Greek Mythology

‘Myth’ (Greek word mythose, meaning ‘story’: “a story that is related to some culture and involves gods or heroes”. It can include fiction and non-fiction stories.  Myths tend to be before literature, so their authors are typically unknown. They were often passed down orally from generation to generation before written down.  Myths can be changed or altered.  They may provide validation for social institutions and may also serve as primitive religion or science.

The Romans didn’t have a mythology of their own, so when they conquered Greece, they over Greek myths, substituting Roman names for the Greek gods and goddesses.  For instance, the Greek Zeus was the Roman Jupiter.  So there are two sets of names for the major deities.

(A)etiological myths explain the cause or origin of something. Primordial myths are on the beginning of creation. Some scholars maintain that only muths that take place in primordial time are true myths. A legend is a story with a historical basis, the setting, events or characters being historical event.  Many concern the deeds of national heroes whose actions are worthy of admiration and imitation. For instance, George Washington cutting down the cherry tree; the Trojan War stories.  A saga is a subtype of legend, distinguished by its great length and its association with a specific real place.  A folktale or fairytale recounts the extraordinary adventures of an ordinary (fictional) person (one of the folk). There are recurring universal motifs (e.g. folly of curiosity).  The time and place are indefinite.  ‘once upon a time…and they lived happily ever after’.  Usually there is a princess involved.  A theme: if you want to get rid of your enemy give him three impossible tasks.  The folly of curiosity is also a theme.  According to Bruno Betleheim, folktales/sagas fulfill the deepest emotional needs of children. 

An example of a folktale (and also a myth) in classical mythology involves Cupid and Psyche. ‘The Invisible Lover’.  Cupid (Eros in Greek) is the god of Love—the son of Venus (Aphrodite), the foam-born goddess of Love.  Proserpina (Persephone) is the queen of the underworld. Venus is jealous of Psyche (Soul), a mortal princess, because of the attention being paid to her.  Venus tells Cupid to strike Psyche with an arrow so he will fall in love with a monster.  But Cupid falls for her and steals her away, visiting her at night.  Psyche’s sisters are wicked.  They suggest that Cupid is a monster.   So Psyche peeks under the covers in bed and sees that he is a handsome deity.  Cupid is hurt by Psyche’s hot oil.  He sees that Psyche didn’t trust him, so he went back to Venus.  Psyche tried to find him.  Cupid finds Psyche and marries her.  Their child, Voluptas (Pleasure).  The story’s motifs are hidden love, evil sisters, a shift from innocence to wisdom.  Folktales are primarily for entertainment.

An allegory has two levels of meaning: the literal and symbolic or figurative. For instance, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.  Christian, a man, travels from the city of destruction to the celestrial city, using a chart (Bible)  Faithful is his companion.  He defeats giants (troubles in life) along the way.  Each character represents a concept.  Christian is a Christian soul trying to gain eternal happiness.  The Cupid story is also an allegory: the soul’s search for love, the result being pleasure.  When the soul finds love it makes pleasure or is pleasurable. In an allegory, every element of the story corresponds to an abstract concept.

A fable is a short fictitious story that teaches a desirable mode of behavior. In other words, it is prescriptive of a desirable mode of behavior.  A moral is often explicitly stated at the beginning or ending of the story. Usually only one main character—typically a personified animal: animals that have human characteristics as their main characteristics.  For instance, Aesop’s fables.  The Ant and the Grasshopper: prepare today for tomorrow’s need.  The City and the Country Mouse. 

A parable (derived from the Greek word for ‘comparison’)  A narrator, usually a character in a piece of literature) attempts to enhance understanding of a particular situation by comparing it to an analogous situation. A comparison is made that can be an allegory.  Typically a moral or spiritual truth is involved.  For instance, Horace, Satires II.6.  He uses the City and Country Mouse to teach that a mean eaten in peace is better than a banquet eaten in anxiety.  Whether you are rich or poor, you can have problems.

Hesiod’s Theogony

It is on the most complete account of creation in Greek mythology.  Theos: god; gon: birth.  At first, there was chaos: either a confused mixture or an emptiness/vaccum.  Then there was Gaea (Gaia), the earth.  The Greek deities were anthropo(man)morphic (shape).  Following the creation of Gaea, Tartarus(os) was created: the god who is part of the underworld, deep within the earth.  Then Eros (Cupid), the god of love (here not the son of Venus) was created.  Chaos gave rise to Darkness (Erebus) and Night (Nyx), who gave birth to Aether (the air the gods breath on Mt. Olympus) and Day.  Darkness is the parent of light.  Then Gaia, without sex, produced Uranus was the god of heaven or sky, who then married Gaia. They had three sets of children: the titans, Cyclopes (one eye) and Hecatoncheires (100 heads).  The titans included Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, Thea, Creios, Coeus, Lapetus, Mnenmosyne, Themis, Rhea, Phoebe, and Cronos (Saturn). The Cyclopes included Arges, Steropes, and Brontus. The Hecatuncheires included Brareus, Cottys and Gyes. Uranus stuffed the kids back into Gaia so they would not replace him.  Uranus was the first king of the gods. Cronos took over after he had castrated his father, Uranus. Born from the castration of Uranus from drops of blood on the earth) were: 1. the Erinyes (furies), who were creatures of vengeance, and included Allecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera; 2. Giants, including Porphyrion, and Alcyoneus; 3. Nymps of the ash trees, and 4. Aphrodite (from the foam of the ocean rather than a drop of blood).

Cronos married his sister Rhea, another titan.  Cronos swallowed his kids because he found out he would be overthrown by one of his sons.  Gaia advised Rhea to give her her remaining children.  The next baby was Zeus.  Gaia took him to the island of Crete to be raised by Nymphs. Zeus challenged his father when he was grown.  Cronos spat up his other children.  Cronos and the titans (associated with darkness and the underworld) at Mt Othrys did battle with Zeus who was at Mt. Olympus.  Gaia helped Zeus by telling him to release the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires from the underworld.  They help Zeus.  The Cyclopes made a thunderbolt for Zeus.  The Olympians defeated the titans.  Cronos (Saturn) went to Italy to begin a golden age.  Zeus held an election and was subsequently elected king of the gods.  He delegated authority to other deities.  This reflects the Greek city state history of going from autocracy to democracy.  Also,  invaders from the North came in 2000 BC (represented in the story by the Olympians) clashed with the Greeks (titans). Together, they made up the Greeks.  Ancient Greece was matriarchal whereas the invaders were patriarchal.  Zeus clashed with his wife, who might have been the matriarichal goddess.  A clash of historical cultures.  Myth often reflects history.  Norman O. Brown claims that in theogony, there is a change from the female primacy to that of the males.  Gaia produces her own children without a man in the beginning. In the end, Zeus is the king of the gods.

The story represents the victory of order over chaos; each deity comes to have a specific function.  The titans are sent to the underworld.  Zeus is a kinder ruler than Uranos and Cronos were.  The old defeated the young is also a theme. It is the natural process of things.  By the end of the Creation cycles, the emphasis is on Zeus.  There is a shift in primacy from the female to the male.  Gaia told Uranos what to do.  Zeus allowed less influence from the women.

The succession of the gods is as follows: Uranus was the first king of the gods.  He married Gaea.  Cronus (Saturn), their son, was the second.  He married Rhea.  Their son Zeus was the third.  He married Hera. 

Typhoeus, a son of Gaea and Tarturus, was the monster of the storm winds.  100 snake heads, fire for eyes, and a hissing noise.  He attacked Mt Olympus.  Zeus zapped him with his lightning bolt.

Zeus has a series of consorts:

1. Metis (Wisdom): Mother of Athena (goddess of war). Zeus swallowed Metis so he would not be replaced by one of his sons.  Meaning Zeus has wisdom within him. Hephaestus (Vulan) split Zeus’ head open because Zeus had a headache (after swallowing Metis).  Athena, full grown, is released because she was not a threat (because she is a woman). Allegory: Zeus has wisdom within him.
2. Themis (Law): She had two sets of offspring.  The Hours (Horae) are goddesses who identify with the seasons.  Arder (Eunomia), Justice (Dike) and Peace (Irene). They are in charge of rolling away the clouds. The Fates (Moirai), more powerful than Zeus, are the most powerful creatures in the world.  Clotho (Spinner) spins the thread of a person’s life when he or she is born.  Lachesis determines how long that thread will be.  And Athropos is the one who can’t be turned away from—she cuts the thread of life at one’s death.  Zeus can’t control the Fates. Even so, the Greeks believed in free will as well.
3. Eurynome had the Graces (Charities), the three goddesses of beauty and lovliness.  Thalia (Bloom), Aglaia (Brilliance) and Euphrosyne (Joy). They have been of interest to artists.
4. Demeter (Ceres), the goddess of grain.  Had Persephone, the goddess of the underworld.
5. Mnemosyne (Memory), had the Muses, the goddesses of inspiration: Calliope (Epic), Clio (History), Euterpe (Lyric), Thalia (Comedy and Bucolic), Melpomene (Tragedy), Terpsichore (Dance), Erato (Erotic Poetry), Polyhymnia (Sacred Song), and Urania (Astronomy).
6. Leto (Latona).  Had Apollo and Artemis.
7. Hera (Juno) had Hebe, the original cup bearer of the gods, filling their cups with nector so they can have a drink.  Hebe married Hercules.  Zeus made Ganymede the cupbearer.

Lapetus and Clymene had four sons: Atlas, who holds up the sky, Memetuis, Prometheus, and Epimetheus (Afterthought).  Prometheus (Forethought) tricked Zeus.  He wrapped bones in fat and sacrified them (the worst parts).   Zeus knew he was being tricked so he picked the bones and punished Prometheus by withholding fire from the humans. This is meant to explain why the Greeks use the worst parts to sacrifice to the gods. Prometheus stold fire from the flood of Hephestas and gave it to the humans.  Zeus was angered.  The punishment was Pandora, the first human woman, who was beautiful but evil, bringing a jar of evil stuff from the gods.  Zeus offered her to Epimetreus (After Thought), who didn’t recognize the consequences until afterward. He had been warned not to take her by Prometheus but he didn’t listen. The folly of curiosity.  Pandora opened the lid of the jar of evils and everything escaped except hope.  While hope is good when it urges men on, it is bad when it is too high.  So Pandora, the first woman, brought evil into the world.  No matter what station of life man selects, there are bad things that happen to him because of women. Zeus’ punishment. Pyrrha is the first woman in the Roman creation story.  A much better view of women. Hesiod doesn’t say how men came into the world.  For Prometheus, Zeus’ punishment was being tied to a rock, with his liver eaten (then regenerated) by an eagle.  Hercules later released him. Prometheus has faults (tricking Zeus and stealing fire) and good traits (trying to help mankind).

In the fifth century, BC, Aeschylus wrote three plays on Prometheus: Prometheus Fire Bearer, Prometheus Bound, and Prometheus Unbound.  At the end of Unbound, Prometheus and Zeus are reconciled as Zeus became just. 

In Prometheus Bound, Prometheus’ good qualities are emphasized.  For example, Prometheus is said to have stolen the fire because he wanted to benefit mankind.  A benefactor.  Zeus, on the other hand, is portrayed as a tyrant.  Athens in the 5^th century BCE had by that time bad kings, the earlier ones having been just.  Aeschylus is doing a study in his plays of a young ruler: when a young rulers comes into power, he is overzealous and often becomes a tyrant. Hephaestus bound Prometheus to the rock unjustly.  Then, a series of visitors.  Oceanus, a titan who personified the ocean, came first.  Then his daughters, the Oceanids (patronymic: name indicates one’s father).  Oceanus advised Prometheus to agree with Zeus, but he refused.  Io, shaped as a heifer, was the next visitor.  Zeus had fallen in love with her and he put up a cloud so no one would see them together.  Hera (Juno) came along and almost saw them together, so Zeus turned Io into a heifer.  Hera asked for the cow and he gives it to her. Hera has Argus, a many-eyed monster, to guard Io so she can’t go back to Zeus. Zeus felt bad, and sent Hemes (Mercury) down to kill Argus, , whose eyes Hrea (Juno) put into the peacock, so Io could go free.  Io jumped the strait (Bosporus: cow’s passage) to Egypt.  Zeus is not omniscient.  Io visited Prometheus, telling him her story of woe and he tells her not to worry because when she gets to Egypt she’ll change back and be mother to a hero. Prometheus knew that the goddess Venus would give Zeus a son better than Zeus, but he refused to tell Zeus who that goddess was.  So Zeus threw him and his rock off a cliff.  Prometheus’ liver was eaten by an eagle (and regenerated) down there.  Venus married a mortal, Peleus.  No god would, as the son would be greater than the father.  Venus’ son with Peleus was Achilles, a hero.  Prometheus suffered unjustly, tied to a rock.  Christians would later see him as a foreshadowing figure. 

Plato wrote The Protagoras.  The gods created the humans.  Prometheus and Epimetheus were assigned by Zeus to give out qualities to the animals. Epimetheus distributed parts to the animals and Prometheus inspected them.  Epimetheus ran out when he got to the humans (the humans were last), so they were naked without much hair.  Prometheus stold fire and gave it to the humans, and was subsequently punished by Zeus. Zeus saw the humans fighting.  He sent Hermes to distribute the art of government.  Zeus let every human have a share of justice (Athens was a democracy when Plato wrote the story—but women, the lowest class of freemen and the slaves were not citizens). 

Plato’s work is almost the complete opposite of Hesiod’s Works and Days.  Hesiod lived on a small farm in 750BCE.  He saw the world around him worsening.  In contrast, the city of Plato’s day was improving.  Whereas Plato thought the world was getting better, Hesiod wrote on successively degraded ages, the worst one taking place in his own day.  According to Hesiod, the first age was the Golden Age, which occurred during the time of Cronos.  There was peace, no suffering, and abundance in that paradise.  It was followed by the Silver Age, when Zeus was king of the gods.  The silver was a race much worse off.  It took them one hundred years to reach adulthood, then a short adult life would follow.  They were foolish people who fought and neglected to worship the gods.  So Zeus had them sent away.  Ovid adds seasons to this age.  Next came the Bronze Age, in which violence was enjoyed and people didn’t eat bread.  That race destroyed itself.  Next, Hesiod, unlike Ovid in the Metamorphasis, had a heroic age, which was better than the Bronze.  It was occupied by a divine race of heroes, ruled over by Cronos.  They included the warrior heroes. Honor and glory were theirs.  They fought for righteous causes and to defend their families. When they died, they didn’t go to the underworld; rather, they lived together, apart from the other humans at the islands of the blessed in a paradise similar to the Golden Age.  Next came the Iron Age, the most degraded.  It is characterized by toilsome anxiety.  Babies are born with grey hair.  Right is in might, and the race delighted in evil.  Zeus will destroy this race, and better days will follow—implying a cycle.  At the end of the Iron Age, Aidos (shame and conscience) and Nemesis (righteous indignation, meaning that others would disapprove even if they are not there), two goddesses, will go to mount Olympus, disgusted by the humans of the iron race.

Virgil, a Roman writer, wrote the Georgics, based on Hesiod’s Days.  He wrote of a Golden Age until Zeus deliberately brought the age to and end so the human race would develop.  Man would be forced to work so he would advance.  So Virgil saw mankind as getting better as did Plato (who lived in democracy and a city with nice buildings), whereas Hesiod had seen hard work and fighting—the world getting worse.

Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) came up with solar theory to explain mythology.  He noticed that various Vedic deities had names based on the sun or celestrial objects.  He concluded that all myth is related to the sky, especially the sun.  In Aztec myth, for instance, the sun god was the most important. So, it a hero kills a monster, it is really about the sun overcoming darkness in the early morning.  Prometheus’ liver, which is dark, is eaten everyday by the eagle, which comes from the sky, then the liver regenerates at night.  Or consider Apollo, the sun god, who chased Daphine, representing the dawn. 

On the Deities:

On the general characteristics of deities: a deity does not die, is anthropomorphic, physically perfect.  Not thin.  Tall. Ichor: a colorless liquid in a deity (in place of blood), which can come out in a battle wound.  Ambrosia: the sweet-smelling food of the gods.  Some gods have loud voices.  They have their own language.  They are not omniscient (all knowing).  They fall in love, suffer, get angry especially when neglected or when humans try to challenge them, as to a contest.  But they are generally happy because they don’t die.  Man, in contrast, is a tragic figure.  In contrast, deities can use comedy. 

Prayer to the gods is a process of bargaining.  Zeus is the king of the gods, but shares his power with other gods. He resolves conflicts between the gods.  Each deity has his or her own area.  They are not models for ethical behavior.

