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I have never been one for parties or clubbing (a noisy room full of sweaty strangers, who wouldn’t love that?), but apparently that is what people my age are expected to do. Nonetheless, I am a reader and as Edgar Allen Poe (The Masque of the Red Death) and Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) taught us, such gatherings are dangerous things. But perhaps the hazards are not so perfectly illustrated outside of Greek mythology. Seriously, it was a wonder people kept going to these things.

The Trojans learned the hard way.

https://elisabethwheatley.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/d0279-trojan-horse.jpg

They thought they had just won a long and laborious war that had lasted over a decade. As far as they knew, their enemies had run away and left this big wooden horse as an offering, so what did they do? They threw a huge shindig, got plastered, and while they were all passed out, Greeks climbed out of the wooden horse and opened the gates, letting in more Greeks who killed/imprisoned them all.

And Andromeda’s old flame…and all his buddies.

There was this bloke, Phineus, who was engaged to Andromeda before she was bound to the rock and left out for the sea monster and so on and so forth. When Phineus heard that Andromeda was now supposed to be married to Perseus—who had rescued her from aforementioned sea monster—he was a little upset.

Therefore, Phineus barged into the wedding feast with a gaggle of his friends and a whole bunch of swords to claim the princess. Needless to say, Perseus was not particularly pleased about this. After a bit of bashing each other around, Perseus got sick of fighting and uncovered the head of Medusa, turning Phineus and his friends into stone.

Not to mention the suitors of Penelope.

Firstly, if a woman puts you off for close to two decades, I think it’s safe to say she’s not all that into you. In any event, these creeps hung around the apparently dead Odysseus’ house, waiting for Penelope to pick a new husband.

It was one big feast that went on without end and they started to eat Penelope out of house and home. Then all of a sudden, her wayward husband returns from his seven-year dalliance with a goddess and locks the suitors into the banquet hall while he and his son proceed to kill everyone in the room.

I could go on, but I think I have made my point. Greek stories were not big on morality, but there is one thing they have taught me—no matter what happens, no matter what you do, DON’T GO TO THE PARTY.