TRTR Chapter 6 - page 203 - which three millenniums?

[Michael Bailey]

The fly continues his exploration of Otto's face and eventually
overcomes the latter's inertia, although with no intention of so
doing.

The horribleness of having a fly walk over one's face is glossed with
a reference to the original lord of the flies, and to (perhaps) a
cultural thingie about how at one point horribleness could be part of
what one worshipped (a-and "Egyptian mothers still hesitate to disturb
flies settled on a sleeping child) - supposedly, or, um, "supposably"
(which despite being non-canonical is still a pretty good word), I
would think that has sort of gone out of style except perhaps among
Satanists...

maybe all the references to horrible practices among Catholics and
Protestants in the book are meant to remind of how that human tendency
to adore the nastiest things didn't actually end with the erection of
monotheism; maybe it's the slow return of the repressed?


 "So Otto, forced awake by three millenniums, a goddess, a princess,
and a devil..."


 isn't the standard usage "millennia"?
which 3 millenia?
The princess would be, well, Aida (also Amneris, eh?) She and Rhadames
would be from the 2nd millennium BC, perhaps?
The goddess would be Hera, who sent the gadfly, and that would be from
the first millennium BC, right?
The devil would be the fly, still with us in the latter half of the
last century of the 2nd millennium AD.

He skipped over the Dark Ages...


So now Otto is back on American cigarettes, though no brand name here
is offered.
\\
A word about Otto: he seems a bit alienated.  Here he is in his own
pad, and yet the fly's more in evidence as an explorer of the
environment.  Once the O-man wakes up, he ignores the budding drama
audible through the walls (I mean, what's a lady got to do for him to
notice her?) and gets dressed to leave.

He becomes one of numerous men shaving, following a custom instituted,
or at least vigorously instigated, by old Wulstan of Wulster
- who, living from 1009-1095, occupied a time-frame at the opposite
end of the 2nd millennium AD from Otto.  Didn't like beards.  Preached
damnation to those who wore them.  That ain't from Holy Writ, is it?
But followed methodically by many, including myself most of the time.

Meanwhile, in the street, a pigeon attacks "a bird of rare beauty,
tropically plumed, which looked lost and unused to spreading its wings
beyond the breadth of a cage."
-- hmm, is this a continuation or a presaging of something, or just an
isolated image like the graceful dog in chapter 2 seems to have been?