Zeus/Jupitor, Jove: ‘Father of the Gods and Men’; ‘Cloud Gatherer’, Xenios (Protector of Strangers).  He is the son of Cronus and Rhea (Cronus’ sister).  He makes sure the Greeks are abiding by the rules of hospitality.  Lycaon: lycanthrope.  He is associated with justice, solving problems and conflicts between the gods and goddesses.  It is only in the story of Prometheus that he is portrayed as unjust.  His weapon is the thunderbolt made by the Cyclopes.  He has a Sceptre, or king’s staff, because he is the king of the gods.   The eagle is the head of government of the gods.  The oak tree is the strongest tree.  Dadona was the oak tree that talked—the oracle of Zeus, where mortals go to consult the gods and goddesses.  The oracle’s responses were equivocal (could be interpreted in different ways).  Zeus decides to destroy all mortals by a flood because of Lacayan’s treatment of them. According to Ovid, Deucalion and his wife Pynha are the only good humans whom Zeus saves.  They want to repopulate the earth quickly so they go to the oracle of Themis.  The oracle tells them to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders.  They throw stones over their shoulders and the stones that go over Deucalion’s shoulder become men and Pyrraha’s become women. 

Aegis: Zeus’s shield.  He shakes it to create thunder for thunderstorms.  The color associated with Zeus is white.  Hera (Juno), his wife, was ox-eyed. 

Zeus and Callisto had a love affair.  She was a nymph who was a follower of Artemis (Diana).  Artemis required her followers to be chaste. Zeus turned himself into Artemis and becomes friendly with Callisto.  He kisses her then turns into his regular form and forces himself on her.  Callisto becomes pregnant but can hide it under her big robes.  Diana/Artemis decided she and her followers will go skinny dipping and found out Callisto was pregnant and kicks her out of her clan.  Callistom, ursa major (Big Bear) gives birth to Ursa Minor (Little Bear). Zeus turned both of them into constellations. So argus the hunter doesn’t shoot his mother who has been turned into a bear by Hera.

Hera/Juno is the wife and sister of Zeus.  She is the goddess of marriage and fidelity.  June, the month of weddings, was named after her.  She is ox-eyed because she had beautiful eyes (theriomorphic: a deity in the shape of an animal). The peacock is assocated with her.  The cuckoo is the bird associated with her and Spring.  Zeus/Jupitor changed into two cuckoos to win over Hera.  It was Spring when they married. Her outstanding trait is her jealousy and bickering with Zeus. 

Poseidon/Neptune is in charge of the sea.  He is called ‘earth shaker’. His weapon is the trident. He rides horses and races them.  He often causes sea storms to punish someone.  Hippios is another title for him having to do with horses.  Poseidon is credited with creating horses.  Athena created the olive tree.  The olive provided the economic basis for Athens (perfumes, embalming fluids, cooking oil).  Symbolically, the horse was associated with war and the olive tree with peace.  Poseidon fell in love with Medusa.  He made love to her in Athena’s temple.  Athena punished them by turning Medusa’s beautiful hair into snakes and everyone who looks at her turns to stone.  Pegasus comes out of Medusa when her head is cut off. Poseidon wanted to marry Thetis (Venus), but when he found out that she was destined to rear a son greater than the father, he married Amphitrite (sea nymph) instead.  They had Triton, a murman (fish up to his waist). 

Hades, ‘the unseen one’, has a hat that makes him invisible.  He is mostly in the underworld, ‘house of Hades’. His other names: Plouton (Pluton, wealthy one, or Pluto transliterated from the Greek), Dives (Dis) Pater ‘the rich father’, Orcus.  He is in charge of all the wealth that is stored underneath the earth.  Hades married Persephone (Proserpina).  Because there is no dualism in Greek mythology, he is not a bad god or devil.  Hades was a good god.  The cypress is the tree sacred to Hades. 

Athena or Athene (Minerva) is the goddess of wisdom.  Her other name is Palace.  She is associated with the owl.  She is also the goddess of war (female counterpart of Ares) and of crafts (spinning and weaving).  She is associated with Athens.  Arachne, a human, challenged her to a spinning contest, and for this Athena turned her into a spider.  She is also the goddess of virginity ‘virginity Parthenos’.  The Parthenon was built for her.  She invented the trumpet and the flute.  The olive tree is sacred to her.  She is also called ‘grey eyed’ and ‘owl face’. 

Ares (Mars) is the god of war.  His symbol is a spear and a burning torch. Unlike Athena who sought peace, he relishes bloodshed. He is associated with beautiful women, a burning torch or spear, and vultures (feasted on bodies) and eagles, as well as Sparta, a very disciplined city focused on warfare. He slept with Aphrodite (Venus).  They had four offspring: Eros (Cupid), Harmonia (who marries Cadmus), Deimos (Terror), and Phobos (Fear).  Hephaestus is Venus’ husband. He made a net of chains for over their bed to humiliate them, but they continued love-making in spite of the gods there laughing at them.  Mars (Ares) slept with Rhea Silvia (a vestal virgin, a priestess of Vestia, the goddess of the harp).  They had Romulus and Remus (twins).  They were orphans, fed by a she-wolf. In founding Rome, the two twins fought.  Romulus killed Remus.  Rhea Silvia was killed for breaking her virginity. 

            Hephaestus (Volcanos, or Vulcan) was originally the god of volcanoes.  He is the god of fire.  He works with metal, creating many objects such as Achilles’ armour, Harmonia’s necklace, and Agameminon’s scepter.  Zeus ordered Hephaestus to fashion Pandora from water and earth.  He is lame, an exception to the rule that the deities have perfect bodies.  Either he was born disabled and then thrown from Mt. Olympus, or he was hurt when thrown from the mount by Zeus after he had made him mad by saying that Hera was right in a dispute with Zeus.  Perhaps he was lame because it was common in Greece for men who have bad legs to work as silver or black smiths.  Hephaestus had forges (blacksmith shops) in Lemnos and at Mt. Aetna.  According to the Odyssey, Hephaestus’ wife was Aphrodite (Venus).  But the Illiad and the Theogony name Aglaia, one of the Graces who was very beautiful.  Why would a beautiful goddess marry a lame god?

            Hermes (Mercury) had many functions, the foremost being running as a messenger of the gods, especially Zeus.  He carried a staff, the caduceus, so he would be recognized in battle as a messenger.  The caduceus has an olive branch with garlands.  He is said to have seen two snakes fighting.  After he stopped them, he put them on staff.  Later, wings were added.  Thoth, the Egyptian god of chemistry, associated with Hermes, so his staff became associated with the medical profession.  That Hermes is also associated with merchants and anyone on the road, including robbers, has led some in the medical profession to prefer the one snake staff of Aeseulapius (Aselepius), the son of Apollo (the god of medicine) and Coronis.

            Hermes was also the god of dead souls (Psychopompos), leading them to the underworld after they come out of the holes of their bodies.  He was also associated with poetry.  He had been the slayer of the monster that guarded Io the hepher.  He was born in the morning.  As a child, he found a tortoise, took out its insides, and made it into a guitar like instrument, the lyre.  After he had stolen Apollo’s cattle, pulling them by the tails so their footprints would seem to be going the other direction, Apollo went to Zeus, who was so impressed with Hermes’ lyre that he settled the matter by having him give it to Apollo for the cattle.  This story is told in the Homeric Hymns to Hermes, translated by Shelly, which was written by an imitator of Homer. 

            In honor of Hermes, the Greeks put little busts of Hermes at cross-roads to ward off evil.  In 415 BCE, Athens was at war with Sparta.  A navel expedition was sent to Sparta.  All the busts of Hermes were busted around Athens.  So they presumed the expedition would fail, which it did.  The vandalism was blamed on Aleibrades, who led the expedition.  He wasn’t tried because he escaped. 

            Aphrodite (Venus) is the laughter-loving goddess of Love and Beauty.  She was born out of the ocean in the foam from the castrated parts of Uranus. When she is in her girtle (cestus), she is irresistible.  But she is unable to influence Athena, Hestia (Vesti), and Artemis (Diana, the huntress).  She is worshipped as Pandemos (all the people).  She causes people to fall in love and create new citizens.  Prostitution was legal.  Aphrodite was the goddess of it.  Plato made a disctinction between Aphrodite Pardemos (erotic love) and Aphrodite Urania (intellectual love).  Aphrodite is personified as beautiful or a horse.  She cheated on Hephaetus with Ares and others.  The sign for Venus and women represents a mirror.  The myrtle tree is sacred to her. The turtledove is associated with her.  The rose is associated with her, as is the apple.  In art, she is portrayed as nude or scantily clothed, in some cases on a sea shell.

            Hestia (Vesta) is the goddess of the hearth, the fireplace in the home.  She is a maiden goddess.  She was courted by Apollo and Poseiden, but Zeus gave her permission to remain a virgin.  She is not mentioned in Homer’s epics, perhaps because they were not centered on the home but on a war and a journey.  She was associated with the sacred fire in the town halls of the Greek cities.  Such fires were symbolic of the flourishing life of the town, and they had a practical use as well—fires in the homes being difficult to start.  Fires in the city halls of colonies were typically lit from the fire in the mother city (metropolis).  In Rome, the fire was kept in the temple of Vesta, tended by the vestal virgins who served for thirty years and kept the sacred fire burning or faced punishments.  Rhea Silvia had been a vestal virgin when Mars came to her. She was then punished for losing her virginity.

            Apollo (transliterated from the Greek). (same name in Latin).  The destroyer. He was worshipped from 433 BC in Rome.  There was a plague in Rome, and a statue of Apollo was brought over from Greece to fight the plague.  Apollo has many functions.

Apollo was also called Phoebus (the shining one).  He was the god of light and sun (but not originally, but by Ovid).  Homer had Hyperion or his son Helios as the sun god.  According to Ovid, Phaethon went to his mother Clymene to ask if Phoebus was his father.  Phoebus told Phaethon that he was indeed his father.  To prove it, he granted his son one wish, which he would have to grant because he had sword to grant wishes at the river Styx in the underworld. Phaethon wanted to ride Phoebus’ chariot over the sun.  Phaethon flew too close to the earth, creating a desert.  Zeus struck him dead.

As the god of the sun, Apollo can cause plagues and diseases.  Related to his role in causing plagues, Apollo also had the title Smithos (a mouse god).  But he was also the god of healing and medicine.  The sun is good for health, but it can be damaging too.  As a healer, Apollo’s name is Paeon (healer).

Apollo had a love affair with Coronis.  She cheated on him, so he killed her with an arrow. Apollo was a god of archery: the ‘far shooter’.  He used his arrows sometimes to cause plagues.  Their son, Aesculapius (Aselepius) became a physician (he had the one-snake staff).  Apollo was also the god of music and poetry.  Hermes gave him his lyre to compensate him for his stolen cattle.  Lyric poetry used to be written to be read to a lyre, expressing emotions.  He was also the god of herdsmen.  He was also called Lycius, as he was associated with the she-wolf.  His mother Leto (Latuna) had been a consort of Zeus.  She changed herself into a she-wolf and went to the island of Delos to give birth to Lycius. 

Apollo was also called Pythian (as the god of prophecy).  He had an oracle at Delphi.  It was originally possessed by Gaia, then Themis followed by Pheobe (the titaness) and finally Apollo.  This shift from women to Apollo may suggest that Greece was originally matriarchal.  Apollo had to kill Python, a monster, which rots at Delphi (i.e. Pytho).  Apollo’s priestesses were called the Pythia.

Apollo fell for Daphne.  He was mad at Cupid for having arrows.  So Cupid shot Apollo with a gold-tipped arrow, which caused him to fall in love with Daphne.  But Cupid then shot her with a silver tipped arrow, so she did not fall for Apollo.  Apollo chased her until she turned herself into a loral tree.

Artemis (Diana) is the twin sister of Apollo.  She was the goddess of the hunt.  She was a virgin, uninfluenced by Aphrodite.  As Selene, she was also the goddess of the moon (Selene, or Luna in Latin).  It is only when she is goddess of the moon that she has love affairs.  Artemis is also associated with Hecate, a sorceress goddess who is like a witch and is usually in the underworld.  So Artemis came to be associated with the three aspects of a woman’s life: Artemis (unmarried virgin), Selene (fertile and sexual), and Hecate (old crone).   Artemis is also called Phoebe (moon shines).  Her favorite animal is the stag or deer, and she is also associated with the bear.  Artemis is usually shown with a bow and a deer, wearing a short garment (because she is a huntress).  She is mentioned in Acts, ch. 19 as Artemis Cybele in Ephasis (in Asia Minor).  Her priestesses didn’t want Paul there, so they caused a disturbance so he left. Callisto, a follower of Artemis, was impregnated by Zeus, resulting in Areas.  Zeus made Callisto and Areas into the Ursa Major and Minor constellations. 

Demeter (Ceres) ‘Some kind of mother’. The goddess of grain. So, earth mother or grain mother.  With Zeus, she had Persephone (Proserpina).  Zeus gave Hades permission to marry Persephone.[1]  Hades took her down to the underworld.  Zeus had not consulted with Demeter, so she searched for her daughter for 9 days then was told that Persephone had been taken down to the underworld by Hades.  Meanwhile, King Celeus was married to Metanira at Eleusis, and they had daughters and an infant son (by the name of Demophoon).  Demeter went there.  Metanira sensed that Demeter was usual.  She gave kykeon (made of barley, water and mint) to her.  Demeter agreed to take care of Demophoon.  She tried to make him immortal by holding him over a fire, repeating this over several days.  Metanira was frightened by this, so Demeter turned herself into her goddess form.  The child did not become immortal.  Demeter stayed in the temple there for a year, mourning the loss of Persephone and forgetting about the crops.  Zeus sent Hermes to Hades to tell him he must allow Persephone back to earth to visit her mother.  But Persephone ate a pomegranate seed (according to Homer, Hades gave it to her, whereas according to Ovid it was by accident), when meant she would be stuck in the underworld.  Zeus intervened, deciding that Persephone would spend part of the year with her mother and part with her husband.  Crops would grow when she was with her mother, whereas the seeds would be underground (fall and winter) when she is with her husband.  The seeds of grain were put in jars underground for the winter in ancient Greece.  They are still alive because they grow the following spring.  So there is a ‘life after death’ theme in this story.  Following her daughter’s return, Demeter was happy and went to Mt Olympus.  But before going, she set up a cult on herself at Elusis.  The Eleusian Mysteries (Greater Mysteries).  A fertility cult.  The initiates were called ‘mystai’ (thus, ‘mystery’) because they had to keep a secret. Part of the story of Demeter was acted out in the cult in ritual form.  Before the ritual, the initiates purified themselves by bathing in a river.  Foreigners couldn’t participate. Before the rites, there was a procession from Athens to Elusis.  The rites included prayers, acting out the story, a kykeon-drinking ‘communion’ ritual, and a showing of secret objects to the elite of the cult. The aim of the cult is happiness in the underworld. The Greek cults emphasized a more personal approach to religion. 

The ancients believed that the myths really happened. How were they related to ritual? Ritual can be defined as “a formal procedure in a religious or solemn observance”.  There are fertility, sacrificial, initiation, inauguration, wedding, funeral, and birthday rituals.  Walter Burkert claimed that rituals are characterized by repetition and theoretical exaggeration. Most scholars believe that myth came first, followed by ritual. James G. Frazer, who wrote The Golden Bough, argued that myth preceded ritual.  The first age was of magic. Sympathetic magic: people went to magicians for answers. This included homeopathic (imitative) magic wherein like (ritual) produces like.  For example, eating a bear makes one ferocious.  And it included contagious magic wherein things that have been in contact continue to influence each other. Following the age of magic, it was believed that a higher power brought about results from the rituals.  This included the worship of higher powers (deities). W. Robertson Smith argues in contrast that the rituals came first, then they lost their original meaning, so myths followed to explain them.  But why did every ritual lose its meaning? 

The Trojan War:

            The war is told in epic poems, the earliest of which are the Illiad and the Odyssey by Homer in 750 BCE.  Then, others wrote on the background of the story as well as on what happened between them and after them.  Schliemann concluded that there must have been a Troy.  He found it in Asia Minor on June 14, 1873.  1250 BCE is when Troy is thought to have fallen.  Although there is evidence of a war, there is no proof that any of the characters in the epic poems actually existed. 

            The House of Priam, king of Troy:  Zeus had sex with Electra, daughter of Atlas.  They had Dardanus, the first king of Troy, who had Erichthonius, who had Tros, who had Ilus (Illium is another name for Troy), who had Laomedon, who had Priam, who married Hecuba.  They had Helenus, Polites, Hector (who married Andromache, and they had Astynax), Laodice, Polyxena, Paris (who married Helen, and they had Hermione), Cassandra, Polydorus, Troilus, Deiophobus and others.  Assarcus was the brother of Ilus.  Assarcus’ grandson was Aeneas, who was an ancestor of Romulus.  So there is a blood relationship between the house of the king of Troy and the founder of Rome. 

            Apollo and Neptune said they would build a wall around Troy if Laomedon paid them gold.  He refused to pay.  So, there was a flood and a sea monster.  So Laomedon sacrificed their daughter Hesione (sister of Priam) by tying her to a rock on the sea to await the sea monster.  Hercules asked Laomedon for horses in exchange for rescuing Hesione.  Hercules performed the rescue but Laomedon refused to give him the horses.  So Hercules got an army together and conquered Troy.  Poderces bought her brother’s freedom.  This was a generation before the Trojan war. 

