Greco-Roman Mythology

Theseus and Ariadne

2010-07-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

One of the best known myth-tales from classical times is that of the Athenian hero Theseus and the Cretan Minotaur. Infatuated with the arrival of the foreigner and handsome prince, Ariadne (daughter of king Minos and step-sister of the monster) helps Theseus to kill the living hybrid and get out safely from the gloomy and winding labyrinth. Later she escapes from the island with his new fiancee, leaving family and friends behind.
Why ? Simply because she was in love.

Ariadne is abandoned in Naxos, not knowing she will become the wife of mighty Dionysus
Painting by John William Waterhouse

Is this the end of the story ? Not even near !

Theseus abandons Ariadne in the island of Naxos and sails home to meet his unfortunate father Aegeus, who will soon commit suicide due to his son's neglect. What about Ariadne ? She is to marry Dionysus, God of wine and ecstasy.

Here are the Wikipedia links to the full story of Theseus and Ariadne.

What comes next is part of a blog-posting I came across which deals with the psycological and affective "behind the scenes" of Theseus and Ariadne.
Did Ariadne leave her family for love ? Was it a command of the Gods ? Destiny ? What did she feel ? What went through Theseus' mind when he anandoned her ?

It starts here ...

I try to imagine Theseus’s shipride to Crete–how he and his fellow travellers were stripped of their weapons as soon as they boarded ship, and then forced to row, side by side, the long voyage to the land of the enemy. How close they must have grown as every day and every league drew them nearer to the end of so many things. Did they talk about their youths? their mothers? their sweethearts? Maybe they confided in each other their plans for farming peaceably or fighting well or nurturing families, plans that they had fostered since they were little. These futures were to be sacrificed, and the sweeter the future, the greater the sacrifice. I wonder if this comforted them. I wonder if they recognized themselves in the throes of their fear and grief, stripped of time like that, taken from their homes, their families and their pasts, sent off to a strange place where time for them would end, and that end was absolutely knowable and terrifying. And even as they grew closer and grew to love each other in their misery, and learned how to comfort the ones who were always crying, they were also growing nearer to the end of that closeness, the end of comfort, the end of love.

Did they dream? Did they have nightmares of running in slow motion through a pitch-black labyrinth, pounding against walls and tripping over stairs while their ears were flooded by the roar of the monster coming closer, coming to tear them into pieces and eat them alive?

Then they landed, maybe they were enchained, maybe they cried, most likely they went into shock at the naked imminence of their deaths. I imagine them divided from the Cretans by hatred, by fear, by language . . . . a babbling and antagonistic crowd gathered around them, poking, prodding, leering, doing as we do when we are about to knowingly hurt somebody: blaming it on them. Theseus would have kept a brave face. He’d already proven himself a fearless hero, and the experience had made him cocksure. He believed in his blood that he was meant for great things.

The myths say that Ariadne was made by one of the goddesses to fall in love with Theseus, but if there are no goddesses than this is a fiction and Ariadne fell in love for the usual reasons. I can see how standing on the dock in the middle of all that rabble, commanding everyone’s attention with his strength and beauty, that Theseus was magnetic. So maybe it started with a spark of attraction and awe. Or maybe Ariadne saw Theseus and immediately recognized him as a kindred soul, someone she had known in past lives and who was therefore instantly knowable and lovable to her. Or it could have been pity for the Athenians that inspired her to help them, and she just chose Theseus to help directly because he was their leader, and fell in love from there. Maybe she just didn’t like being alone, or maybe she was rebelling against her Dad. Maybe she was simply ambitious, or tired of Crete, or hungry for adventure. Maybe maybe maybe. I’m not sure it matters, because the result is the same: she loved him suddenly and passionately.

I think of her faith in love, and I’m touched or appalled. She loved Theseus so much that she threw away her father, her mother, her family, her throne, and her home. She loved him so much that she trusted him completely. “If I help you, will you take me away with you and make me your wife?” she asked. Theseus said, “Yes.” She didn’t hold anything for ransom: right up front she gave him the thread, the sword, and the directions through the labyrinth. Because he said he loved her, she gave him everything.

