O, Courage, Courage, Princes!

There are two things I've always wished I'd seen. One is Alexander standing... well, suppliant is hardly the right word under the circumstances, so I'll just say standing... before the Oracle. Alexander's reputation for being remarkably easy on the eye has nothing to do with it - or so I claim. What I really want to see is the expression on her face, the most powerful person, without exception, in all Hellas, the voice of Apollo, at whose word kings were wont to tremble...

Yeah. Right.

The other thing is Achilles riding out after the fiasco with Patroclus. The Iliad builds to that, in the end; all the grandeur and savage beauty of twenty-four books lead up to that one passage. The fall of Ilion may have dropped the curtain on the Greek mythic pantheon, but Troy fell when Hector fell.

That's the trouble with the Iliad - with all books and plays about the Trojan War, for that matter. You don't know, at the end, whose side you were supposed to have been on.

At some point in the past four paragraphs I should possibly have mentioned that I have end-of-term exams from Monday. That is easily remedied; I'll mention it now: I have end-of-term exams from Monday. Last night my situation was dire, but it has now become so bad that it's actually funny... And I have no choice but to put all my faith in my guiding star.

And that's enough about exams. There's no reason to devote these fifteen minutes to them as well.

It's at times like this that I wish my knowledge of Greek extended beyond, "Phobos kai Deimos," which, incidentally, is what I'm feeling now. They're a nice pair to be the constant companions of the warlord. You don't even need a battle; the briefest hint of a skirmish is enough to make them pop up unpleasantly.

I know what Plum would have said. He would have said I should go through the next six days brandishing my pen like it's a banner with the strange device Excelsior. The only problem is that, brandish I never so well, I will not have Longfellow to write my epitaph.

But then... I will hopefully be alive and kicking on Thursday afternoon, all set to board that flight to freedom.