            Priam married Hecuba and they had many children.  Hecuba had a nightmare when she was pregnant with Paris—that she would give birth to a burning torch that would burn the city.  Fearing that Paris would destroy the city, Priam and Hecuba put the welfare of the city first and exposed the child in the woods, leaving him there.  A shepard rescued Paris.  So Paris didn’t know that he was a prince while he was growing up. 

            In Greece, Peleus, a mortal, wed Thetis, a goddess.  The goddess Eris (strife) had not been invited. And she was upset.  So she made a golden apple for the fairest, and sneaked it into the wedding feast.  Three goddesses claimed it.  They fought over it.  Zeus told them to go to Troy to ask Paris to judge which goddess is most beautiful.  In the way of bribes, Hera offered Paris wealth and power, Athena offered him military glory, and Venus offered him a beautiful woman for his wife.  Paris selected Venus in ‘The Judgement of Paris”.  Priam held athletic games in Troy.  When Paris began to win, Cassandra, a daughter of Priam, saw a resemblance between Paris and Priam.  She told Priam, who recognized him as his exposed son.  Paris went to the palace to live.

            At the time, Helen of Sparta was the most beautiful woman.  Tyndareus, king of Sparta, had married Leda.  Zeus fell for her and they had Pollux, Polydeuces, and Helen.  Leda had Clytemnestra and Castar with Tyndareus.  All four were conceived on the same night.  Castor and Pollux are Gemini (the twins).  As a child, Helen had been abducted by Theseus, who took her to his mother because he went to the underworld because he wanted to marry Persephone.  The twins returned Helen to her home in Sparta.  Tyndareus said that Helen’s suitors must be willing to rescue her if she is kidnapped again.  Tyndareus selected Menelaus of Mycenae as his daughter’s suitor who would become her future husband.  Accordingly, they were married and Menelaus became the king of Sparta.  Meanwhile, Paris arrived in Sparta and was Menelau’s guest.  Paris ran off with Helen, aided by Venus, to Tory.[2]  Did Helen go willingly?  Either way, Paris married her at Troy.  Tyndareus called on Helen’s past suitors to get her back.  The Greeks wanted Helen back.  The Spartan army gathered at Aulis, led by the brother of Menelaus, Agamemnon, who was married to Clytemnestra and was king of Mycenae, the most powerful of the Greek city-states from 1400 to 1100 BCE (so its king would lead the Greeks in war). 

            Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin), the son of Laertas and Anticleia) didn’t want to go off to war.  He was married to Penelope and they had a son, Telemachus.  Odysseus was clever and resourceful.  He feigned madness to get out of going to war.  He attached two different kinds of animals to his plow and sowed salt.  Palamedes figured it out, and put Telemachus in the path of the plow.  Odysseus stopped, so he was shown to be sane.  So he had no excuse to avoid going off to war.  Later, Odysseus and Diomedes planted a letter attesting to bribery in Palamedes’ tent.  As a result, Palamedes was stoned to death.

            Peleus and Thetis had a son, Achilles.  Thetis tried to make him immortal by holding him over a fire by his heels.[3]  He did not become immortal, but he was invulnerable except for his heels.[4] ‘Achilles’ heel’: weakest point. Peleus divorced Thetis because he saw her holding Achilles over the fire.  Thetis sent Achilles to Scyros island to avoid having him serve in the war.  At Scyros, Lycomedes had a daughter, Deidamia.  Achilles dressed as a woman, pretending to be another of his daughters.  But he fell for Deidamia and she got pregnant and had Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus). Odysseus went to the island.  To trick Achilles, he set out swords and women’s things.  Achilles picked a sword, so his cover was blown and he had to go with Odysseus to war. 

            In the myth, the Greeks went to Troy to retrieve Helen.  In historical reality, it might have been over fishing rights or a struggle for the strait between Europe and Asia.  The Greek leaders gathered at Aulis on their way to Troy.  Agamemnon claimed that he was a better hunter than Artemis.  Artemis, in turn, was angry and stopped the winds so the Greeks would not be able to continue on to Troy.  Calchas, the Greek prophet, told Agamemnon that Artemis was angry and that he must sacrifice Iphigenia, his daughter.  Putting the interests of his country above his own, Agamemnon agreed and sacrificed Iphigenia.  In Euripides’ play Iphigenia in Aulis, Agamemnon sent a letter home to his wife Clytemnestra asking her to send Iphigenia to Aulis for the purpose of marrying Achilles.[5]  Clytemnestra and Iphigenia went to Aulis, where Agamemnon led Iphigenia to an altar to be sacrificed.  At last minute, Artemis substituted a deer (which was sacred to her) and took Iphigenia off.  That ending did not come from Homer, who had stated that Iphigenia was killed in the sacrifice, after which the winds blew.  The Greeks went across the Agean Sea to Asia Minor.  They used small boats and could not store food, so they went close to the shoreline.  They stopped at Lemnos, which was a friendly place.  Philoctetes, a Greek leader, was bitten by a snake there.  As the wound would not heal but smelled very bad, he was left there.

             Achilles took twelve towns.  In one, he took Boiseis as a slave girl.  Agamemnon captured Chryse, and took Chryseis, daughter of Calchas—who was a priest of Apollo.  Calchas offered Agamemnon a ransom, which the latter refused even though Calchas was a priest.  So Apollo shot arrows, causing a plague.  Calchas told Agamemnon that if he gives Chryseis back the plague would end.  Achilles told Agamemnon to give her back.  This angered Agamemnon, who sent Chryseis back but took Achilles’ slave girl, which made Achilles angry.  So Achilles held off from the battles, hoping his honor would be restored. 

            The Iliad opened in the tenth year of the war, covering only 51 days.  Achilles is the hero of it.  The theme concerns his anger. Achilles saw a wounded man going to Nestor’s tent.  So he called Patroclus, his squire (asst), to see who it is.  Nestor asked Patroclus to beg Achilles to return to battle.  Patroclus told Nestor that Achilles would only refuse.  So Nestor suggested that Patroclus use Achilles’ armor to scare the Trojans.  Achilles agreed, but told Patroclus not to fight so he would not be killed. But he did fight.  He fought with Hector, the leader of the Trojans, and was killed by him.  Hector then took Achilles’ armor and used it.  Achilles was mad that Patroclus had fought.  He wanted to avenge his death.  His mother, Thetis, came and got him new armor from Hephestus (Vulcan), a god.  Achilles and Hector had a dual.  Achilles killed him.  Hector’s soul would not get to the underworld unless he was buried.  But Achilles dragged Hector’s body and kept it in his tent.  Hector’s father, helped by Hermes (Mercury) in disguise, went to Achilles’ tent to give ransom for the body of his dead son.  Achilles knows that his own father will be like Hector’s father. So he sympathized and gave the old man his son’s body.  Achilles was no longer angry.  And with that, the Iliad closed.

            The Trojans are portrayed as just as noble as the Greeks.  This is rare in epic poetry, which is typically on a national hero who is noble, honest and intelligent.  Hector’s brother Paris was missing. So Hector looked for him, and visited his mother, Hecuba, on the way. She gave him wine, but he refused it wanting a clear head for the battle ahead.  Besides, he did not have bloodless hands so he could not make a libation to the gods.  Hecuba made an offering to Athena, who refused it.  Paris was in his own house and Hector found him there.  Paris was portrayed as an ordinary fighter (but Ovid made him into a coward).  Hector went to his own house to see Andromache and their son, Astyanax (Scamondrius).  Andromache wasn’t at home because she was watching the battle.  He met her on the way back to the battle.  She begged him not to go, but he refused, putting his country first.  Hector said that only fate would determine whether he would return to her. 

            The Epic of Aithiopis.  Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons (warrior women who had one breast amputated so they could use bows and arrows) helped the Trojans.  Achilles killed her.  Memnon was the son of Eos (Aurora), a goddess who had fallen for Tithonus, a Trojan mortal.  Eos wanted Tithonus to be immortal.  He lived so long he went senile.  Memnon was king of Ethiopia,  He was called ‘the dark’.  He helped the Trojans.  Achilles had been warned that if he killed Memnon he would die.  But he dualed with him and killed him.  Memnon was then made immortal by Zeus.  Ovid had Aurora ask for a memorial, so some of Memnon’s ashes became birds.  A spear thrown by Paris wounded Achilles’ heel and he died.  This was not the death of a hero.  Achilles had chocked Cygnus, whose father was Neptune. He turned Cygnus into a swan when he was being chocked.  Neptune was angry at Achilles, so he asked Apollo to help him get rid of him.  Apollo guided Paris’ spear.  Thetis, Achilles’ mother, took her son off to the isle of Leuce.  Ajax the greater and Odysseus claimed Achilles’ armor.  The army voted after their debate: which is more important, physical fighting (Ajax) or strategy (Odysseus).  Odysseus won and got the armor.  Strategy was voted more important than physical fighting.  Ajax went insane and killed sheep, then committed suicide when he realized what he had done.[6]  So ends The Aithiopia. 

            Hyacinthus was a friend of Apollo.  According to Ovid, in a disc-throwing contest Apollo accidentally killed him and memorialized him as a new flower, the hysen.  This flower has markings similar to ‘alas’ as well as ‘ajax’ in Greek. 

            Henenus was the prophet on the Trojan side.  The Greeks captured him and got him to say what conditions must be met for the Greeks to sack the city.  First, the bow and arrows of Hercules must be used.  Philoctetes, left at Lemnos due to his smelling wound, had them.  So Odysseus, accompanied by Neoptolemus, went to Lemnos.  Neoptolemus tried to trick Philoctetes.  The ghost of Peracles convinced Philoctetes to go to Troy with them.  While at Troy, his wound healed. He killed Paris with Hercules’ bow and arrow, satisfying the first requirement.  Secondly, the palladium, a wooden statue of the Pallas Athena, must be removed from Troy.  Odysseus and Diomedes stold it at night.  But Troy still didn’t fall.  So the Greeks built a large wooden horse and packed soldiers inside.  Sinon hid in the woods outside Troy as the Greeks left the area.  The Trojans saw the wooden horse but didn’t know what to do with it.  Laocoon, a Trojan priest, warned it was a trick.  From Vergil’s Aeneid, Laocoon says, “I fear the Greeks, even bringing gifts.” The Trojans shook the horse but didn’t hear the armor within.  Sinon allowed himself to be captured and told a lie so the Trojans would bring the horse into their city.  He claimed the Greeks had built the horse because they had angered Athena.  When Laocoon was killed by two snakes, the Trojans concluded that Sinon must have been right.  So they let the wooden horse into the city.  The Greek soldiers went out of the horse.  Some went to the palace.  Helen had married Deiphobus, so the soldiers went to his house on the way to the palace.  Helen wasn’t there, but was at the temple.  So the soldiers went there, took her, then on to the palace.  Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who is portrayed as cruel in the Aeneid but noble in a Greek play, led the attack on the palace. He chased Polites, a son of Priam and Hecuba, killing him as his parents looked on.  Priam was angered, and so tried to kill Neoptolemus, but Neoptolemus dragged him to the altar, killing him there (a sacrilege). 

            The king was dead.  Troy had fallen.  Men of adult age except prophets and priests, were typically killed in a fallen city.  Ajax the lesser was collecting women in Troy for slavery.  He saw Cassandra, a daughter of Priam who was at a temple and claimed sanctuary.  Ajax violated her right of sanctuary and the Greeks didn’t punish him.  So Athena was angry.  She asked her brother Poseidon to punish the Greeks.  So every Greek leader had trouble getting home.  The Trojan women were divided up by the Greeks.  Neoptolemus got Helenus and Andromache, the two would eventually marry after having been freed by him.  Agamemnon got Cassandra.  Menelaus got Helen.  Odysseus got Hecuba, the former queen. 

Ovid had Odysseus stop at Cynossema.  Hecuba and other captives walked on the shore, and saw the dead body of Polydorus, a son of Priam and Hecuba.  Priam had asked Polymestor of Throce to take care of his son.  Hecuba blinded Polymestor, then Hecuba was turned into a dog (her tomb was called ‘tomb of the dog’).  Polyxena, another daughter of Priam and Hecuba had been sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles.

There is a play called The Trojan Women.  The Greek version was by Euripides and the Roman version was by Seneca.  Astyanax, son of Hector and Andromache, was sought by the Greeks who wanted to kill him.  In Seneca’s version, Astyanax hid by Andromache at Hector’s tomb.  Odysseus wanted the boy.  Andromache told him that her son was dead.  Odysseus orders the tomb crushed, so Andromache admits that her son is inside.  Odysseus killed him.  There is less admiration for Odysseus in Roman works, such as those by Ovid and Seneca.

As Troy was falling, Aeneas, a Trojan related to the Trojan royals, was told by the gods to go to the mountains and then found a new city.  Vergil’s Aeneid tells of Aeneas, an ancestor of Romulus.  Aeneus was blown off course to Carthage.  He fell for Dido, its queen. The gods sent him a message: he must found a new city in Italy. So he left Dido and she cursed him.  This is a reference to Hannibal, who would lead Carthage against Rome. Aeneas then fell for another woman, this time in Italy, and he killed a rival to get her. 

The Nostoi (‘Returns’—i.e. nostalgic) is a lost work on the return of the Greek leaders.  We know from other references to this work that Idomeneus, king of Crete, went through a sea storm.  So he prayed to the gods that he would kill the first person he saw at Crete if they would save him.  When he arrived at Crete, the first person he saw was his son, so he killed him.  Compare this with Jephthah, who promised to sacrifice the first person he would see at home if he could win the battle.  He won, and when he returned the first person to greet him was his daughter, so he sacrificed her (Judges 11:1-12:7).

Tantalos, whose mother was Pluto (daughter of Oceanus) and whose father was Zeus,  chopped up his son Pelops and cooked him up for the gods. One of them realized it and had Pelops put back together again, but not before Demeter had taken a bite.  So the reconstituted Pelops was missing a part of one of his shoulders.  Tantalos was punished.  He was put in water up to his chin in the underworld.  So he could not eat or drink even as he was surrounded by food.  Tantalos was ‘tantalized’.  Pelops fell for Hippodameia, the daughter of Oenomaus.  Oenomaus didn’t want her to marry because a prophet had told him he would be killed by his son-in-law.  He set up a suitors’ contest.  He would choose her husband.  A suitor would take Hippodameia in a chariot and if Oenomaus could catch them the suitor could not marry his daughter.  Pelops fell for her. He bribed Myrtilus, Oenomaus’ charioteer, to remove the linch-pins of Oenomaus’ chariot and replace them with wax.  Oenomaus was killed while trying to chase Pelops and Hippodameia.  So the prophesy was fulfilled. 

Pelops and Hippodameia had two sons, Atreus and Thyestes.  Due to the laws of primogeniture, Atreus got the throne at Mycenae.  His brother was jealous, so he seduced Atreus’ wife, Aerope, but Atreus found out and banished him.  Years later, Atreus invited Thyestes and three of his sons back.  Thus beings the play, Thyestes, by Seneca.  Atreus had a banquet for his brother, and served as food his brother’s three sons, then again banished Thyestes.  Thyestes had another son, Aegisthus. 

Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, and Menelaus, king of Sparta. After the Trojan war, Agamemnon had some trouble when he got home.  Aeschylus wrote an Oresteia (three plays, each with a complete story, on the same theme) on this theme.  His plays are: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides.  When the plays were written, Argos was the most powerful city.  So Aeschylus substituted it for Mycenae in his plays.

The Agamemnon.  There is foreshadowing in the play, hints of what is coming.  Trouble in Mycenae. Recall that Aristotle taught that the tragic figure contributes to his own disaster. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had had four children: Iphigenia (sacrificed to make the winds), Orestes (a son), Electra (a daughter) and Chrysothemis (mentioned only by Sophocles—not by Aeschylus. The play opens with a relay of fires to tell Mycenae that the Greeks had taken Troy. Clytemnestra pretended that she was happy that Agamemnon was returning.  In reality she was pissed at her husband for having sacrificed Iphigenia. She invited Aegisthus to live with them so they could plot against Agamemnon.  Orestes had been sent to another country.  His mother Clytemnestra had written to a neighboring king asking him to keep Orestes, heir to the throne, safe.  Agamemnon returned with Cassandra, his new slave girl.  He liked her and allowed her to ride with him.  Clytemnestra pretended she was glad to see her husband.  She asked him to walk on the carpet on the stairs leading into their palace.  But in keeping with the Greek tradition, he did not want to appear like a god.  In Troy, kings were viewed as gods.  Clytemnestra got him to do it anyway. Cassandra stayed back.  As a prophetess, she saw her own death and that of Agamemnon.  Apollo had fallen for her, but she refused him, so he said that no one would believe her prophesies.  So no one believed that Agamemnon would die then.  Clytemnestra opened the main door and there were two dead bodies inside.  She had thrown tapestry on him when he was bathing.  She killed him and Cassandra.  Aegisthus appeared, explaining that he did not kill them (in Homer’s Odyssey, Aegisthus did the killing). There was a vendetta system of justice so the nearest male blood relative was obliged to take revenge.  In historic Greece, this was a never-ending process.  In the play, Orestes was Agamemnon’s nearest male blood relative.  With his friend Pylades, Orestes went to Delphi, where Apollo told him that he must take revenge against the killers.  The play ends with Orestes and Pylades going to Agamemnon’s tomb. 

