This too I answer; mark a soothfast word
Not the true parent is the woman’s womb
That bears the child; she doth but nurse the seed
New-sown: the male is parent; she for him,
As stranger for a stranger, hoards the germ
Of life, unless the god its promise blight.
And proof hereof before you will I set.

A.

Marzena Skubatz, Berlin.

After growing up on a farm in Poland, I spent my time drawing rockets, climbing on trees and watching cartoons before I decided to become a photographer.

Andreja Popovic, Belgrade, Serbia.

The serpent, who his maw obscene had fill’d,
The branches in his curl’d embraces held:
But, as in spires he stood, he turn’d to stone:
The stony snake retain’d the figure still his own.

O.

Daguerreotypes 15 / Fear, photos 1-3 by Russell Joslin, photo 4 by Simona Ghizzoni and last shot by Alejandro Cartagena.

Naught’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

W.S.

(If you get what you want and you’re still not happy, you’ve spent everything and gained nothing. It’s better to be the person who gets murdered than to be the killer and be tormented with anxiety.)

Al Brydon, Sheffield, United Kingdom.

Presently he came down from his post on the mountain top, and as he strode swiftly onwards the high hills and the forest quaked beneath the tread of his immortal feet. Three strides he took, and with the fourth he reached his goal- Aegae, where is his glittering golden palace, imperishable, in the depths of the sea.

So lightly did the horses fly that the bronze axle of the car was not even wet beneath it; and thus his bounding steeds took him to the ships of the Achaeans.

H.

Chill-out selection: Charles Murdoch – “Straws”, Kenton Slash Demon – “Skydancer” (Taragana Pyjarama Remix), Taragana Pyjarama – “Together” (Kenton Slash Demon Remix) and Dntel – “Peepsie” [Hyetal RMX].

The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages before the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any Ilion to be conquered.
Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that the legend, as we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization of mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine tradition.

In this view I am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman, who finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of the problem before us.

J.F.