Among their topics are making meaning of myth: the interpretation of mythological imagery in the Polyxena Sarcophagus and the Kizilbel Tomb and the history of Achaemenid Asia Minor, from Mezntie to
Mezentius: the stratigraphy of a myth in Etruria and Rome, distributive narrative: a very short history of juxtaposing myths on Pompeian walls, Gilgamesh and Homer: the missing link, and the transformations of Achilles on late Roman mosaics in the east.
She also appeals to the surrounding peoples, to King
Mezentius and the Etruscans, to rise up against the Trojans (Aen.
Mistress of Mistresses tells of the Three Kingdoms of Zimiamvia, a tripartite empire thrown into turmoil by the assassination of its king,
Mezentius. His son has quickly gone the same way, leaving only one legitimate heir, the seventeen-year-old Princess Antiope.
The Oldham elegy (1684) with its Virgilian echoes, the stories of Nisus and Euryalus from Aeneid v and IX, and of Lausus and
Mezentius from Aeneid x, which appear in Sylvae (1685), all testify to his apprehension of heroes' capacity to inspire love and emulation.
If it has to be mutilated, it would be a savagery worthy of an Ezzelino or a
Mezentius to oblige a father to mangle his son with his own hand; and a savagery as useless as inhumane, since it would either be a matter of purging the opera of its defects or of adapting it to the occasion, actors, theatre and the circumstances of the country it was to be given in.
Beyond all the ingenuity of the novel, however, lies a fundamentally guarded view of the future of the United States, and it is fitting that Katz, after finally selling the most commercial script in the history of film, and while making his closing statement about the future of the United States in which "viewers pay homage to the new gods of the 21st century: Mercury and
Mezentius" (378), is preempted (ironically playing on the infamous Heidi intrusion of an Oakland Raiders game) by an NFL football contest already in progress, which is as precise and laconic a way as any to end a novel dealing with the media in the United States.