The Libation Bearers.  It opens at the tomb.  Libations were typically poured as a offering.  Meanwhile,  Clytemnostra was having a nightmare—that she gave birth to a snake that bit her.  Foreshadowing.  She sent Electra to Agamemnon’s tomb to pour libations to calm his soul.  When she arrived there, Ornestes and Pylades watched.  They overheard Electra say she wanted Ornestes to avenge their father’s death.  Ornestes agree, and told her to keep it a secret.  Ornestes disguised himself as a traveler, went to the palace, with news of Ornestes’ death.  Ornestes killed Aegisthus, his mother’s lover.  Ornestes tried to kill his mother, but he hesitated.  Pylades reminded him that Apollo had told him to revenge his father’s death.  So Ornestes killed his mother.  He then saw the Erinyes (Furies) coming.  These were old goddesses of vengeance who pursued those who have killed blood relatives.  Orestes went back to Delphi to consult with Apollo. 

Eumenides (the third play).  It opens at Delphi.  Ornestes had to be purified before he entered the temple there.  He was sleeping in the temple, with the furies around him.  Apollo woke him up, telling him that he would go with him to Athens to see Athena about his dilemma.  The ghost of Clytemnostra woke up the furies, who then pursued Ornestes to Athens.  Athena was willing to help Ornestes, but first there would have to be a trial.  The furies would be the prosecutor.  Apollo would be the defense attorney.  The citizens of Athens would be the jury.  And Athena would preside.  The furies propose a plea bargain: if Ornestes swears that he didn’t kill his mother, he could go without them.  But he did kill her, so he refused it.  Apollo then claimed that it is possible to have a father without a mother.  For instance, Athena popped out of Zeus’ head (but he had swallowed her mother first).  Besides, he argued, a mother merely nourishes a child, rather than being a parent.  The jury voted.  A tie.  Athena could thus vote.  She voted to free Ornestes.  The furies were pissed.  So Athena promised them that she would build a shrine to them in Athens.  They would be the protectors of Athens rather than goddesses of vengeance.  As the protectors, they were called the Eumenades (well-minded ones).

            In history, Athens had set up a court, the Areopagus. In 549 BCE, Solon made the court in addition consider constitutional issues.  But in 462 BCE, Ephialtes emphasized democracy, and so was against the extra powers of the court.  The play was written in 458BCE, just after that.   

            Themes in Greek literature and or these three plays in particular. 

1. The triumph of the newer gods such as Apollo and Athena over the older ones such as the Furies. 

2. There was a historical transition in Greece from vendettas to the courts—from the family to the state, which was reflected in Greek literature. 

3. The furies personified curses or the shade of the dead person.

4. Wisdom comes through suffering. Zeus “has laid down that wisdom comes through suffering” (Aeschylus, Agamemnon, lns 176-8.  Suffering has a beneficial effect.  For instance, Achilles’ suffering made him a better person. 

5. Wrong-doing in one’s generation can have consequences in the next generation.  This was so in Hebrew scripture as well.  This helped to explain the suffering of the innocent while the bad guys get away without suffering. 

6. Nothing, even good things, should be in excess.  Aristotle’s Golden Mean.  Hubris (overweening pride) leads to Ate (blind folly), which in turn leads to Nemesis (disapproval and punishment).

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill, 1888-1983, wrote a play, Mourning Becomes Electra, based on Aeschylus’ trilogy.  T. S. Eliot wrote Murder in the Cathedral, based on Agamemnon.

In Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, a deer was substituted for Iphigenia just before her father Agamemnon was to sacrifice her so there would be wind.  In Euripides Iphigenia in Taura, Apollo told Orestes to go to the land of the Taurians and get a statue in order to get his sanity that had suffered from the furies back. Orestes went there with Pylades.  They were taken prisoner, due to be sacrificed.  Iphigenia was a priestess there.  When she learned that they were Greek, she announced she would spare one, who would go back to Greece and notify her family that she is well.  Orestes and Pylades both volunteer to die for the other.  They were true friends.  Pylades relents and agrees to let Orestes die.  Iphigenia discovered that Orestes was her brother, so she helped them steal the statue, then they all three escaped back to Greece. 

Bronislaw Malinowski’s ‘Charter Theory’:  Myths charter for social institutions and actions a validation of traditional customs, beliefs and attitudes.  Myths strengthen tradition, endowing it with greater value and prestige by tracing it back to a higher, better more supernatural reality of initial events.  For example, a deity might be said to have set up an institution.  The Areopagus in Eumenedes, for instance.  Malinowski noted that the same social institutions in myths as in society. 

The Odyssey.  It is an epic poem about a national hero.  It was written at about 700 BCE of events that had taken place 400-500 years before.  It is on Odysseus’ return from Troy.  Odysseus, son of Laertes and Anticleia, married Penelope and they had a son, Telemachus.  Odysseus’ crew died because they had killed the cattle of Helios (or Hyperion), the sun god.  Odysseus was not involved so he was not killed. The poem begins 20 years after he had left Ithica. Ithica was a poor city. It begins in medias res, into the middle of things (then flashbacks).  There was a council of the gods called by Zeus, where Aegisthus was mentioned.  Homer considered Aegisthus to have killed Agamemnon.  Athena asked that Hermes be sent to the island of the goddess Calipso to tell her that she should free Odysseus.  He had been there for seven years.  Athena, disguised as a friend of Odysseus, appeared to Telemachus, who was not yet mature. Suitors had moved into his house, pressuring Penelope to select one.  Athena told Telemachus to chase the suitors away.  But the suitors laughed at him.  They were angry becaue Penelope had been unweaving the burial shroud that, when finished, would be the time she would pick a suitor.  The ‘web of Penelope’.  Athena, disguised as Mentor, another friend of Odysseus, helped Telemachus travel to Pylos to see Nestor, who told him to go to Sparta to see Menelaus and Helen.  Menelaus had been blown off course to Egypt (Homer thought the real Helen had been there).  Menelaus had been blown off course. To make the winds blow, he had to capture the sea god Proeus, who could change shape.  ‘protean’: to change shape. Odysseus would catch Proeus. Menelaus told Telemachus that his father Odysseus was still alive but stuck on the island of the goddess Calipso.  Suitors set up an ambush to kill Telemachus, but he escaped them.  Calipso told Odysseus that he could leave the island.  The goddess had been in love with him, so she offered him immortality if he would agree to stay.  He refused, saying that although she was beautiful he wanted to get home.  So he built a raft and set off for Ithica.  Seventeen days later, he could see his city, but Posiedon sent a storm and the raft fell apart.  The sea goddess Ino offered him her veil so he could get to shore, as long as he would throw it back, which he did when he reached the shore of the land of the Phaeacians.  He followed a river, falling asleep under a bush.  Alcinous was the king of Phaeacia.  He and his wife Arete had Nausicaa, their daughter. Athena appeared to Nausicaa in a dream, telling her to go to the river to wash clothes.  The next morning, he and her friends were playing ball at river after washing their clothes near Odysseus.  Their playing woke him.  Very dirty from the night, Odysseus approached her though greeted her at a distance so she would not be afraid.  Nausicaa helped him with his clothes.  She offered to bath him, but he refused and bathed himself and put on some clothes she had been washing.  Athena made him very handsome.  But he and Nausicaa did not have a romantic relationship.  Homer sets the stage for one, but then doesn’t make one happen.  Nausicaa invited Odysseus to walk with her to the city but then separate just out of town so people would not think she had been with him.  Odysseus went to the palace.  Nausicaa had told him to go there and speak with Arete.  Odysseus spoke with her and Alcinous, defending the virtues of their daughter—that she had been very polite.  Odysseus revealed his identity after Alcinous talked about the battle of Troy.  He told of his travels since leaving Troy.  Homer is using this as a flashback. 

            After leaving Troy, Odysseus and his men landed their ships at Cicones.  Then they went on, rounding the southern tip of Greece.  But instead of going back up north to Ithica, they were blown off course by a storm to North Africa where the Lotos eaters lived.  His crew insisted on staying after eating some of the lotos flowers.  It was a drug like opium.  Odysseus had to force them back on the boats and tie them below.  Homer does not depict much about the lotos eaters, leaving it to the reader to fill in the details.  After leaving the lotos eaters, Odysseus and his men went to Cyclopes.  A Cyclops by the name of Polyphemus saw Odysseus and his men in a cave and entered it before putting a huge rock to cover its entrance.  He ate several of Odysseus’ men, then slept. The next morning, he ate more men and left with his sheep.  He returned in the evening and ate more men.  Odysseus offered  him wine.  He told Polyphemus that his name was ‘nobody’.  Polyphemus thanked him for the wine and said he would eat Nobody last.  Drunk, he fell asleep so Odysseus and his men could take out their stake and stab his eye out.  The other Cyclops heard Polyphemus scream and asked if he was ok. Polyphemus replied: Nobody hurt me.  So they assumed that he was crazy. The next morning, the men hid under the sheep and were able to escape.  Odysseus hid under the ram, which usually was the first animal to leave.  Noticing that the ram was the last to leave, Polyphemus felt sorry for it, supposing that it had stayed behind out of concern for its now-blind master.  This illustrates a trait of ancient Greek literature: even the bad guys have good points.  For instance, Polyphemus had fallen for Galatea, but she went with Acis.  So Polyphemus threw a mountain on Acis but Acis became a river god. 

Polyphemus was Posiedon’s son, so Poseidon hated Odysseus most of all of all the Greek leaders (because he had blinded him).  The Fates had it that Odysseus would make it home back to Ithica.  But Poseidon could certainly make his journey home very difficult.

            Odysseus and his men next reached the floating island of Aeolus.  Aeolus helped them by putting winds in a bag. But when they got near to Ithica, Odysseus went to sleep and his men opened his bag, thinking it was full of treasure.  The winds came out, sending them back to Aeolus’ island.  Thinking that they could not possibly be favored by the gods, Aeolus refused to help them.  So they set sail and arrived at the land of the Laestrygonians.  A scouting party went to the palace.  The Laestrygonians were cannibals, so they chased the men, harpooning several of them and throwing large rocks at the boats.  Only one boat was left.  They sailed on to Aaiaia, where Circe, a sorceress, lived. She mixed potions.  A scouting party entered her house. She fed them, which turned them into swine.  All but Eurylochus, who had stayed outside.  He returned to Odysseus, who went to her house to get his men back.  On the way, he met Hermes in disguise as a hunter, who gave him a plant called moly.  Circe offered Odysseus the potion, but it didn’t work on him because he had eaten the moly.  So she asked him to be her lover.  He agreed, on condition that she bring his men back.  She did, and they were lovers for one year.  The men came back even more handsome.  Circe told Odysseus that he must go to the underworld to confer with the Thebian prophet, Teiresias.  Before Odysseus and his men left, they had a party at Circe’s house.  Elpenor was very drunk, so he went on the roof to sleep.  He fell off in the morning and died.  But Odysseus didn’t notice he was missing.  Odysseus and his men went west, to the entrance of the underworld (morocco).  At the entrance was Eplenor, whom Odysseus was surprised to see because he had not noticed that he had been missing.  Eplenor begged Odysseus to go back to Aaiaia to bury his body so he would be able to get into the underworld. Then Odysseus consulted with Teiresias, the prophet of Thebes, who told Odysseus of his death at sea after a long life. 

The Telegony is a lost epic that tells of Odysseus’ death.  It is on Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe.  Circe gave Telegonus a poisonous spear.  He went to find Odysseus, landing at Ithaca.  Odysseus thought he was an invader and so attacked his party of men.  Without realizing that Odysseus was his father, Telegonus killed him in the battle.

Teiresias also told Odysseus not to eat the cattle of the Sun Helios.  Then Odysseus met his mother, Anticleia.  She said she had died of a broken heart, missing him.  Then he met Agamemnon, who told of how he had died and assured him that Penelope was being faithful to Odysseus.  Then he saw Achilles, who Odysseus praised.  Achilles was not enjoying the afterlife.  Even heros are not happy in the underworld.  Then he saw Ajax the Greater, who had killed himself when Odysseus got Achilles’ armor.  So Ajax ignored Odysseus.  Then Odysseus was given a tour of Tartares, the area of the underworld populated by wicked doers.  For instance, Tityos (vultures were eating of his liver), Tantalos (in water up to his neck, unable to eat the fruits above his head), and Sisyphus (he had been a thief or he killed a blood relative, so he had to push a rock continuously uphill).  Then Odysseus returned to the upperworld.

He went to Circe’s island to bury Elpenor.  Circe told Odysseus about the sirens.  Their sound of nice voices is bewitching, including the promise of giving special knowledge of the future (see Gen. 3: the serpent offers Eve an apple with the promise of the knowledge of good and evil).  It is not clear whether death in listening to the sirens was due to being shipwrecked or to not wanting to leave them.  Odysseus heard their song, tied to the mast of his boat.  Then he saw Scylla and Charybois, between Sicily and Italy.  Circe had said of Scylla that she was a monster with six heads who lived in a cave.  With six heads, she could eat six men.  Of Charybois, Circe had said that it was a whirlpool.  To avoid it, Odysseus would have to hug the rocks on the other side, closer to Scylla (even though six men would be lost).  He was ‘between a rock and a hard place’.  According to Ovid, Scylla had been a beautiful girl, loved by Glaucus.  When Glaucus tasted magical food and became a green sea god, Scylla was no longer interested in him. He went to Circe, who had loved Glaucus.  Circe mixed poison in a pool for Scylla, which turned her into the monster.

Odysseus then landed near where Helios, god of the Sun, lived.  Even though Circe had warned him not to eat the cattle, when he was away praying, his men ate them.  When he returned, Odysseus was shocked.  The winds started blowing, so they set sail.  Helios returned after they had left and was upset that his cattle had been eaten.  So he complained to Zeus, who in turn striked Odysseus’ boat with a bolt of lightning.  Only Odysseus (who had not eaten of the cattle) survived. He swam to Calipso’s island, where he stayed for seven years.  Then he went on a raft, getting close to Ithaca, before a storm hit and he was blown to the island of the Phiacians (Phaeacia).  He stayed there for awhile, before they sailed him home to Ithaca.  When the ship returned to Phaeacia, it turned to rock.  When the king, Alcinos, saw it, he remembered the prophesy of a wall of rock, cutting his city off from the sea.  Posiedon had complained that the Phaeacians had rescued Odysseus.  Zeus allowed Posiedon to punish them. Alcinos made a sacrifice to Posiedon and promised not to rescue anyone else.  So Posiedon did not build a wall of rock. 

Odysseus awoke at Ithaca.  Athena advised him not to go directly to his house as he was, so she gave him the appearance of an old begger.  Then she went to Telemachus in Sparta to tell him to return to Ithaca and to warn him of the suitors’ ambush.  He left Sparta, but could not take their gift of horses because there was no grazing land there. When he returned to Ithaca, he and Odysseus went to their house.  They say Argus, their dog, in a manure area very sick.  Argus died when he saw Odysseus.  Odysseus was taunted by the suitors.  Penelope questioned him, not knowing who he was.  He told her that Odysseus was still alive.  Penelope told him of a dream she had in which an eagle killed geese in the palace.  Penelope set up a contest for the suitors, the winner of which would get her hand.  The winner would have to string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve axes.  The servant Eurycleia washed Odysseus’ feet, recognizing his scar.  Odysseus told her to be quiet.  After the suitors failed, Odysseus strung his bow and shot the arrow through the 12 rings.  He killed most of the suitors, a few being spared. The servant girls who had told on Penelope had to clean up the carnage before being hanged. Penelope was told of this, after which she and Odysseus talked but she still did not recognize him.  Testing him, Penelope said she would have his bed moved.  He replied that the bed could not be moved, as it was built from around a tree.  So she welcomed him.  He went off to make a sacrifice to Posiedon, then returned home.  The relatives of the slain suitors wanted revenge according to the vendetta system.  Odysseus and his sone went to where Laertes, Odysseus’ father, lived.  Laertes asked for proof of Odysseus’ identity. He showed his father his scar and recalled the trees that his father had given to him.  The suitors’ relatives came to his father’s house.  Athena tried to intervene. They ignored her, so Zeus sent a thunder bolt that stopped the two sides from fighting.  So ends the Odyssey.

