User blog:Bobdave/Epic Rap Battles: Modern vs Classic. Homer vs Dante

Ey what's up. It's been four months and a bit since I dropped GLaDOS vs AM. There are a few reasons for that. Firstly I was lazy. Secondly, I wasn't fully satisfied with the battle at the time. Thirdly, despite these dissatisfactions, I was still so proud of what I had written up till that point that I decided I would wait until the new ERB dropped to release this to maximise attention. Is that cheap? Perhaps!

This battle was suggested by someone with a pretty high suggestion success rate at this point, Kiren, and I understand that there will probably be an immediate confusion from some regarding how this qualifies as Modern vs Classic. I feel that is in some small part justified by the over a thousand years separating Homer and Dante but also by another factor which will become clear by the end of the battle. It may or may not involve Joe.

This battle is one of my favourites I've written (probably THE favourite). Not only because I think what I wrote is p good but also because I love the characters and their work. I studied Homer at A-Level and Dante for both my first year of English (yes, I know La Commedia is Italian) and in my spare time. I could go on about why it's fire and also big up Dorothy Sayers while I'm at it but I shan't. I think it's really worth thanking both my Classics teachers, and especially one who I actually went over the battle with to make sure everything held up from an academic perspective so huge thanks to him. I'll also shout out Barry who I went over a few line concepts with as well as a friend of mine I'll call Naz who gave me an idea for a line as a last minute change before release.

So we got Homer, author of epics The Iliad and The Odyssey (pretty much all we know about the dude other than his hometown. Might have even been multiple people) and he's battling Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, a chronicle of the narrator's journey through the underworld guided by fellow epic poet Virgil and the love of his life Beatrice. Both very good and I suggest exploring them in some form (even if it's watching the uhh... moderately inaccurate Troy).

Jesus I write a lot for these. By the way this is halfway through Season 1! Only took almost three years! Enjoy!

WARNING: VERY epic B)

Instrumental: God of War Pt.II by 2Deep





Homer:
Sing, Goddess, of the anger of the poet

Who shall show this lowly Guido he knows zero of heroics

Because lion-hearted Homer's far the greatest of the authors

So you can leave and live or else be fated to the slaughter

I'm the Western epic's Daedalus: the guide whom you follow

Lines ply through your defense as with the arrows of Apollo

I plan to break down your Islamaphobic rantings like it’s scansion

Then send Dante and his companions down to hang out with the phantoms

My fervent stories are of warriors in search of glory

You bore a self-insert, turgid tour of Purgatory

All your infernal verses are sloppy thirds off of Virgil

And my sagas shall eclipse all nine of your circles

Dante:
So he spoke, and Dante was greatly unimpressed

By a lore formed of stolen whores and godly incest

<font color=#D4350A>For you could pray to Thor, Zeus, Dì, Anubis or Jupiter

<font color=#D4350A>I’d still torch you to a crisp like a loose-lippéd Lucifer

<font color=#D4350A>With fantastic ambition I crafted my grand vision

<font color=#D4350A>You used verbal transmission to issue your fanfiction

<font color=#D4350A>And playa, this will be my aristeia! Once I own ya

<font color=#D4350A>I’ll parade your bloody corpse around the border of Ionia!

<font color=#D4350A>Think you manufacture rapture but each chapter is a massive slog

<font color=#D4350A>Repetitive epithets and a less-than-epic Catalogue

<font color=#D4350A>Even Socrates believes you should deliver an Apology

<font color=#D4350A>A stodgy Odyssey can’t top a god-like Comedy

<font color=#D4350A>I'm a furious Cerberus, you're a crane-fighting midget

<font color=#D4350A>And to spit to my fly lines is thersitically hubristic

<font color=#D4350A>But why should I care to resist the pithy disses that you've listed

<font color=#D4350A>When I’m hardly even certain that you ever existed?