So what about Theseus? Did he mean it when he said, “yes,” or was he saying whatever it took to survive and become the hero of his people? Maybe he was sincere when he said yes, I love you, and just as sincere at Naxos when he said to himself, no, I don’t want to take her home. What was the value of his word? Having said yes, even if he’d tired of Ariadne by the time they got to Naxos, shouldn’t he have kept his promise so that his word remained a true and constant thing? Or was it vanity and cowardice? Was he too afraid of Athenian opinion to remain loyal to the daughter of the enemy, even if she did save his life? Or was it hypocrisy: some scholars say that, as a rule, Greek heroes in the end find it unforgivable that a woman would betray her own kind, even if it’s to save the Greek hero, and the Greek hero inevitably punishes her for the betrayal after he’s benefited from it.

Did Theseus believe in love? A man who would risk sacrificing his life to save his people but not consider sacrificing any freedom, pride, or pleasure to save the woman who saved him. It’s possible, then, that he didn’t believe in love. I guess Athenians to this day, though, are grateful for the lie that saved their legendary King and preserved Athens. What they will never know is whether Theseus might have been even greater, and Athens even more wonderful, had Theseus kept his word to Ariadne despite the cost. Perhaps a future was lost in which a powerful and brave woman inspired and influenced a great king. Perhaps a future was lost wherein Theseus let nothing, especially not the betrayal of a woman who loved and helped him, chip away at his integrity. In that future, maybe Theseus feels bold and pure for longer and therefore rules with greater integrity and confidence. Because maybe abandoning Ariadne put a crack in his virtue that gradually opened into a fissure. And thus he matured into the kind of man who on a lark, with his best friend Pirthouous, would abduct a seven-year-old Helen and have his mother keep the little girl prisoner until she was old enough to marry, who became the kind of man who would help his best friend try to steal another man’s wife–a god’s wife, in fact.

Ariadne alone on Naxos and abandoned, maybe pregnant or maybe rescued by Dionysus, cursed Theseus in her grief. She cursed him to forget to change the sail from black to white to signal victory to his father. So when poor Aegeus, who had kept watch on that cliff for months, finally saw a speck on the horizon, he held his breath until it came close enough to make out. The anticipation he must have felt! Because he’d missed his son so much, and worried over him, grieved for him, prayed for him, imagined this moment. . . and here he came at last. . .. Then it took one split second for Aegeus to see the black sail, to feel his heart break in two, and to let go of life and fall into the sea. Suddenly, just like that, Theseus became King.

When he was an old man himself, Theseus would stand on that same cliff and look out at the ocean, imagining Naxos just beyond the horizon. He would allow himself for a few seconds to imagine Ariadne years ago waking up from her dream on the beach all alone, with Theseus completely gone. The weeping and the pacing and the shocked disbelief, the torturous helplessnees of loving somebody who doesn’t love you. The lamenting. The heart-crushing pain. Did she drown herself? Grow old and bitter? Marry somebody else? He would never know anything for certain except that he’d done her harm. He would think this, and maybe remorse would clench his chest, because the guilt engendered by that decision might have flavored everything that came after it: his rule of Athens, his adventures abroad, his subsequent love affairs. Maybe he felt regret. But the abandonment left the sail black, which killed his father, which made him king. Power and adventure or love and sacrifice? If Theseus had it to do all over again, would he have chosen differently?

And that’s why he’s like the ship of Theseus. Over time, it doesn’t really change. It’s the same ship, and like the ship, Theseus would have made the same choices. Or the ship only looks the same but actually has been fundamentally transformed over time. And like the ship, Theseus with the wisdom of age knows now he might not have betrayed Ariadne, he might’ve saved his father’s life, and had time to grow wiser before becoming king. And thus he might have become an old man standing on a high cliff without this regret, guilt, or anguish in his heart.

Interestingly, legend has it that the next great love of Theseus’s life was Antiope, an Amazon warrior — sister to the queen of the Amazons, in fact. She was killed fighting in battle by Theseus’s side.

Taken from "Theseus and Ariadne" (A world in a Grain of Sand)

Battle of Marathon

2010-03-08T05:26:00.000-08:00

Ten years before the famous Spartan "Last Stand" (Battle of Themopylae - Leonidas' 300 heroic army), the Persian empire had already made a futile attempt to enslave Mainland Greece.
Marathon, a city state near Athens, was the perfect setting for this early stand.