Stories on Thebes, a city in central Greece, antidate those on the Trojan war. Poseidon and Libya had Agmor, who married Telephassa and they in turn had four children: Europa, a daughter, and Cadimus, Cilix, and Phoenix.  Europa is the eponym (a person from whom something is named) of Europe. Zeus fell for Europa and they had three sons through their love affair: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Hira, Zeus’ wife, was jealous. Zeus disguised himself as a bull and Europa climbed on his back and they went to Crete.  Agmor sent his three sons to look for her with Telephassa, who died.  Cadmus left his two brothers to go to the Oracle at Delphi.  Apollo told him: after you leave, follow a cow and found a city where the cow rests.  Accordingly, he founded Thebes in Boeota (means cow).  Cadmus sacrificed the cow.  He sent companions to a spring for water for the sacrifice.  They found a dragon, the offspring of Ares and Tisiphone, there. Cadmus went there and slayed it. Athena advised him to plant the dragon’s teeth in the ground. He did so.  And up came armed men, the Spartoi (sown men—nothing to do with Sparta) who fought each other until five were left.  Athena advised one of them, Echion, to stop fighting.  He got the others to stop and help Cadmus establish the city.  So Cadmus, with the Spartoi, founded Thebes.  Cadmea was the name of the fortress there.  Echion married Agave, a daughter of Cadmus.  Cadmus married Harmonia.  He gave her a neckless made by a goddess that caused so much trouble that he eventually locked it up.  Ovid, in Metamorpheses, claims that Cadmus believed his problems had been due to the fact that he had killed the dragon.  So Cadmus asked to become a serpent.  His wife then asked to become one too.  Cadmus and Harmonia had five children: Polydorus, Agave, Ino, Actonoe, and Semele.  Zeus fell for Semele.  They became lovers.  Hira got jealous, as usual. She disguised herself as Semele’s old nurse, Beroe.  She wanted Semele to test Zeus to see if it was really he or just a mere mortal pretending to be a god.  Semele asked to see him in all his trappings as he is seen by his wife.  Zeus objects, but most grant her wish because he had to fulfill his promise.  In the trappings of thunder and lightning, Zeus came to Semele. She was burnt to a crisp, but the baby within her Zeus put in his thigh.  That baby, Dionysus, was ‘twice born’, once out of his mother and then again out of Zeus’ thigh. 

Ovid claimed that Dionysus was handed to Ino, who in turn gave him to the nymphs at Mt. Nysa.  According to another account, Dionysus was handed over directly to the nymphs at Mt Nysa.  Hira punished Ino and Athamus (Ino’s husband) by driving them insane.  Ino and Athamus had two sons, Laechus and Melcertes.  Athamus thought they were all lions, so he killed Ino and Melcertes by running them off a cliff, but they were saved by Aphrodite, who changed them into sea deities. 

Dionysus grew up in the east on Mt Nysa.  He established a cult on himself.  He taught mankind how to grow and make wine.  Bread was associated with Demeter.  Dionysus was the god and liquid of life (e.g. sap of trees).  He had many names, including Bacchus, Lysios (the loosener), and Liber (the Freer—wine frees one up).  He was associated with Osiris, an Egyptian deity.  He was also associated with noises (ecios and Tacchos, or loudness).  And he was associated with the power of the sap: Dendrite (power in the tree), Anthios (god of flowers), and Karpios (fruit grower).  He often used the shapes of animals, the bull being his favorite.  The female followers of him were called Bacchae or Bacchantes or Maenads (the latter from the word suggesting madness).  Dionysus and the Maenads often carried a wand, the thyrsus.  The cult involved animals, including snake-handling, from the pre-Greek times when eating the flesh of an animal associated with a god was thought to make one feel the god within oneself.  The maenads drank wine to get to an ‘entheos’, or excited state: a feeling of the god within oneself.  From that word came ‘enthusiasm’. They would not have thought they were taking in the god in drinking the wine. The rites of the cult were called the orgia, but there was no sexual activity in them.  Dionysus returned to Thebes as an adult to vindicate his mother—to prove that she had given birth to a god-man. 

Euripides wrote Bacchae, a play on this Dionysus.  Semele’s sisters, Agave (who married Echion), Ino (who married Atharmas) and Autonoe (who married Aristaeus), had accused her of making up a story about Zeus to hide her indiscretion.  So Dionysus made those sisters insane. They became Maenads (Bacchae), followers of Dionysus.  Cadmus was by that time old, and thus retired as king.  Pentheus was the king.  After returning from a journey, he found Cadmus and Teiresias preparing to join Dionysus’ cult.  He did not think Dionysus was a god so he sought to dissuade them.  Cadmus asked Pentheus to consider Semele’s reputation and that just in case Dionysus was indeed a deity it is not good to piss him off.  Pentheus was not convinced.   Dionysus was a stranger to Pentheus.  Pentheus had him bound, not knowing his identity.  The part of the palace where the stranger had been taken collapsed, and the stranger went back to Pentheus.  The stranger suggested that he dress as a woman and go to the mountainside to spy on the maenads.  Dionysus was making Pentheus’ mind unclear.  So Pentheus disguised himself as a woman to witness the obscenities he expected were going on in the cult.  When he arrived near the women, he climbed a tree in order to watch them.  Meanwhile, Dionysus was telling the women that Pentheus was there, mocking them.  The women leapt toward Pentheus, hurling rocks and finally uprooting the tree, causing Pentheus to scream.  Agave, Pentheus’ own mother, tried to kill him, not recognizing him.  After she killed him, she remained insane. Cadmus got her to see that she had killed her own son.  Because they had killed a blood relative, Agave and her sisters had to leave town.  This story highlights the power of Dionysus and what harm can occur when religious beliefs are carried to an extreme.  Agave had been so enthusiastic in the cult that she killed her own son without realizing it.  Dionysus is associated here with irrationality—his cult involving excitement. Dodd reports on the Dionysian “orgiastic religious ritual” that emphasized an excited happy feeling accompanied by dancing and music.[7] Mysticism, wherein it is believed possible to achieve communion with a deity via contemplation and love without using reason, is also associated with religious feeling absent reason.  In contrast, the cult of Apollo stressed reason. 

    Dionysus sought to spread his cult.  There was some resistance.  For instance, he changed himself into several animals to convince the Minyades (daughters of Minyas) women to join, but they refused. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysus tells of pirates bounding Dionysus intent on selling him.  They didn’t listen to him when he claimed to be a god. So, he allowed grape vines to grow on the ship’s mast.  Then, as a lion, he got the pirates to jump overboard and drown. 

Historically, the cult spread throughout Greece from the east, disrupting Greek life (e.g. women running into the countryside to engage in the rituals).  The festivals involved singing (dithyramb), drama (thespis—thespian now means ‘actor’), and sacrifices.

            The Thebes Myths. Ovid wrote on Teiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes.  Teiresias had seen two snakes coupling and separated them, resulting in him being turned into a woman for seven years until he did the same thing again.  Then he took Juno’s side in a dispute with Jupiter, so Jupiter made Teiresias blind.  Juno then made him a seer.  Laius was king of Thebes. He was married to Jocasta (Epicaste).  Laius had to go into excile.  He visited Macenae.  He carried off Chrysippus, a son of Pelops.  The oracle at Delphi told Laius that for punishment, he will have a son who will kill him.  Laius and Jocasta had a boy.  Fearing the prophesy, they had him exposed.  They tied his hands and feet and handed him to a shepard servant.  They told him to leave the boy at Mt. Cithaeron.  On the way, the servant ran into a shepard from Corinth who asked for the boy for Polybus and Merope, king and queen of Corinth.  The shepard servant gave him the boy. The king and queen named the boy Oedipus (‘swollen foot’), who grew up not knowing they were not his parents.  But his friends told him that he had been adopted. So he went to the oracle, which didn’t answer his question but told him instead he would kill his father and marry his mother.  So he stayed away from Corinth, still believing that Polybus and Merope were his real parents.  At a cross-road, he saw a chariot carrying an old man and his servants.  Neither would yield. Oedipus killed the old man and all but one of the servants.  The older man was Laius.  Oedipus had killed his father.  The surviving servant told Jocasta about the murder.  Her brother, Creon, became king.  Creon wanted to be rid of the Sphinx that was on the wall of Thebes.  The Sphinx was a monster that had the face of a woman, wings, and the body of a lion. It told a riddle to all who sought to enter the city.  If they didn’t answer correctly, it killed them.  Creon announced that he who solves the riddle will become king and marry Jocasta.  Oedipus arrived and solved the riddle.  Either Oedipus killed the Spinx or it jumped to its death.  So Oedipus became king of Thebes and married Jocasta.  They had four kids: Polyneices, Eteocles, Antigone and Ismene.  The oracle’s prophesy had come true, though Oedipus didn’t realize it.  There was a plague in Thebes.  Oedipus sent Creon to the Oracle.  It is at this point in the story that Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex (Oidipous Tyrannos in Greek and Oedipus the King in English) begins. Creon reported to Oedipus that the plague had been due to the murderer of Laius having gone without punishment.  Oedipus didn’t realize that he had been the murderer, so he cursed the killer (ironic).  Oedipus talked to Teiresias, who knew Oedipus was had murdered Laius.  The prophet told him that he was the murderer, but he did not believe him.  He accused Teiresias as conspiring with Creon to get the throne back.  Jocasta stopped their argument, telling Oedipus not to listen to him.  She told Oedipus how Laius had died at a crossroads.  Oedipus asked to see a witness.  Meanwhile, a herald arrived from Corinth, who told him that the king had died.  Oedipus was heir to the throne there.  He hesitated to go back.  He was afraid he would end up marrying his mother there.  The herald told Oedipus that he had been the shepard who had brought Oedipus to Corinth as a baby.  At this point, Jocasta realized the truth.  Oedipus then asked for and then spoke with the shepard who had turned him over and had witnessed Laius’ murder. Meanwhile, Jocasta was hanging herself in her bedroom.  Oedipus found her there and blinded himself with her broaches in order to punish himself.  He did not kill himself because he realized it would be a worse punishment to go on living.  So he continued living, wanting to go into exile.  Creon became king of Thebes again.  He refused to send Oedipus into exile unless Apollo gave the word.  The play ends with them waiting for the word. 

            Sophecles, Oedipus at Colonus. Apollo gave permission for Oedipus to go into exile.  Oedipus left Thebes accompanied by his daughter Antigone.  Ismene visited them.  Polyneices and Eteocles, his two sons, stayed in Thebes and did not with to associate with their father.  Oedipus and Antigone went to Colonus because he thought he was meant to die there.  Theseus was king of Athens.  He had sought a federation of the little city-states around Athens including Colonus.  Oedipus and Antigone went into the sacred grove/temple of the Eumenides (formerly the Furies).  Meanwhile, the locals learned about Oedipus, so they demanded that he leave the temple.  Oedipus left the temple but refused to leave the city.  The locals called Theseus for help.  He allowed Oedipus to remain in the city.  At this point, Ismene arrived, and told her father that his two sons were fighting back in Thebes.  Then Creon arrived and asked Oedipus to return to near Thebes to help end his sons’ fighting.  Creon tried to get Oedipus’ two daughters to go back, but Theseus stepped in to stop this.  Then Polyneices, being then in exile himself, arrived.  Etheocles had expelled him and taken over the throne even though Polyneices was the elder.  Polyneices was planning a military run against Thebes and wanted his father’s support because the oracle had said that such support was crucial to his victory and life. Oedipus cursed both of his sons.  Polyneices went away intent to fight anyway.  When Oedipus felt death coming, he asked Theseus to go off with him and witness his death.  Secret knowledge of where he would be buried would protect Athens against Thebes. Theseus kept his promise of secrecy, so no one knows if Oedipus died or was taken up by the gods. 

            This was Sophecles’ last play.  He lived to be ninety.  Athens and Thebes had fought a war.  Perhaps Sophecles used the ‘secret knowledge’ held by Athens because Athens had won.  Although chronologically after this play’s time, Antigone was written by Sophecles earlier. 

            Irony is a characteristic of a tragedy according to Aristotle.  It involves something seeming to be what it is not, even as the audience knows what it is.  This is Sophoclean or dramatic irony.  There is also irony of fate, wherein the outcome is opposite of what is expected.  For example, Oedipus said he knew more after he was blinded.  There is also Socratic irony involving a pretense of ignorance to cause someone to reveal his or her ignorance.  The Sophists, for example, claimed to know more than they knew. Socrates would feign ignorance in order to get them to admit that they were actually ignorant of what they thought they knew.  There is also sarcastic irony wherein one says the opposite of what one means. 

            Aristotle wrote The Poetics on the characteristics of good poetry.  In it, he discussed the characteristics of a good tragedy.  First, there should be catharsis in the audience, in that they are drained of emotion via a cleansing or purging of their emotions to identify with the characters.  Secondly, there should be a tragic hero with hamartia, the tragic flaw and hubris (hybris), or prideful insolence (some excess, full of oneself so doing a foolish thing).  Third, there should be a complex plot involving peripeteia (peripety in English), a reversal of fortune for the hero, anagnoresis, a recognition scene wherein the hero realizes something crucial, and sophoclean irony.  Cedric Whitman disagreed with Aristotle, arguing that the hero should have a tragic virtue rather than a tragic flaw as he or she attempts to do the right thing (which offends others).  But it might be two sides of the same coin, as are stubbornness and perseverance, for instance.

Chronology of major Greek Philosophers:

Socrates 469-399 BCE, Plato, 427-348 BCE, Aristotle 384-322 BCE (Alexander the Great, 356-323 BCE).

            Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes.  Polyneices attacked Thebes, assigning seven leaders each to take a gate into the city. Meanwhile, Eteocles assigned seven of his leaders to defend those gates.  He and Eteocles killed each other in a dual.  So Creon became king.  He refused to allow Polyneices’ body to be buried. 

            Euripides, Phoenician Maidens.  Differing from Sophocles’ account, Jocasta committed suicide not when she had learned the truth about Oedipus but rather after failing to prevent her sons from killing each other.  Oedipus had gone insane, cursing his sons while still in the palace awaiting Apollo’s permission for him to go into exile.

            Euripides, Suppliants. Theseus forced Creon to deliver Eteocles’ body (but not Polyneices’).

            Sophocles, Antigone.  Creon refused to allow Polyneices to be buried because he had attacked his own city.  Creon was not a tyrant; rather, he was concerned with the welfare of the city.  That going against divine law would not be in the welfare of the city didn’t occur to him.  Because Polyneices had been his nephew, Creon was putting the interests of the city above his own interests.  Antigone asked Ismene to help her bury Polyneices.  Ismene replied that politics are a man’s business and that Creon was the king so his decision should be accepted.  Antigone still wanted to bury her brother.  So she went to his body to perform the ritual, pouring some dirt on his body (not digging a hole).  A guard found that someone had buried Polyneices, but he did not know who had done it.  He assumed a man had done it.  Creon was upset and wanted to know who did it.  There was then a chorus on the wonders of the human race.  Recall that for Plato, mankind is always getting better, as for instance with his laws and justice—but mankind can’t overcome death.  Antigone returned to bury her brother a second time even though it was unnecessary and in fact this excess would contribute to her downfall because she was caught in the act.  Creon was surprised.  She told him that divine law was above human law, so Creon’s law should have conformed with the laws of the gods.  But Creon ordered that both sisters be punished.  Ismene was willing to suffer it, but Antigone criticized her for agreeing to be punished even though she had refused to take part in the burial.  As a result, Creon exempted Ismene.  He immured Antigone in a cave, closed in so she would die.  Creon’s son, Haemon, arrived and protested, as he was engaged to Antigone and cared for her even though it was an arranged marriage.  He begged Creon to spare her, but he refused, saying to Haemon that as future king he should learn to put the interests of his city first.  But Haemon warned his father that he would die with Antigone.  Meanwhile, Antigone was comparing herself to Niobe, the sister of Pelops in mythology, who had refused to worship Leto (Latina) because she had killed Niobe’s children. Niobe wept so much she was turned into a weeping rock.  Teiresias warned Creon that he had two debts to pay: not burying Polyneices and immuring Antigone (buried alive in a cave).  He didn’t bury when he should have and he buried when he should not have.  Creon heeded this warning, and ordered that Polyneices be buried.  Then he went to the cave to free Antigone but it was too late, for she had already hanged herself—Haemon then clutching her body.  Haemon threw a sword at Creon but missed.  So Creon took the sword and killed himself.  Creon returned to the palace, learning that Eurydice, his wife, had killed herself.  Creon was in disgrace.  The play ends here. 

            Themes in the play relate to human vs. divine (unwritten) law, public authority (Creon) vs. private conscience (Antigone), man vs. woman (Antigone had taken on a man’s role), and the interests of the state vs. family (see Hegel, Asthetik II.2.1).  Both Creon and Antigone qualify as tragic heros.  Both had a reversal of fortune.  Both had a tragic flaw.  Antigone went to excess and was stubborn for not trying to compromise with Creon.  And Creon was stubborn as well for the same reason, and had been mistaken in judgment (forgot about divine law).  In line with Whitman’s tragic virtue theory, both Creon and Antigone tried to do the best thing.  He had been trying to look out for the welfare of the city while she was trying to follow divine law. 

            Psychological theories of Myth.  Freud (1856-1939) claimed that the same themes exist in myth and dream. Both bring to light inborn impulses that are in one’s unconscious.  For example, there is the tendency of the child to be sexually attracted to the opposite sex parent while hating the same sex parent. The Oedipus complex involves repressing these impulses so when one becomes an adult one can be sexually attracted to a third party.  Castration anxiety exists for boys when they see that girls don’t have penises and they presume that their father cut them off.  So the boys repress the anger/hatred of their father.  Girls have the Electra Complex (sexual desire for the father and hatred of the mother).  Recall that Electra wanted her brother Arestes to avenge their father’s (Agamemnon) death by killing their mother. See Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.  Oedipus killed his father and married his mother without realizing it.  His story moves us because of wish-fulfillment—it touches on our impulse rather than because a basic issue of fate vs free will is involved in the story.

