Drakonomakhia

[Kirvina]

 

OOC: Eurth Iliad analogue.

"The Drakonomakhia, the Dragon-Battle, is the foremost of national epics among the Kirvinsét literary canon. Quite possibly their oldest remaining written work, it is the best approximation of a series of tangentially related oral tales retold throughout the villages of the local countryside. Once read, its importance quickly becomes rather self-evident. While veiled in analogies and mystical obfuscation, the Drakonomakhia is clearly a chronicle of the departure of the people from the collapsing Aroman Empire, and their continuation of their own pocket of Arhomaneia in another corner of the wurld. Within it, great heroes, most of whom are real figures of this time period, slay tyrannical dragons who hold sway over the people and subject them to untold cruelty and slavery. What each dragon is individually a metaphor for can be debated, as the migration of the Kirvinsét to Aurelia was not exactly a peaceful journey. Some also theorize that the tale was added to over time and continuously mutated as late as up until the arrival of further Europans to the shores of Aurelia, for there are certain references that are considered out of place and best attributed to the early Lysian colonists in Shffahkia and other journeymen of the late medieval period. The author is held in most retellings to be a single poet named Athanasios, sometimes alternately referred to as a woman named Athanasia. Since the meaning of the name is 'deathless', some consider it to be an allusion to the fact that there is no one true original bard, but instead that the Drakonomakhia is a living and breathing work that was constructed from the disparate tales of many storytellers. We cannot, in the modern day, be all too sure."

Excerpt from an interview with a Pan-Aurelian Shffahkian anthropologist, Marcel Toulemont.

 

AS TRANSLATED INTO ANGLISH | Ath. II. 1. 1

Sing of wrath, oh goddess; of the Eleftherioi,

of woeful wrath in a most countless of measures,

which sent to the dying-land scores of heroes-

beneath the mountains held firm by Atlas,

beneath the snow-capped peaks of far places,

to rest now and forever in realms of quietude. 6

 

On the Amnalos Sea, where tall birch stands,

there does also fly the eagle of Arhomaneia,

and stand too the lords of men, lofty as statues;

noble sons of noble fathers, bright and prideful,

Canassa built of bricks, and Aethos, green-bayed,

there lay the fortunes of a prosperous people. 12

 

But gold and incense bring envy, so say the sages,

and envy brings discord and times of hardship,

as ever much it was sternly commanded unto us:

to do no evil, and to do right by one another,

the way of things reminds us that it is otherwise,

when mortal desires are in fullness laid bare. 18

 

Arhomaneia swayed, under tempest, looming threat,

its ships, held from the sea, bobbed in the lapping wet,

as trepidation did hold all, and fear even took some,

for a man stands against a host as a lonely akritēs,

as a border-guard, he who keeps the kennel shut,

when the barbaroi hounds bay in feverous unrest. 24

 

And thus the wishes of Ploútōn came to fulfillment,

from the moment Lysandros son of Sotiris did arise,

armed with the manifold blessings of Mardochaios;

among the spirits of the wurld, greatest dragon-killer,

and armed with gilded lance, bearing vaunted name;

to visit misfortune upon the enemies of the Kirvinsét. 36

Edited February 13, 2021 by Kirvina (see edit history)