Snake Island, the island off the Romanian coast from which the Ukrainian soldiers shouted words as vociferous, if not as grandiose as some Laconic words of defiance has a history stretching back into the Greek myths. Upon this island lay the temple of Achilles, where now the lighthouse stands; on its model the Greeks constructed Elysium; on these shores Circe (in some accounts) absolved her niece Medea of the murder of her brother Absyrtus (whose resemblance to Abzu, the watery consort of Tiamat, does not pass unnoticed). Pindar's Olympic Ode 2 mentions the Tower of Kronos in the Islands of Blest. If any island should represent the ghosts and sorrows of war, it is this island.
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