            Freud, On Narcissism.  Echo was a nymph who helped Zeus by talking to Hira while he was off with other women.  Hira figured this out and so took away Echo’s ability to converse. She wanted to meet Narcissus, a hunter.  She ran into him, introducing herself.  But he rejected her so she went to a cave.  Soon only her voice was left (an echo, given her inability to converse).  Narcissus was in love with his own reflection in a pond.  He would gaze at it continuously, even after he had gone to the underworld, according to Ovid.  In modern Psychology, narcissism is a specific disorder wherein one experiences sexual pleasure with one’s own body, according to Freud. The ordinary definition is: too much self-interest.  Oedipism is another psychological condition wherein one is obsessed with gouging out one’s eyes on account of guilt. 

            Erich Fromm (1900-1980) saw conflict between fathers and sons as the most important theme in the plays on Oedipus.  There is no evidence, Fromm claims, that Oedipus was sexually attracted to Jocasta.

            Carl Jung (1895-1961) wrote on archetypes and the collective unconscious.  Archetypes are patterns due to one’s humanity, thus shared by all.  They are universal, as are myths.  Myths represent the inmost feelings of humans, the realization of them typically leads to tragedy.  Certain images appeal to everyone.  For instance, the Mother as a model for nourishing.  Children begin as psychological appendages of their mothers.  Each archetype has a good and bad side.  Regarding the Mother, the Spinx is the terrible devouring mother.  The Father archetype involves strength, power and authority and is associated with storms and change.  These archetypes are not really stereotypical.  The animus is the male element in the female and the anima is the female element in a male.  Archetypal numbers include 3, 7 and 12.  For instance, the tripartite structure is common in human anatomy.  Joseph Campbell accepted Jung’s view.  For him, the Mandela (a circle) is the archetype of eternity.

            Solar Theory (Friedrich Max Muller) can be applied to the Oedipus cycle.  Laius is darkness, Oedipus is the rising sun, Jocasta is the violet-tinted clouds of dawn.  Antigone is the pale light opposite the setting sun. 

            Myth and Ritual Theory (James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough) claims that all myths are associated with ritual.  For instance, the Oedipus myth is associated with a breach in the marriage laws wherein ritual was required to restore fertility.  See Gen. 20: Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was taken into a king’s herim.  There were plagues until she was allowed to leave, thereafter the king’s women were fruitful again.  But in Oedipus Rex, Sophocles has the plague due to Laius’ murderer having gone free rather than due to Oedipus’ incest.  As another example of the myth and ritual theory, a scapegoat is from the Hebrew, coming from a goat that had been allowed to escape after the high priest had confessed (i.e. transferred) all the sins of the people to it. 

            Historical Basis Theory.  Myth comes from historical events.  For instance, there is a Thebes in Egypt with a king Akhanton, who had a deformed foot and who hated his father (he destroyed his father’s statues) and married his mother (though this was common).  He was killed in a war.  Maybe this was the historical basis for the Oedipus myth.

Classical eras:

Knossos, Crete 1600-1400 BC  (Minos: first navy)  Minoan Age

Mycenae  1400-1200 BC  (Trojan War)  Mycenean Age

Athens 5^th Century, BC.  Golden Age

Alexandria, Egypt 313-146 BC  Hellonistic Age

Rome  146 BC – 476 CE

            Athamas married Nephele (Cloud goddesss), and they had a son (Phrixus) and a daughter (Helle).  They were divorced.  Athamas cared for the kids and fell for Ino and married her.  But Ino didn’t like his kids.  Phrixus, rather than Ino’s kids, would get the throne.  Ino roasted seed corn so the seeds wouldn’t grow.  Ino paid off a messenger to the oracle.  That messenger reported back to Athamas: the corn will not grow unless you sacrifice Phrixus and Helle.  Nephele sent a special ram with a golden fleece.  Her kids climbed on it and flew east.  Flying near Troy, Helle fell off and drowned at the Hellespant Strait.  The ram flew Phrixus east over the Black Sea to Colchis, whose king was Aeetes.  He cared for Phrixus.  Eventually, Phrixus married Medea, a daughter of Aeetes.  Aeetes sacrificed the ram, hanging its golden fleece on a tree.  Jason would try to get it. 

            Jason was a hero.  Classical heroes typically had something unusual about their births or upbringing and have an outstanding quest or accomplishment.  Jason was the son of Aeson and Alcimede.  In Iolcus, Aeson had a wicked brother, Pelias, who usurped the throne from Aeson.  Jason was heir to the throne, so his parents, fearing Pelias, pretended that Jason had died and conducted a mock funeral.  His parents met Cheiron, a Centaur (half man half horse—who are typically lustful and like wine). Cheiron was a scholar.  He raised Jason.  When Jason had grown up, Cheiron told him to return to Iolcus to get back the throne.  He met the goddess Hira deguised as an old lady.  She tested him, asking him to help her cross the river (which he did—so she would help him later).  He lost a shoe helping her cross.  When he reached the city of Iolcus, Jason demanded that Pelias step down.  Pelias agreed on condition that Jason get him the golden fleece.  Jason agreed, and got Argus to build the Argo, a ship. See The Argonautica, by Apollonius of Rhodes, an epic poem. Athena helped Jason to build it by making it a talking ship.  The sailors were called the Argonauts. 

            The Argonauts included Castor and Pollux, the brothers of Helen (thus this was before the Trojan war).  Hylas, the squire of Heracles, and Heracles, were on board, as was Admetus.  Laertes, the father of Odysseus, was also on board, as was Peleus, the father of Achilles.  Meleager, the hero of the Calydonian boar hunt, was there, as was Argus, ship’s builder.  Orpheus, the poet and musician who could calm others, was there, as were Calais and Zetes, sons of Boreas, the North wind (Calais and Zetes could fly).  Atalana, a great huntress, also wanted to go, but Jason felt that one woman amid many men on board would not be a good idea.  In all, fifty sailed with Jason. 

            Jason was not as Odysseus had been as a leader. In fact, the men had wanted Hercules to be the leader. Jason was the leader because Hercules had refused.  In contrast to Odysseus, Jason depended on his men. 

            As the boat set sail, Chieron, who had raised Jason and was then raising Achilles, waved from the shore.  The first stop was the island of Lemnos. Queen Hypsipyle and the other women had neglected the worship of Afrodite, who then made them smell bad.  Their husbands subsequently took up with slave girls, so their wives killed them.  Polyxo, one of the women, suggested that rather than hurrying on the Argonauts they should use them to repopulate the island.  Jason was Hypsipyle’s lover. 

            Next, the Argonauts stopped at Cyziocus (named after its young king).  Cyziocus married Cleite.  He was a good host.  The Argonauts left, but a storm turned them back that evening.  Cyziocus thought they were invaders and attacked them.  Jason accidentally killed Cyziocus—the accidental killing of a friend.  So they set off again.  While on the water, Heracles broke his oar.  Hylas, son of Theiodamas and Menodice, was not only his squire but his friend as well, even though Heracles had taken some cattle from Theiodamas.  When the boat stopped again, Hylas was getting some water at a spring when the arm of a nymph grabbed him and he was never seen again.  Heracles looked for him, taking hostages and even staying behind when the Argo left. 

            The Argonauts went on, encountering Phineus, a prophet who had been blinded by Zeus for giving too much information in his prophasies and was then plagued by the Harpies (birds with women’s faces).  Jason assigned Zetes and Calais to chase the harpies.  They caught up to them at Strophades (island of turning).  Iris, a messenger goddess (and of rainbows too) was sent by Zeus to tell them not to kill the harpies.  So Zetes and Calais turned back.  Meanwhile, Phineus told Jason how to get through the clashing rocks (symplegades): send a dove and use it as an omen.  He sent it through, and only some of its tail feathers were caught.  A good omen.  So the Argo went through, with the rocks catching only the decoration at the rear of the Argo. 

            At Colchis, Jason asked his men whether he should get the golden fleece by force or diplomacy.  The men preferred the latter.  Jason went to the king, Aeetes, who told him that he could have the fleece if he could accomplish two tasks.  He had to yoke two fire-breathing dragons, bury its teeth, and kill the armed men who arose from the teeth.  This was the old folktale theme of setting a trap for an outsiders to be rid of him. Media, a daughter of Aeetes and a sorceress, agreed to help Jason because she had fallen for him.  She gave him Promethean sauve to become invulnerable.  She told him to get the armed men to fight each other, so he would only have to kill the remaining men. Aeetes denied Jason the fleece even though he had accomplished the required tasks. And he threatened that he would burn his ships if he and his men did not leave immediately. Media helped Jason again, even though she had qualms about going against the wishes of her father and her country.  She led Jason to where a dragon was guarding the golden fleece.  She used a sleeping drug on the dragon to get the fleece.  Jason agreed to take Medea with him, but he said he would not marry her until after their return trip. 

            The Argonauts and Medea went back via rivers (Danube, Po, and Rhone). Apsyrtus wanted to meet Media to get her to return the fleece.  Jason killed Apsyrtus.  So the Argo escaped the pursuers from Colchis.  The Argo landed at the island of Circe, who was Medea’s aunt.  Circe recognized Medea, and did a ritual (cutting the throat of a piglet and pouring blood on Jason) to cleanse Jason of killing Apsyrtus so the Furies would relent. Circe refused to help more because Medea had gone against her father.  Hira helped them through Scylla and Charybdis.  Orpheus drowned out the song of the Sirens. Talus, a big bronze giant, guarded Crete.  He pelted the Argo.  Medea gave Talus the evil eye.  He collapsed after looking from scraping his foot against a rock (his tendon near his foot was his vulnerability).  When they arrived at Phaeacia, king Alcinous was asked messengers from Colchis to send Medea back.  Technically, Medea belonged to her father because she was single.  Arete, the queen, told Jason and Medea that they should get married so Medea would not have to be sent back to Colchis.  So they were married at Phaeacia.

            When they returned to Iolcus, Jason went to Pelias, the king, to get the throne back for his father.  But even though Pelias said he would do so if Jason had gotten the golden fleece, he refused.  Medea got Pelia’s daughters except for Alcestis to dismember Pelias. She told them that she could rejuvenate things (e.g. she demonstrated on a lamb). She had rejuvenated Jason’s father, Aeson, giving him more years to live.  So they killed their father and chopped up his body believing that Medea would extend his life.  But Medea’s potion didn’t work on Pelias.  So Jason and Medea had to flee. They moved to Corinth for ten years, having two sons there.  Creon, the king of Corinth, asked Jason to divorce Medea and marry Glauce, his daughter.  This was an opportunity for Jason.  Medea was upset at him for taking it.  So Creon decreed exile for Medea and her two sons, though Medea got a day extension.  Medea, by Euripides, begins at this point.  Seneca wrote another version.  Jason claimed that he had done more for Medea than she for him because he had brought her to civilization.  She didn’t buy this. To get revenge on Jason, she called for him and apologized. She gave him a present for his new bride: a robe and crown (poisoned). Then she killed her two sons. Glauce put on the robe and died, enflamed.  Creon saw this and tried to help her, inadvertently poisoning himself.   Aegeus, the king of Athens, was visiting Corinth.  Childless, he had gone to the oracle, which told him not to loosen wine skins until he got home.  Medea asked him is he would take her back to Athens.  She said she could make a potion for him to be able to have kids.  Aegeus refused to take her back, fearing war with Corinth.  But he said she could stay in Athens if she could get there herself.  Having to flee, she was helped by her grandfather, Helios, who sent a chariot for her.  She went to Athens, then back to Colcis. This is a dues ex machine (god from a machine) ending wherein a character in trouble is helped by a god.  Jason lived on in Corinth.  Sitting under the Argo, some of the mast fell on him and he died. 

            The Argonautica deals with the quest for the golden fleece.  It is a literary epic rather than an oral epic. As a literary epic, it includes references to other works and explanations of the origins of things. Thus it was written for an educated reader.  It was written in the Hellonistic Age (323-146 BC), when oral epics were in style. For instance, Callimachus wrote short perfect poems rather than long books. Epics were not in style.  So Apollonious was bucking the trend. There was also an interest in travel and aetiologies (how names were gained) during this period. Philip of Macedon (382-336 BC) had expanded his state.  His son, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) conquered much of the then-known world, including Greece, Egypt and India.  Alexandria, Egypt was the best city then in the Greek world.  After Alexander, his empire split apart. Alexandria came under the Ptolemy.   A library, light house and museum/think tank were important there.  It was an international city.  The Septuagent was written there (the Greek version of the O.T.).  There was a change there from isolationism to ecumenicism (a common civilization for all men presumed, thus a blending of mythologies).  From the Greeks’ contact with the Egyptions, for instance, the Greeks came to believe that humans could become gods (eg. The Pharoh was a god to the Egyptions).  There was a blending of deities.  Hermes and Thoth, Io and Isis, Hephaestus and Ptoh, Cronus and Geb, and Zeus and Ammon.  Syncretism: a blending.  For instance, the Ptolemy invented Serapis, a blend of Osiris, Dionysus, Zeus, and Aesculapius, to be Alexandria’s patron deity.  There was also a blending into Greek mythology of the Assyrian belief that people could turn into stars. 

            Theseus was another hero. See an opera: Aradne Auf Naxos, by Richard Strauss, on Theseus. Aegeus, king of Athens, had been suffering from infertility.  The Oracle had told him not to loosen the wine strings until he got home.  This could mean: don’t get drunk or don’t have intercourse.  He consulted with Pittheus, king of Throezen.  He got Aegeus drunk and sent him to the bedroom where his daughter Aethra was resting.  Aegeus and Aethra had a son, Theseus.  Aegeus went back to Athens.  When Theseus could lift a rock to get the sword and sandal out, he could go to Athens to claim the throne.  While in Athens, Aegeus married Medea.  Still, Theseus was first in line for the throne.  Accordingly, he went to Athens when he was able to lift the rock.  He purposefully took the most challenging route so he would have the reputation of being a hero.  He overcame various creatures. 

1. Sinis, or Pitycamptes (pine-bender), challenged visitors to a pine-bending contest, breaking apart the losers between two bent pine trees.  Theseus used Sinis’ practice against him to kill him.
2. Cremiayun sow (Phaea) was a pig.  Theseus killed it.  He encountered other animals in other versions. 
3. Sciron
4. Cercyon, whom Theseus beat in a wrestling contest.
5. Procoptes (the cutter), or Procrustes (the crusher), put strangers on a bed. He cut their limbs if they were too big for the bed, and stretched them by crushing their bones if they were too small.  ‘procrustean’: producing conformity by arbitrary means.

Aegeus got word that someone coming to Athens had killed these lawless creatures.  Theseus arrived at Athens.  Medea was at that time Aegeus’ wife.  She figured out that it was Theseus who was coming.  She told Aegeus that it was really an enemy coming.  She did not want Theseus to gain the throne because she wanted that for one of her own children.  She planned that they would welcome Theseus with food and wine (and she would poison his wine).  But Aegeus recognized Theseus’ sword and sandals just before he was to drink of the wine.  As a result, Medea had to flee.  Theseus noticed that occasionally Aegeus had to give up some citizens to be fed to a monster at Crete.  Determined to end this practice, Theseus went along with the victims. 

      Concerning Crete, Zeus had had children with Europa: Sarpedon, Rhadamanthus, and Minos.  Three sons.  Minos married Pasiphae, and they had Phaedra, Ariadne, and Androgeos.  The king of Crete had died without an heir.  Minos wanted it.  He asked Posiedon for a sign.  Posiedon sent a bull out from the sea.  So Minos took that as a sign that he should be king.  He became king, but he did not sacrifice the bull as he should have.  He sacrificed an inferior bull to Posiedon instead.  As a result, Posiedon was angry and punished Minos.  He had Pasiphae fall in love with the bull.  She went to Daedalus, a craftsman in Crete in exile from Athens.  He built a wooden cow for Pasiphae, who went inside of it, hoping the bull would become sexually interested in her.  Pasiphae and the bull conceived the minotaur (half human, half bull).  The minotaur attacked crops and people.  Minos went to Daedalus for help.  Daedalus built the labyrinth (maze) structure building to contain the minotaur.  Minos subsequently made war on city-states to get victims to feed to the minotaur.  He went to Megara.  King Nisus had a lock of purple hair that was necessary for his political power.  The king’s daughter Scylla (not the one who turned into the six headed monster) fell in love with Minos so she cut Nisus’ purple lock of hair and gave it to Minos.  Scylla jumped into the water so Minos would take her, but he didn’t.  Eventually, she turned into the ciris bird.  In the play, Libation Bearers, Scylla had been bribed by Minos rather than falling for him.  Minos could get victims from Megara.  Then Minos went to Athens.  Minos claimed he had sent Androgeos there and he had not returned.  Maybe he had been killed by the Marathon bull as per her purpose in going, or maybe she had gone to participate in the athletic games and had been killed because he was winning. In any case, there was a war between Crete and Athens.  As part of the treaty, Athens had to send victims to the minotaur in Crete.  Theseus went with the victims, telling Aegeus he would use white sails upon his return to Athens if he had been successful. 