Video coming from The History Channel - Battle of Marathon

The year is 490 BC; the Greco Persian Wars had already started and King Darius (Xerxes' father) is leading the Asian army to subjugate the Hellenic city-states. After a series of victories, the Persians arrive at the shores of Marathon, where they are "received" by general Miltiades and his Athenian hoplites. Though the Spartans were early invited to hold the Persian invasion side by side with the Athenians, they only arrived late after the Persians had already fled back to Asia.

Ten years later Darius' heir, Xerxes, was back again in Greece to try to finish what his father had already started. After an initial success in Thermopylae and Artemisium (480 BC), the Persians were later defeated at Salamis and Plataea (479 BC), giving a final victory to the Greeks and expelling the Persian Empire from their territory.

The History Channel, once again, has made a good job at delivering this part of history to a wide audience. We can argument that it's a bit "cinematographic" and "mythological", putting Miltiades as the strategic saviour of all Greece and other details to take into consideration. Nevertheless, their job is great; an entertaining must see !

The iconic Marathon race (Wikipedia modified version)

According to the Herodotus, father of History, an Athenian runner named Pheidippides (or Philippides in some accounts) was sent to run from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance before the battle, covering the distance of 140 miles in two days. Then, following the battle, the Athenian army marched the 25 or so miles back to Athens at a very high pace (considering the quantity of armour, and the fatigue after the battle), in order to head off the Persian force sailing around Cape Sounion. They arrived back in the late afternoon, in time to see the Persian ships turn away from Athens, thus completing the Athenian victory.

Later, in popular imagination, these two events became confused with each other, leading to a legendary, but inaccurate version of events. This myth has Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens after the battle, to announce the Greek victory with the word "Nenikēkamen!" (We were victorious!), whereupon he promptly died of exhaustion.

When the idea of a modern Olympics became a reality at the end of the 19th century, the initiators and organizers were looking for a great popularizing event, recalling the ancient glory of Greece. The idea of organizing a 'marathon race' came from Michel Bréal, who wanted the event to feature in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. This idea was heavily supported by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, as well as the Greeks. This would echo the legendary version of events, with the competitors running from Marathon to Athens. So popular was this event that it quickly caught on, becoming a fixture at the Olympic games, with major cities staging their own annual events. The distance eventually became fixed at 26 miles 385 yards, or 42.195 km, though for the first years it was variable, being around 25 miles (40 km) — the approximate distance from Marathon to Athens.

Monsters of Classical Mythology

2010-01-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

Monsters in classical mythology are typically part animal and part human, or else they constitute a collection of animal graftings. They are not really horror monsters, just unpleasant or nasty afflictions sent by the gods. They often do no more than throw into relief the heroism of the main character (Perseus, Oedipus, Odysseus, Theseus) by existing simply to be overcome or destroyed as obstacles to his goal.

Cerberus, Minotaur and Echidna
Slideshow in QuickTime Version (17.6 MB)

Cerberus
The watchdog of the realm of Hades, generally described as being a three-headed dog with a serpent tail, and on his back innumerable snakes' heads. He is believed to be the son of Echidna and Typhon. Chained in front of the gates of the Underworld, he terrorizes souls upon their entering. You can catch a glimpse of him in Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI (Aeneas' journey into the underworld) and in Dante's Inferno. In other stories, Cerberus was bested by men such as Heracles and Orpheus.

Medusa
Once a beautiful woman, Medusa was the child of Phorcys and Ceto. Of the three "gorgons", Medusa was the only mortal. Their hair was a mass of serpents; they had huge tusks, hands of bronze, and golden wings enabling them to fly. Anyone who encountered their gaze was turned to stone immediately from a horrible fear and loathing. Poseidon was the only immortal not fearful of Medusa since he fathered a child with her. Medusa was defeated by Perseus, who managed to chop off her head by looking at her through a looking-glass, which was most likely a bronze shield. This story can be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Athena made use of Medusa's head by fixing it to the center of her shield or her aegis.

