When students learn about Briseis, for instance, the war prize of Achilles in the Iliad, they are somewhat horrified a woman as a prize, now a (sex) slave to Achilles? Yet how can one not talk about Briseis and discuss the Iliad? The Latin teacher finds herself in a quandary. Unfortunately, all too often (at least in my experience as a Latin teacher), the real myths fail to live up to Riordan’s contemporary versions, and students often find their overtly sexual, violent, and sexist elements at odds with the tales of laudable heroism that transfixed them in the first place. Rick Riordan’s children’s books drive countless students toward Latin classrooms across the United States, thrilled to learn more about the Greco-Roman myths he adapts in his novels. As a child, I never read the Percy Jackson series, which has probably done more for the continuation of classical studies in the twenty-first century than any outreach attempts on behalf of classicists themselves.
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