      On the way to Crete, Minos was taking advantage of an Athenian woman when Theseus objected.  Minos threw his ring overboard and told Theseus that if he could recover it he would leave the woman alone.  Theseus jumped overboard.  Helped by Amphitrite, he found the ring and made it back to the boat.  Once at Crete, Ariadne fell for Theseus, and helped him by giving him a ball of yarn.  He was sent into the labrynth.  As he went, he used the string so he would be able to back-track.  He killed the minotaur, rolling back the string to find his way out.  On the way back to Athens, Theseus stopped at Naxos.  He left Ariadne there while she was sleeping. Maybe Dionysus wanted her and had asked Theseus to leave her behind for him.  Eventually, Dionysus married her and took her up to the gods’ realm.  Theseus and others returned to Athens.  But he forgot to hang the white sails as they came into the harbor.  Seeing the black sails, Aegea jumped of the sea-cliff.  Hence, the Aegean Sea.

      Minos was angry because Theseus had escaped. So he imprisoned Daedalus with his son Icarus in a structure with no roof.  Daedalus made wings for his son and himself with bird feathers and wax.  He told his son to fly the middle course, not too close to the sun or the wax would melt and not too close to the sea or his wings would get wet from spray and thus too heavy.  Icarus flew to close to the sun, his wax melted, and he fell into the sea.  Daedalus arrived in Sicily.  King Cocalus was the ruler there.  Minos had come to Sicily in search for Daedalus.  Minos asked Cocalus if someone there could string a string through a shell.  Cocalus asked Daedalus, who used an aunt to run the string through it.  Minos knew it had been Daedalus.  Cocalus stalled in returning Daedalus to Minos. Cocalus had his daughter give Minos a bath.  She poured very hot water on him, killing him.  Daedalus had originally been from Athens.  He had a nephew, Perdix.  Daedalus killed Perdix (who became associated with a partridge bird) so he had to go into exile.  He went to Crete.  Doedal: ‘craftily wroght’.

      After Aegeus had died, Theseus became king of Athens.  Sadly, he had inadvertently caused his father’s death. Theseus went to little city-states near Athens to propose a loose federation.  Theseus was the only one to know where and how Oedipus had died.  Theseus got Creon to release six of the seven bodies of those who had attacked Thebes.  Hippolyta, an Amizon, and Theseus had a son, Hippolytas, who was sent to Troezen to be raised by Pitteus.  Theseus killed the bull at Marathon.  He became friends with Pirithous, who was famous for his wedding wherein a fight broke out.  Theseus and Pirithous were known as ideal friends.  Pirithous, a Lapith, married Hippodameia  (not the one with Pelops).  The centaurs were invited to their wedding, got drunk and kidnapped the bride. The others fought the centaurs before they could carry the bride away.  ‘Centauromachy’: battle with centaurs. 

      Theseus participated in the Calydonian boar hunt.  Later, he married Phaedra (the unwilling victim of a scheme by Aphrodite).  See Hippolytus, by Euripides, Phaedra, by Seneca, or by Racine.  The prologue is by Aphrodite.  The setting is Troezen.  Hippolytus refused to love.  This angered Aphrodite.  So she punished him.  Phaedra would fall in love with Hippolytus, her step son.  Phaedra told her nurse that she was in love with her step son.  Hippolytus, told of this by the nurse, rejected it.  Phaedra was ashamed.  She wanted revenge against Hippolytus who had repudiated her.  So she accused Hippolytus of having seduced her in a note she wrote just prior to hanging herself.  Theseus saw his dead wife and believed the note.  Posiedon had granted him three wishes.  Theseus hoped for the destruction of Hippolytus.  He decreed that Hippolytus would go into exile.  Hippolytus died.  Artimus set up a ritual so Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus would be remembered.  Theseus felt Hippolytus’ death had been his fault.  But he blamed the gods too (Euripides was questioning tradition in his play, rather than being an atheist).  Artimis saw that Hippolytus had been an innocent victim.  Virgil and Ovid had Hippolytus revived. Aesculapius, son of Coronis and Apollo, was killed by Zeus.  Apollo was upset, so he killed the Cyclopes who made Zeus’ thunderbolt.  Apollo was then punished by being Admetus’ servant for one year.  See also Gen. 39: Joseph and Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife seduced Joseph but told Potiphar that Joseph had seduced her. Potiphar threw Joseph out.  

      Theseus was forced into exile during a rebellion in Athens.  He went to visit Lycomedes.  Either he slipped on rocks was pushed by Lycomedes into the sea.  See Plutarch’s Lives, on the real people. There was an actual king of Athens by the name of Theseus.  Plutarch includes the myth as well. 

      Heracles (Hercules in Latin).  ‘Heracles’ is from the Greek: Kleos (glory) of Hera.  See Amphitruo, by Plautus.  A play on Heracles’ conception (Mercury gives the prologue). Heracles had a painless birth (Ovid disagreed).  Heracles’ mother was Alcmene and his father was Zeus.  His step father was Amphitryon. Zeus disguised himself as Amphitryon and slept with Alcmene.  Zeus told Amphitryon what had happened.  Iphicles and Heracles were born at the same time.  Some writers claim that Zeus swore that his child born on that day would be king.  So Hera got him to swear it and slowed down Heracles’ birth while speeding up Eurystheus’ birth.  The latter was born first, and he became king.  Heracles, on the other hand, was never a king.  As a boy, Heracles crushed snakes.  He had a temper.  He killed Linus, his music teacher.  To memorialize him, there was the Linus song ‘alas for Linus’.  Due to his anger, Heracles was sent to tend sheep.  Xenophon, in Memorabilia, wrote of an incident called ‘the choice of Heracles’.  Two woman, one happiness/vice and the other virtue.  He could only choose one.  He chose virtue.  Hardship and glory rather than a pleasant life. 

      Heracles married Megara.  They had three sons.  Heracles wanted glory, so he went to the Oracle to find out how to get it.  The Oracle told him to do twelve labors assigned by Eurystheus.  Some were in the Pelopennesia (South Greece) area, while others were in the underworld or outer area.  The twelve labors:

1. Nemean Lion (constellation Leo) was invulnerable.  Heracles choked him and then wore his skin.
2. Lernaean Hydra had many heads.  Heracles cut them off and dipped his weapons in its poisonous blood.
3. Erymanthian Boar

Then Heracles joined the Argo.

4. Cerynean Stag.
5. Stymphilian birds that ate humans and had feathers like arrows.  Heracles killed some using a sling shot.
6. Augean Stables.  Heracles cleaned the dung out of the stables by diverting two rivers. King Aureas of Elis (cite of the Olympic established by Heracles) withheld payment for this service, so Heracles killed him and his sons. 
7. Cretan Bull.  This was either the bull used by Zeus to capture Europa or Mino’s bull by which Pasiphae conceived the minotaur.  Heracles captured it and moved it to the plain of Marathon where Theseus finally killed it.

Heracles visited Admetus, who was married to Alcestis (see Alcestis, by Euripides).  Apollo rewarded Admetus with extra time if he could find someone to die in his place.  Alcestis agreed to die in his place.  Alcestis asked Admetus not to remarry because step-parents are bad to their step-children.  Admetus agreed.  Heracles arrived during Alcestis’ wake following her death.  Admetis allowed Heracles in, but Heracles was not a good guest—he got drunk and shouted orders for food.  Heracles left when he learned that it was Alcestis who had died.  He returned with a veiled woman.  It was none other than her!  Heracles had wrestled with death and rescued Alcestis from it.  Admetus and Alcestis presumably lived happily ever after. Based on this sketch, Aristophanes wrote into his comedies Heracles as a comic figure. T.S. Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party based on Alcestis. 

8. Horses of Diomedes were man-eating.  Diomedes was a son of Ares.  Heracles fed Diomedes to his own horses, which stopped them from eating any more humans.  
9. Girdle of Hippolyte, the queen of the Amizons in Scythia.  Heracles got her girtle. She fell for him.  He attacked Troy after not being paid for some horses. Heracles won the ensuing battle. After Heracles won, Hesione asked that Podarces (who was later called Priam), her brother, be saved. 

Labors in other areas of the known world (far west) and in the underworld: 10-12.

10. Cattle of Geryon, a triple-headed giant.  He had a magical herd of cattle.  Heracles killed the giant and got his cattle. Then her accomplished many small labors in small towns. 
11. Apples of Hespirides (in the far west). Golden apples guarded by a dragon with one hundred heads.  Heracles went to the Titan Atlas and asked him to get them for him.  Heracles held up the sky why Atlas went to get the apples.  When Atlas gave the apples to him, he asked Atlas to temporarily hold up the sky and this is how Heracles got out of having to hold up the sky. 
12. Heracles had to get the dog Cerberus from the underworld.  While there, he pulled Theseus from the stoveseat.  He also encountered Meleager, who told him to look up his sister Deianira, but he refused.   ‘Katabasis’: going down to the underworld.

After his labors, Heracles returned home to his wife, Megara and his sons and his step-father Amphitryon.  They were being threatened, and Heracles killed the offender.  But then he went tragically insane and killed his own wife and kids.  Distraught, he was joined by Theseus who convinced him to continue living.  Heracles sought Deianira, Meleager’s sister.  She was already engaged to Achelous, a river god.  Achelous wrestled Heracles.  Achelous could take on different shapes and had horns.  Heracles ripped off his horns and fruits came out (cornucopia: horn/plenty).  Heracles won and married Deianira.

See Euripides, Heracles Mainomenos and Seneca, Hercules Detaeus. 

            Heracles and Deianira were at a river when Nessos, a wicked centaur, approached them in an apparent-friendly manner.  Nessos offered to give Deianira a ride across the river.  Half way across, he began to violate her.  Heracles shot Nessos with an arrow.  Nessos told Deianira to keep some of his blood as a love potion to be applied to Heracles should his love ‘stray’.  But Nessos’ blood was poisoned because there was poison on Heracle’s arrow (it had been dipped in Hydra’s blood, which was poison).   Years later, Heracles fell in love with Iole (while he was still married to Deianira).  He asked Iole’s father for her hand but he refused.  Heracles met up with Iphitus, one of Iole’s brothers, and killed him, thus giving him blood pollution.  In need of a ritual to cleanse himself of it, he went to Nestor’s father, Neleus, who refused to allow his son to do the ritual.  So Heracles attacked Neleus’ city and killed Neleus and all of his sons except for Nestor.  Heracles then went to the oracle.  He tried to take Apollo’s tripod, but Apollo wrestled him and got it back.  The oracle told him he must serve as a slave for Omphale, Queen of Lydia, for one year.  She required Heracles to exchange clothes with her.  After his year of servitude, he went back to get Iole, and carried her back home.  His wife, Deianira, was not amused.  See Sophocles, Trachiniae and Seneca’s Latin translation, Hercules Detaeus.  Deianira remembered she had the centaur’s blood as a love potion, so she smeared it on a shirt and gave it as a present to Heracles.  After he put it on, he was in extreme pain.  His father had foretold that he would die from an animal already dead.  Deianira was distressed, realizing the blood was poisoned and would kill her husband.  So she hanged herself.  Heracles ordered a funeral pyre be built on Mt. Oeta and called for the father of Philoctetes to take his bow and arrows.  Philoctetes, the man with the smelly wound, would then get the bow and arrows.  When Heracles was on his burning funeral pyre, his mortal part burned off, becoming a shade in the underworld according to Homer.  His immortal part went to Mt Olympus to join with the other gods.  He made up with Hera, who allowed him to marry her daughter Hebe.

            Theories of Myth: 

1. Euhemerism.  Euhemeus was a Greek philosopher in Sicily in the 4^th century, BC.  He attributed the origin of the gods to the deification of past mortal heroes via inflated stories.
2. Structural Theory.  Structuralism emphasizes the structure of story rather than its content.  Claude Levi Strauss claimed that the mind divides experiences into binary oppositions.  Myth reconciles contradictions and thereby lessens them.  For example, the centaur brings together man and horse.  Heracles, a god-man, brings together life and death.  Strauss emphasized nature (the raw) vs. culture (the cooked).  For instance, Heracles reconciled an animal side (hairy, lion-skin, anger) with advanced culture (rid society of lawless creatures, founded the Olypics).  The myth brings these together.  Concerning the Theben myth, Strauss saw having one parent vs. two as a major contradiction reconciled.  Whereas Oedipus had two parents, the Spartio had one (the dragon’s teeth).  And concerning Cupid, Strauss claimed that he reconciles how to be a good son and a good husband.  Strauss has been criticized, however, for having arranged contradictions in myths to fit his theory.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt:  Oeneus married Ahaea.  They had Meleager, Deianira and other daughters.  Ahaea was told by the gods that Meleager would live only as long as a log then burning in the hearth during his birth would last.  Ahaea douced the log and put it in a secure place.  Years later, there was a boar hunt.  Atalanta wounded a boar, then Meleager killed it.  But he gave Atalanta credit for it.  Melaeger’s uncles were furious because Melaeger had given the boar to Atalanta.  Melaeger killed his uncles, which angered his mother.  She could not replace her brothers but she could replace Melaeger.  So she took out the log and burned it.  Melaeger died.  Melaeger’s sisters other than Deianira grieved his death so much they were turned into birds.

Atalanta had wanted to go with Jason on his voyage, but he refused because she would be the only woman on board.  Atalanta’s suitors raced her. She killed those who lost.  Hippomenos (Meilanion) fell for her.  He prayed to Anphrodite, who gave him golden apples.  During his race with Atalanta, Hippomenos dropped apples, knowing that Atalanta would be delayed in picking them up.  He won the race and married her.  According to Ovid, Hippomenos did not repay Amphrodite, so she got him back.  Hippomenos took Atalanta to the tavern or temple of Cybele, a saralye.  Cybele turned both of them into lions.  Natalie Shainess interpreted this story as that Atalanta had found a man intellectually her equal. 

Perseus.  He was an ancestor of Heracles.  Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae.  Danae was the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, and Aganippe.  Acrisius had been told by the gods that his grandchild would kill him.  So he locked Danae up underground so she would not have any children.  Zeus went to her and impregnated her.  The result was Perseus.  Acrisius ordered that the mother and son be put into a wooden chest and cast out to sea (Simonides wrote a poem about them in the chest).  As they neared Seriphos, Dictys caught the chest in his fishing net and took them in.  He took them to Polydectes, the king there.  He fell for Danae but she refused him for years.  Polydectes feared Perseus, so he trie to get rid of him.  He had a banquet, feigning that he had asked another woman to marry him.  Perseus did not have a gift, so he told Polydectes he would do him a favor.  Polydectes told him to go and get Medusa’s head.  Medusa was a gorgon. Medusa, according to Ovid, had been a beautiful woman. Posiedon (Neptune) had fallen for her.  He had brought her to the temple of Athena to have sex with her there.  Athena was angered by this sacralige.  So she turned Medusa into a monster with snakes for hair.  Any look at her would turn a person to stone.  Putting her head on something would be apotropiac—warding off evil.  Athena gave Persius her shield so he wouldn’t have to look at Medusa’s head as he cut off it off.  He could look at her reflection in the shield.  Hermes gave Perseus a seimitar sword (curved).  He told Perseus that the stygian nymphs in the far west near the entrance of the underworld (near the river styx) would give him other things that would help him.  The graiai (‘gray ladies’) shared one common eye among them, passing it between them as needed.  Perseus grabbed their eye as it was being passed, demanding directions to the stygian nymphs in exchange for returning it.  He got the directions and went to the nymphs, who gave him the winged sandals of Hermes so he could fly, a sack for Medusa’s head, and Hermes’ cap of invisibility.  Then he found Medusa and beheaded her.  Pegasus, son of Medusa and Neptune, popped out of her.  On his return, Perseus stopped by at Atlas’ house.  Atlas told him to leave, as he had been told that a son of Zeus would steal his golden apples.  Perseus showed him Medusa’s head and Atlas turned to stone, becoming Mt. Atlas—seen as holding up the sky.  Perseus fleed home. He saw Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia.   Cassiopeia had angered the nymphs because she had said that she was more beautiful.  So she was punished with a flood and a sea monster.  Cepheus was going to sacrifice Andromeda to the monster but Perseus asked to marry her.  He could, if he could kill the sea monster.  He put Medusa’s head on sea-weed, turning it to coral.  He killed the monster and rescued Andromeda. She had been engaged to her uncle, so Perseus showed Medusa’s head to him.  Perseus married Andromeda.  They went on to Seriphos. Once there, Perseus showed Medusa’s head to Polydectos, who turned immediately to stone.  Danae wanted to see her father.  Perseus, Danae and Andromeda went to visit Acrisius.  But he heard they were coming and fled to Larissa.  Perseus stopped there on his way.  In an athletic contest, he inadvertantly killed his father when his disc went into a crowd.  Later, Perseus was flying and he saw a mushroom and figured there would be water nearby (he was thirsty).  He landed, and took the mushroom as a sign he should build a city there.  He founded Mycenae.  Mykos: mushroom; mycologist: expert on mushrooms. 

