 01:30:08,550
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more

1594
01:30:08,590 --> 01:30:12,370
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1595
01:30:12,410 --> 01:30:14,010
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