Echidna
Is the mixture of a serpent and a woman, a beautiful fair-faced nymph from the waist up, but a horrible serpent below. She grew up in her cave and used her beautiful head and torso to lure men but once they were trapped, her serpent nature took over and she ate them raw. Echidna mated with the storm god Typhon and gave birth to a great lot of famous monsters: Chimaera, the Hydra of Lernae, the dragons of Colchis and the garden of the Hesperides, the Gorgons, the eagle that eats Prometheus’ liver, Cerberus and its brother Orthrus. The hundred-eyed Argos kills Echida in her sleep to prevent her from eating him as she has eaten other travelers.

Lernaean Hydra
A snake with numerous heads that were sometimes said to be human as well. It was brought up near the source of the river Amymone in order to provide a test for Heracles. The breath of the Hydra was so venomous that anyone who approached it would die, even if the monster was sleeping. Heracles thought to destroy it by cutting off its heads, but as soon as he did so more heads grew in their place. Therefore Heracles seared the bleeding necks of the monster with a torch in order to prevent growth that way. According to some legends one of the heads was immortal, but Heracles cut it off anyway and buried it deep in the earth. Heracles also dipped his arrowheads in the Hydra's blood and made them extremely poisonous.

Pegasus
Winged horse of Bellerophon. He was the offspring of Poseidon and the Gorgon Medusa. The winged steed was born when the blood fell into sea from Medusa's neck. Pegasus was born at the same time as Chrysaor. Bellerophon was only able to tame the steed when Athena gave the hero a golden bridle. Bellerophon used Pegasus in all his adventure: killing the monster Chimaera, defeating the Solymi and Amazons. When Bellerophon thought to fly Pegasus to Olympus, the home of the gods, they send a gadfly to sting Pegasus. Bellerophon was thrown off his horse; the hero became lame for his misdeed. After this, Pegasus lived in the stable in Olympus offering his service to Zeus, carrying his thunderbolts.

Harpies
Birds with the heads of women, long claws, faces pale with hunger, which leave behind filth and stench. They were originally sent by Zeus/Jove to torment a blinded soothsayer, Phineas. Driven away by the heroes of the Argonaut expedition, they took refuge on an island on which that Aeneas lands in Virgil's Aeneid, Book III. Aeneas and his men see goats and oxen first, and so slaughter a batch and plan a barbecue, being sure to say grace: "Then call the gods for partners of our feast". The Harpies "snatch the meat, defiling all they find, (...) and parting leave a loathesome stench behind." In other words, every time Aeneas tries to get the picnic going, the Harpies crap all over the food. So they prepare an all-out war with the birds.

Cyclop
These beings are giants with one enormous eye in the middle of their forehead. In Hesiod, the three sons--Arges, Brontes, and Steropes--of Uranus and Gaea, the personifications of heaven and earth, were Cyclopes. They were thrown into the underworld by their brother Cronus, one of the Titans, after he dethroned Uranus. Zeus released the Cyclopes from the underworld and they gave him the gifts of thunder and lightning. In Alexandrine poetry, the Cyclopes were considered merely as subordinate spirits: smiths and craftsmen who made the weapons for the gods. They forged Zeus' lightning bolts. In Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclopes are shepherds from Sicily. They are lawless, savage and cannibalistic. They fear neither gods nor humans. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus is trapped in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon. In order to escape from the cave Odysseus blinds him, incurring further wrath from Poseidon.

Griffin
Griffin or Gryphon was a giant creature with the head and wings of an eagle, but the body and hindquarters of a lion. There are only a few references of the griffins in the Greek mythology. The Greek historian, Herodotus, who claimed they come from the land of the Hyperboreans. The griffins were most likely of Asiatic origin.

In his play Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus mentioned the griffins with their sharp beaks. Aeschylus says that the griffins lived around the river rolling gold alongside with the hounds of Zeus and the mounted one-eyed Arimaspians. The geographer Pausanias reported that the griffins were seen guarding their hoards of gold from the thieving one-eyed Arimaspians, their neighbours. However, there are many depictions of griffins in paintings, both in Bronze Age Crete and Greece, as well as in classical Greece. In the Minoan civilisation (Bronze Age), seals have been found, where naked woman or goddess held a griffin by the ear. This goddess was known as the Mistress of Animals, who was later identified with the Artemis, goddess of hunting and wild creatures.