Interpretations of the Perseus myth:

1. Freud.  The wooden chest represents the womb.  The beheading of Medusa represents castration anxiety.

2. Historical.  Dorgon priestesses wore masks. 

3. Jean Paul Sartre (existentialist): the gaze of Medusa represents the look of the other which makes one realize one is an object as well as a subject.  Consider, for example, voyerism wherein one freezes if one is caught. 

4. Ronald D. Laing, a psychologist.  The Medusa Complex is when the child realizes that he or she is being watched by others.  If this worries the child (e.g. worried about what others say about him or her), then his or her self-development will be stifled. 

Perseus had a brother, Proetus, who was married to Anteia.  Bellerophontes came to visit them.  He was handsome so Anteia fell for him but he rejected her.  So she told her husband that Bellerophontes had tried to seduce her.  Proetus refused to kill him because he was his guest.  So he asked Bellerophontes to deliver a message to Iobates. In the message, Proetus asked Iobates to kill Bellerophontes.  Iobates was Anteia’s father.  He lived in Lycia.  When he had received the message from his son-in-law (the first reference to writing in Greek mythology), he gave Bellerophontes three tasks.  He had to defeat the Amazons (warrior women), Solymi (a warlike tribe in the Near East), and the Chimaera (fire-breathing monsters having two heads, lion and goat, and a snake for a tail).  Bellerophontes was dismayed.  He met a prophet who told him to spend the night in Athena’s temple.  He did so, and in the morning he found a horse bridle in the temple.  Just outside the temple, he found Pegasis, a winged horse (who had popped out of Medusa when she was beheaded).  He put the bridle on her and rode her, overcoming the three groups he was to slay.  As a result, Iobates judged Bellerophontes to be a worthy fellow, so he gave him half of his kingdom and his daughter as well for marriage.  But Bellerophontes got too daring, using Pegasis to fly up to the gods on Mt Olympus.  Zeus was angered by this, and so he pushed them down the mountain.  Bellerophontes became a wanderer and Pegasis carried Zeus’ thunderbolts. 

            This story contains the theme of a jolted woman trying to ruin the man by accusing him of having seduced her.  The old name of Jerusalem was Hierosolymi.  Could it be that it was the city of the Solymi?  There is also the theme of one becoming a wanderer as a result of a bad action.  In the Bible, Jehovah gave Cain that punishment (Gen. 4:15).  With regard to the flying horse, Mohammad rode to heaven on one. 

            Orphous.  Orpheus was the son of Oegrus and Calliope.  He marred Eurydice.  He was devoted to Apollo and was the greatest human musician.  While just a bride, Eurydice took a walk.  To avoid an avid pursuer, she inadvertantly stepped on a poisonous snake and died. Orpheus took his lyre to the underworld, hoping to get his new bride back.  He convinced Charon, the boatman of the river styx, to refuse to bring her soul across, on the condition that Orpheus not look back when he and Eurydice were walking back out of the underworld until they were in the light.  But just as he was coming into the light, he assumed she was too, so he looked back at her.  But she was not yet out so she had to return to the underworld.  Orpheus had to go on without her.  He spent his time playing his lyre in the forest.  According to Ovid, this led to his death (attacked by Trace in the forest).  Aeschylus, in his play, Bassarae, claimed that Orpheus neglected worship of Dionysus because he was so preoccupied with Apollo that Dionysus directed the menads to attack him.  Either way, the muses buried his body at the foot of Mt. Olympus.  But his head rolled out to sea, washing up on the island of Lesbos.  It was buried there.  This is of symbolic significance because that island was the birthplace of lyric poetry (emphasizes emotion). 

            Historically, Sappho was a writer of lyric poetry who lived on Lesbos.  She was thought to be a lesbian because she was involved with a circle of girls.  But she had a daughter so she was probably bi.  Lyric poetry was popular after the time of the great epics (e.g. Homer—700 BC).  By the 5^th century, BC, dramas were popular.  And in the 4^th century BC, philosophy became popular. 

            Orpheus personified music.  Early christians identified him with the prince of peace.  There have been three operas on Orpheus.  Orphae aux Enfers, by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), a burlesque opera (making light of something).  Orfeo and Euridice, by Christoph Gluck (1714-1787).  And Orpheo, by Claudio M (1567-1643).  The theme of looking back is also in Gen. 19:11-14.  Lot was warned that he should leave Sodom and was instructed not to look back.  But his wife did, and she was turned to a pillar of salt as a result. 

            A cult developed around Orpheus, from roughly the 6^th century BC to the 4^th CE.  It provided an explanation of where mankind came from.  An anthropogony: an account of the origins of mankind.  The account was much like Hesiod’s.  The first thing to exist was Chronos (time).  The Aether, Chaos, and Erebus. Cronos formed an egg in Aether, resulting in Phanes. Out of Phanes came Night.  With Phanes, Night gave rise to Uranus (sky).  Uranus and Gaea (earth) gave birth to Kronos, who with Rhea gave birth to Zeus.  Zeus and Demeter had Perephone.  Persephone and Zeus had Dionysus Zagreus. The titans were jealous of him.  So they devoured his limbs.  Athena saved his heart and gave it to Zeus, who ate it.  Shortly thereafter, Zeus had an affair with Semele, resulting in Dionysus.  Thus Dionysus was ‘twice born’ not only by virtue of having been in his mother’s womb and his father’s thigh, but in being Dionysus Zagreus reborn.  Zeus punished the titans, burning them by his lightning into ashes.  Mankind was formed out of these ashes.  Because the titans had eaten the limbs of Dionysus Zagreus, mankind thus contained some divine (even though Dionysus Zagreus himself was not a god or god-man even though both of his parents were gods).  And because the ashes also contained the titans, mankind is evil as well.  This is the closest that Greek mythology gets to original sin.  The titans were evil, not just doing bad things.  Plato wrote of the titanic nature of mankind—that man has some innate evil.  

            The cult of Orpheus also had a doctrine of the transmigration of the soul, or metempsychosis wherein the soul goes from one body to another in another life.  There is a world soul (Plato believed in it too).  When a human being is born, a portion of that world soul is broken off and put in the body.  It is entombed in that body.  Through one’s life, the soul wants to rejoin the world soul.  When the body dies, the soul leaves it through its holes and goes to the underworld for a time, drinking of the river of forgetfulness (river Lethe).  So the soul forgets its past life.  The soul goes up to the world.  Depending on how good or bad it was in its former life, it occupies a higher or lower form of life (though it must be an animal).  The Orphic worshipper aimed to be so good in his life that his soul could rejoin the world soul again.  He could do so by following the rules of the cult.  Unlike the Dionysian cult that emphasized feeling (estacy to feel the deity within), the Orpheus cult emphasized reason (following rules).  They were vegetarians because an animal could have been a human in a past life.  The cult view of deity was transcendent, thus one would find it outside of oneself. In contrast, the Dionysians saw deity as infused in everything, thus one would look inward to find it.  Plato accepted much of the Orphic doctrine (innate evil and transmigration of the soul and the world soul).  Neitzche, in Birth of a Tragedy, saw in ancient Greek art a struggle between reason and emotion (i.e. between the two cults). 

            Both the Orphic and Dionysian cults viewed the gods as external even as they both had their own ways of experiencing the divine within (through the world soul and estasy, respectively).

            Pygmalim was an artist.  He did not fall in love with a woman, but fell for a statue he made of a woman.  He prayed to Venus to ask for a wife, but she knew what he really wanted: for his statue to become a real woman.  So Venus made it come to life.  Pygmalim and his wife had a daughter, Paphos, who had a son, Cinyras, who in turn had a daughter, Myrrha, who fell for Cinyras.  She told her servant, who arranged for her to slip into her father’s bed in the dark.  They had sex.  Later, he found out that he had been sleeping with his daughter. He was angry.  Fearing him, she asked the gods if she could change form.  She transformed into a myrr tree, and gave birth to Adonis, who became a handsome hunter.  Venus fell for him.  But he died hunting.  So Venus dedicated the anemone (wind flower) after him, as it bloomed very short and he had lived a short life.  Eventually, there was an Adonis cult.  Adonis was thought to be wanax (Lord) of Cyprus.  Phoenicians took over Cyprus, calling him Adon (Lord).  When the Greeks took over, they added ‘is’, calling him Adonis.

The Pygmalion Complex is when an artist tends to like the object of his or her creation.  The Pygmalion Effect is a persistently held belief in another person such that the belief becomes a reality.  George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion involved a man transforming a woman into a lady and falling in love with her (his ‘creation’). 

Hero (f) and Leander (m).  Leander used to swim across the Hellsfont strait between Europe and Asia, guided by Hero’s oil lamp.  One night, her lamp blew out in a storm and there was no light, so Leander got lost in the water and drowned. Hero jumped into the sea the next day and died. 

Baucis (f) and Phileman (m).  Zeus and Hermes tested humans on hospitality by visiting them in disguise.  There were not invited into houses until they came to the poorest house, that of Baucis and Phileman. They welcomed them, preparing a dinner for them.  The couple didn’t kill their goose.  When they saw their wine bowl refill itself, they realized the status of their guests.  But the gods were satisfied and did not ask them to kill their goose.  The gods sent a flood for all but that house, which became a temple. The couple became its priest and priestess.  The gods agreed to their request that they would die at the same time.  When they died, they were turned into two very close trees—so close they looked from a distance like one. 

Salmacis (f) and Hermaphroditus (m).  Salmacis fell for Hermaphroditus, so she offered herself but he refused.  When he went skinnydipping, Salmacis went in too and offered herself again.  But he still refused.  She prayed that they would become one creature. They became the hermaphrodite—both male and female.

Pyramus (m) and Thisbe (f) lived in Babylon.  They were neighbors who spoke through a crack in the wall between their houses.  They set a time and place to meet.  Thisbe arrived there first.  Her veil was bloodied by the jaws of a lioness.  When Pyramus arrived, he assumed that the lioness had eated Thisbe, so he killed himself.  Some of his blood got on the mulberry tree, turning its fruit red.  Thisbe saw Pyramus dying and killed herself.  She wanted them to be buried in the same tomb and that the mulberry tree would memorialize them (with red berries).  Shakespeare used this story in Romeo and Juliet, and in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. 

Nature deities were associated with the countryside.  They were minor deities.  Pan (‘All’, because he had delighted all the gods when he was a baby) was the god of the woods, flocks, shepards, and pastures. When flocks do not reproduce, shepards put out statues of Pan to wake him up.   He had two horns and goat feet.  The medieval view of the devil came from descriptions of him.  Pan liked to sneak up to people (thus ‘panic’).  He was unsuccessful in love.  Luna (Selene) was the goddess of the moon.  She was lured into the forest by Pan.  See Robert Browning, Pan and Luna (a poem).  Pan fell for Pitys, a nymph.  She ran off and asked to be changed into a pine tree because she was being chased by Pan.  Pan also fell for Echo, but she too rebuffed him.  The shepards tore her apart.  Pan liked Syrinx too.  She ran and wanted to be transformed into reeds.  Pan made the pan pipes (a musical instrument) out of them.  Pan challenged Apollo to a musical context and lost.  Mt Tmolus acted as the judge.  King Mitas in the audience objected so Apollo gave him an ass’s ears. So he wore a turbin to hide them.  In 490 BC, the Persians attacked Greece (near Marathon, which is near Athens). A runner from Athens who was going to Sparta to get them to join the fight met Pan.  The runner promised a festival in honor of him, so Pan agreed to scare off the Persians.  So the battle was over by the time the Spartans arrived.  See Herodotus. 

A nymph is a young woman.  Nymphs danced to music in the forests.  They were not nymphomaniacs.  Nor were they immortal.  They were intermediate, between the deities and mankind.  Some were associated with trees—these associated with oak trees (and eventually with woods in general) were called Dryads (the root of Druid).  When the tree died, so did the nymph. In pre-Hellenic times, animism, the belief that living things have a spirit within them, existed. Erysichthon cut down an oak tree even though there was a nymph in it.  So he was punished—beset with an insatable  hunger.  The nymphs’ names often end in ‘ads’, ‘ades’, or ‘ids’.  They are patronymic (indicate the father).  For instance, Oceanids, Acheloids, Nereids, Oreads, Nysiads. 

Satyrs are half human/half goat.  They are mostly human.  Attic satyrs live around Athens.  He had a horse’s characteristics.  He liked to drink and chase women (especially Nymphs).  He represented uncontrolled fertility in the countryside (not farms).  Marsysas challenged Apollo to a musical contest and lost.  He played the flute.  Apollo punished him by having him skinned alive (flayed).  Satyr plays featured choruses by satyrs as a relief.  For instance, The Cyclops. 

Sineni were bald fat jovial old men who often accompanied Dionysus.  They had the ears of horses.  One fell asleep in Midas’ rose garden. He was sent back.  Dionysus was glad to have him back.  Midas was rewarded by receiving the Midas Touch. Everything he touched would turn to gold.  But this included food.  So he wanted to be rid of that touch.  Dionysus told him to bath at Pactolus river (there is gold in that river).  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book, retold ancient myths.  He added that Midas had a daughter, Marygold, and that when Midas touched her, she turned to gold.  So he wanted to be rid of the midas touch. 

Arcadia was often the setting of the nature deities (in the southern part of Greece).  Faunus was a Roman diety that corresponded to Pan. That is, a god of the forest.  See The Marble Faun, a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Priapus was the god of fertility in Greece.  He was the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite.  His symbol was the phallus.  He chased Lotis, who changed into the Lotis flower.  Priapea were poems in honor to him.

Months of the year.  Janus was only in Roman mythology.  He is two-faced.  The god of doorways and beginnings.  A janus word has two opposite meanings.  For instance, the cleave is to cut or to cling to.  Sanction is to punish or to give approval to.  February was named after a Roman feast of purification.  Mars was the Roman god of war.  April is from the Latin verb aperire (to open).  The buds open in April.  Maia could be one of two goddesses, the mother of Hermes or a Roman garden goddess.  Juno was the wife of Jupitor.  Goddess of marriage.  June is associated with weddings.  July was named for Julius Caesar.  He reformed the calendar to the Julian (still used by the Orthodox Christians).  Augustus (an emperor of the Roman empire) was used for August.  September was named for the number seven in Latin.  October for eight.  November for nine.  December for ten. 

Signs of the Zodiac (a representation of animals in the sky).  Aquarius (‘Aqua’ in latin) is of a man pouring water out of a jug.  Ganymede was the cup-bearer of the gods.  Deucalion (with Pyrrha) survived the flood.  Capricorn (corn: horn; Capri:great).  Pan or Amalthea (provided nourishment for baby Zeus).  Sagittarius (archer) is the centaur Chieron, a great archer who raised Jason and Achilles.  Scorpio.  Orion was a great hunter. Stung by a scorpion.  But Zeus put both in the sky.  Orien is in another constellation.  Libra is not an animal.  It is the scale (e.g. of justice).  Two pans.  Virgo (maiden) is either Astraea (goddess of justice, who left mankind at the beginning of the Iron Age) or Erigone (daughter of Icarius).  Icarius was a friend of Dionysus.  Dionysus gave him wine. Icarius gave his other friends the wine.  They thought Icarius had poisoned them so they killed him. A dog shows Erigone that Icarius is dead. She hung herself. Young girls mysteriously killed themselves until the ones who killed Icarius were found.  Leo (lion in latin) is the Nemean Lion slayed by Heracles (who wore its skin).  Cancer (crab) was the crab that Hera sent to Heracles when he was killing the hydra. Hera sent the crab to the sky.  Gemini (twins) were Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Helen, who were put into the sky by Zeus so they would be together (Castor was mortal whereas Polydeuces was immortal).  Taurus the bull is really Zeus.  The bull that carried Europa to Crete. Aries (ram) was the ram with the golden fleece.  It was sent by Nephele when he was about to sacrifice Phrius and Helle.  Pisces is the sign of two fish in opposite positions.  Eros and Aphrodite were disguised as fish, which went in opposite directions to escape Typhoeus.

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[1] The Momeric Hymn to Demeter is the Greek source, and Ovid’s Metamorphasis is the Roman source.

[2] Stesichorcs (500 BCE) wrote a palinode poem (retracts part of what has been written earlier) to the effect that Helen didn’t really go to Troy.  Euripides wrote a play, The Helen, in which the real Helen went to Egypt and Menelaus found her there.  Homer had not written this. 

[3] In another version, Thetis dipped Achilles into the river Styx, holding only his heels above the water.

[4] See The Argchautica by Apollonius Rhedius.

[5] Euripides also wrote the play, Iphigenia in Tauris.

[6] Sophocles wrote a play on this called Ajax.

[7] E. R. Dodd, The Greeks and the Irrational.