By Alan Cohn

“The Dark Prophecy”

The words that memory wrought are set to fire,
Ere new moon rises o’er the Devil’s Mount.
The changeling lord shall face a challenge dire,
Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond count.
Yet southward now the sun must trace its course,
Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death
To find the master of the swift white horse
And wrest from him the crossword speaker’s breath.
To westward palace must the Lester go;
Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots.
The cloven guide alone the way does know,
To walk the path in thine own enemy’s boots.
When three are known and Tiber reached alive,
‘Tis only then Apollo starts to jive.

— Rick Riordian

Poems are known to relay multiple different ideas and themes. However, poems like the one shown above can also be used to describe details of another work of literature. The poem above is known as “The Dark Prophecy” and it is found in the second book of Riordian’s newest book series called The Trials of Apollo. To give you some background about the series, it is about the god Apollo who was turned mortal by his father Zeus as a punishment for events that occurred in an earlier book series. To become a god again Apollo has to reclaim the sources of prophecy in the human world that were stolen by three immortal Roman emperors who want to use the magical powers of prophecy to control the world because prophecy is a ruling aspect in this mythological world.  Like the other Greek/Roman mythology books that Riordian has written, The Trials of Apollo have prophecies that tell you and the characters the future events that will occur later in the series. What makes me fond of these prophecies in The Trials of Apollo is that Riordian makes them into poems or other forms of wordplay to match the fact that Apollo is not only a god of prophecy, but also a god of poetry. In the first book of this series, the prophecy is a Limerick, and the prophecy in the most recent book has a Terza Rima structure. However, the prophecy poem that I am going to look at is “The Dark Prophecy.” It is found in the second book and describes events in the third book called The Burning Maze. 

The Dark Prophecy that was given in the book, also called The Dark Prophecy, is the scariest prophecy of all the prophecies given in Riordian’s books on mythology. Not only is a sonnet currently considered the darkest form of prophecy in the Riordian’s mythological universe, but the history of the Oracle that gave the prophecy was just as dark. The Oracle was a son of Apollo named Trophonius. Because of him and his brother’s greed, Trophonius set off a trap when they were trying to escape after robbing a king. Trophonius’ brother, Agamethus, got trapped. To make sure that the king didn’t know who robbed him, Agamethus told Trophonius to behead him. Trophonius tried to get help from Apollo, but his father refused, so Trophonius killed his brother. With the guilt in his heart, Trophonius wandered for months and then went to a cave where Apollo gave him the power of prophecy, so Trophonius became the mad Dark Oracle and hated his father for the rest of eternity.

As stated above, Rick Riordian wrote The Dark Prophecy in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet. He also keeps the same 14 lines ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme. By reading the books, you learn from Apollo that sonnet prophecies are the most complex and darkest forms of prophecies because of the long length which tells of more future events and the complex rhythming that hide the true meaning of lines. From this, I believe that Riordian was using this type of poem to represent death and other bad things that were to come. This would be a fair inference because, in the book The Burning Maze that the poem refers to, there is war, fire, death, and the first-ever case where Riordian, in his mythology books, has permanently killed off a major character. The book is full of dark tones of chaos, sadness, and death.

A good example of what I previously talked about, comes from a structural mechanism that I found interesting in The Dark Prophecy. That mechanism is how Riordain puts the sonnet’s shift after the first quatrain changing what subjects that the prophecy is describing. The first quatrain talks about a  blood battle that occurs with main characters separate for the main characters that are currently with Apollo. While in the rest of the poem, the second and third quatrain talks about the sad events that involved Apollo and his group. I believe that the functional value to this is to make a chronological effect in the poem because the battle described in the first quatrain was going to happen in five days. In the book, this was based on the line “Ere new moon rises o’er the Devil’s Mount” because the new moon was going to rise in five days after the prophecy was received. This battle acts as a preview to set the stage for the fourth book called The Tyrant’s Tomb. Apollo’s group in the meantime, goes to a different place when the battle happens, which is explained with the line “Yet southward now the sun must trace its course.” The sun described in the line is talking about Apollo, who is the god of the sun. Showing that the rest of the poem sets the stage for the third book, The Burning Maze. As Apollo struggles through the event that was prophesied to him in the third book, he is constantly worried about his friends who were fighting in the battle. The fact that he was not able to go causes  added more stress to his life, and in the fourth book he feels guilty about not being able to help everyone who died in the battle.