<font color=#BB8F3C>Homer:
<font color=#BB8F3C>I’d lunch on a lotus if I wished to waste time

<font color=#BB8F3C>But if you truly think you're Lucifer, the Devil May Cry

<font color=#BB8F3C>It's best to listen, no one cares about your moral position

<font color=#BB8F3C>So stop your quarrelling, descend, and practice oral tradition

<font color=#BB8F3C>Like Alexandros, you haven’t got the nads to attack

<font color=#BB8F3C>So you better pray the Gods might grant you a sack

<font color=#BB8F3C>You are no match dude, I’mma dispatch you a dactylic clapback

<font color=#BB8F3C>You can take your tertets and rima your asscrack

<font color=#BB8F3C>Perhaps that was vulgar, but I doubt that you mind

<font color=#BB8F3C>You must be used to splits down the Guelph clan’s behind

<font color=#BB8F3C>You caught fever out in exile, almost sacrificed your sons

<font color=#BB8F3C>And the only two women that you loved died young

<font color=#BB8F3C>Yet you still praise a loving God and some child in a manger?

<font color=#BB8F3C>The Gods don't give a shit unless their pride is in danger!

<font color=#BB8F3C>Your hamartia was clear from the start: You’re not smart!

<font color=#BB8F3C>Don’t throws barbs at the bard whose bars fathered your art!

<font color=#D4350A>Dante:
<font color=#D4350A>Ha! Please! Don’t preach to me! Your speeches are all Greek to me

<font color=#D4350A>You’d have to bring the whole hecatomb if you wanted beef with me

<font color=#D4350A>My sweet Beatrice beats Helen’s licentious appeal

<font color=#D4350A>Seems treating women with respect is your Achilles’ heel

<font color=#D4350A>I'm an MC Malebranche and my sick lyrics are pitch

<font color=#D4350A>So play your cards right, you won't wind up in the Burning Abyss

<font color=#D4350A>I wouldn’t go near your one-eyed giants and gratuitous violence

<font color=#D4350A>If you recited for nights upon an island of sirens

<font color=#D4350A>Having said that, I need beeswax for your ceaseless blathering

<font color=#D4350A>Like the whole Trojan War, this shit is needless battling

<font color=#D4350A>‘Cause you canto-verpower me, my place is in Mars

<font color=#D4350A>You can say hi from Limbo while you gaze at the stars



<font color=#D1EEF7>George R. R. Martin:
<font color=#D1EEF7>George is coming to help Dante document the price of sins

<font color=#D1EEF7>Your work blows like Aeolus, ‘cause your words are wind

<font color=#D1EEF7>I could bag the victory with them, leave you scarred like Tyrion

<font color=#D1EEF7>You could never strike a match to my pimp imp and his wisdom

<font color=#D1EEF7>My characters are beloved, you wrote horrible odysseys of bores

<font color=#D1EEF7>I pen scores of lore from horselords to the forced halls of Astapor

<font color=#D1EEF7>You thought but a tour of foreign shores in the fallout of a war

<font color=#D1EEF7>Was enough for us to forget your obsession with gay guys and gore

<font color=#D1EEF7>But there was more, one who would whore himself out for courtly love

<font color=#D1EEF7>With crusty sonnets and interpretations of what happens above

<font color=#D1EEF7>He was a warrior of Florence, I reject wholeheartedly to this philosophy

<font color=#D1EEF7>Married like Robert was to Cersei, or so I read in his biography

<font color=#D1EEF7>You can’t be stopping me, you’ll be smarting from Martin’s retaliation

<font color=#D1EEF7>I have the sweet new styles compared to your antiquated annotations

<font color=#D1EEF7>Roll up your scrolls and flyte me over how these poets should be beat

<font color=#D1EEF7>Take a leaf out from Christie and make your killings bittersweet

Announcer:
WHO WON?

WHO'S NEXT?



EPIC (get it) RAP BATTLES: MODERN VS CLASSIC

Hints explained
Do I really gotta explain this one?

Hints for the next battle
Coming soon...

WHO WON? Homer Dante

Big thanks again to Joe, who played Martin. I loved his verse. Really felt it fit with the rest of the battle. He's probably had this written for over two years at this point so I hope he's happy to see it published.