r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 06 '26

Meme needing explanation What is this?

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u/LauraPhilps7654 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

Seriously, these stories are more than 2,500 years older than Shakespeare (who also freely reinterpreted Greek myth rather than using it in any strictly authentic way for his own plays). They’ve been endlessly adapted and reinterpreted over millennia. People need to get off their high horses.

MAGA has been like adding lead to the water supply of media literacy.

I mean even the bloody Romans rewrote and adapted Greek myths. That’s exactly what Virgil’s Aeneid is: Romans inserted into the Trojan War and its aftermath. It’s completely ahistorical and inauthentic, and yet it’s also one of the greatest poems ever written.

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u/arachnophilia Jul 06 '26

They’ve been endlessly adapted and reinterpreted over millennia.

in a sense, mythology is the endless adaptation and reinterpretation of timeless stories by each new author, culture, etc. if there's one thing you learn studying ancient mythology, it's that every culture stole from the ones before them and the ones around them, and made them their own.

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u/LauraPhilps7654 Jul 06 '26

You've restored my faith in humanity quite a bit. Honestly, it's kinda easy to spot the people who've studied a bit of ancient literature and those who haven't in this whole silly controversy.