The another structural feature that I found interesting is the wording and the rhyming in the second and third quatrain. In these quatrains, the lines do this back and forth pattern between traveling and finding. For example, by referring back to line five, “Yet southward now the sun must trace its course,” has a rhyme with line seven, “To find the master of the swift white horse.” Another example is line six, “Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death,” which rhymes with line eight, “And wrest from him the crossword speaker’s breath.” In both cases, if you put these rhyming lines together, they make complete sensible sentences about traveling and finding something. A similar concept can be found in the third quatrain with the rhyming lines nine/eleven and ten/twelve. If you change the rhyming scheme of the poem like this, “Yet southward now the sun must trace its course, to find the master of the swift white horse. Through mazes dark to lands of scorching death and wrest from him the crossword speaker’s breath.” The poem would make sense with this type of scheme, so I think that Riordian didn’t want to make a rhyme scheme in this alternative way because he wants to keep the importance of the sonnet form that I discussed above.

To that extent, I believe that Riordian attempted to keep the significance of a sonnet by using figurative language and symbolism that helps determine the meanings of the lines in the poem. As well as, giving the one interrupting the prophecy a hard time in understanding the line of the poem to their full extent. I already talked some about how in line five, the sun is a symbol for Apollo himself, so that line is a metaphor for how Apollo, the sun god, will travel southward (which is where the events of The Burning Maze happens in Santa Barbara, CA). However, there are multiple other metaphors and symbols in this poem. Another example is line 10, “Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots” in this line, “roots” are used as a metaphor for family history. It also has a symbolic meaning because the main character that this line refers to is the daughter of an agriculture goddess, so the line has this plant theme. This is important to the prophecy because a character in Apollo’s entourage named Meg learns that she was related to Plemnaeus, who had a strong relationship with Demeter, her mother. 

The final example that I will give is a little different from the others, and it can be found in line 12, which states, “To walk the path in thine own enemy’s boots.” You may think that this line is a metaphor for walking the same path as your enemy. In a way, it does have that meaning; however, the plot of the story eventually reveals that it has literal significance as well. In the book, Apollo has to retrieve and wear one of the Roman emperor’s shoes in order to go through a magical maze safely. Riordian also gives this line symbolic value because the enemy emperor in The Burning Maze book is named Caligula, and this is a nickname for the emperor which, in Latin, means “little boot.” Riordian uses a significant historical context to relate different objects in the book to different characters. This allows him to give particular objects different meanings that are then used to contribute to the complex meanings that he associates with a sonnet in this world in terms of prophecy.

In the end, I wanted to show that this poem relates to the concept that we should think about our actions before making a terrible decision and the concept that hatred is an endless dark road. In The Dark Prophecy books and the other books in the series, even though he was a god, Apollo learns that his choices still have consequences. One of these choices was letting his son Trophonius suffer after making him kill his brother. If Apollo didn’t make that choice, then The Dark Prophecy poem wouldn’t have happened, so there might not have been death and destruction in The Burning Maze book. On the other hand, if Trophonius could have let go of his hatred, he would not be giving out dark prophecies like the sonnet above. This context surrounding The Dark Prophecy poem tells us there are two sides to every choice so choose carefully. It also tells us that  you shouldn’t hold on to anger and hatred because it takes you down a dark road that is hard to get off.

If what you read here makes you interested in the book series, then I highly recommend reading it. Riordian does well in showing how Apollo, a god turned mortal, deals with humanity and the emotions/concepts that come with it. Throughout the series, Apollo looks back at his regrets and sad moments during his long life and starts to try to make up for his mistakes. The books have their profound moments but also their funny moments. However, in order to know the backgrounds of most of the characters in the books, I recommend reading the Percy Jackson series and Heroes of Olympus series before reading The Trials of Apollo series.