Hecatoncheires
The Hecatoncheires or the Hundred-Handed were offspring of Uranus and Gaea; they were brothers named Briareus, Cottus and Gyges. They had hundred hands and fifty heads. Their gigantic size and their ugliness frightened their father, Uranus, who was ruler of the universe. Uranus threw his sons into Tartarus, the deepest region of the Underworld. This caused great pain to Gaea. When Gaea gave birth to another set of ugly, giant sons, the Cyclops were met with similar fates as their elder brothers. The Cyclopes were also imprisoned in Tartarus. Only the Titans, who were fairer in looks, escaped the fates of imprisonment. Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, overthrown his father and became supreme ruler of the universe. Gaea had hoped that Cronus would release her sons who were imprisoned in Tartarus. Cronus refused to release them, so Gaea foretold that he would meet a similar fate as his father.
War broke out between the Titans and the sons of Cronus, known as the Olympians. The Olympians were the younger gods, led by the younger brother Zeus. The Cyclops made weapons for the Olympians. The Titans and Olympians were evenly matched, until Zeus released the Hecatoncheires from Tartarus. With the help of the Hecatoncheires, Zeus and his brothers were able to throw Cronus and the other male Titans into prison. Zeus set the Hecatoncheires to watch and guard the Titans, who were imprisoned in Tartarus.

Lamia
Somewhat vampirical, this was a female monster who was thought to steal children and drink their blood. She was thought to have a woman's head and breasts, but a serpent's body. In some accounts she was one of Zeus' lovers who bore him children. Hera, in fits of jealousy, caused each child that was born to die. In despair, Lamia became a monster jealous of mothers more fortunate than herself. So she devoured their children. Female spirits which attached themselves to children in order to suck their blood were also called Lamiae.

Minotaur
The Minotaur was a beast that had the body of a man and the head of a bull. Legend has it that King Minos of Crete tried to cheat Poseidon by begging for a beautiful white bull for sacrifice to the gods. However, when Minos got hold of this bull he put it in with his own herds. Very angry, Poseidon caused Minos' wife to fall in love with the bull and become its lover. The Minotaur was the result of this weird union. The Labyrinth was built in order to house the beast and each year he was fed with seven boys and seven girls who were the tribute exacted by Minos from Athens. Theseus was able to defeat the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, King Minos' daughter. She gave him a skein of thread and a sword so that he might kill the monster and then retrace his steps back through the labyrinth.

Further reading: "Open minded or twisted sexual behaviour ?"

Scylla
The six-headed monster that resided at the Strait of Messina. Scylla was originally a beautiful maiden who was loved by a minor sea god named Glaucus. The sorceress Circe was in love with Glaucus, but the sea god did not return her love. In a jealous rage, Circe poured one of her potion into area where Scylla normally bathed. Scylla was transformed into a monster with six long necks, with the head of ugly hounds.

Scylla's lair was on the opposite side of the strait, where a giant whirlpool, the Charybdis, bring complete destruction to any ship sailing nearby. To escape both Scylla and Charybdis was virtually impossible. If the ship sailed near Scylla, they would lose sailors, but sailing too close to Charybdis would destroy the entire ship.

However, the Argonauts did manage to pass through Scylla and Charybdis, because of the sea goddess Thetis. Her husband, Peleus was one of the Argonauts. In the Odyssey, Odysseus lost six of his men to Scylla, the first time his ship passed through the strait. A month later, Odysseus lost his entire ship and crew, when the gods send strong winds, driving his ship back to the strait. This time, Charybdis swallowed his ship. Odysseus was the only survivor.

Further reading: "Caught between Scylla and Charybdis"

Satyr
The satyrs were woodland spirits, often depicted in arts with head and upper body of man, horns and pointy ears, and goat legs. They were also depicted with large erect phallus. They were often seen accompanying Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. They were shown in drunken revelry and orgy, dancing with Dionysus' female followers, the maenads.
Pan, the god of shepherd was a satyr, so was probably Silenus or Seilenus. Silenus was one of the loyal followers of Dionysus, who brought up the wine god.

Sphinx
The Sphinx was a creature with a head and chest of a woman, body and legs of lion and wings of an eagle. The Sphinx was an offspring of Echidna and either Orthus or Typhon. The Sphinx lived on the road west of Thebes. It was custom of the Sphinx to tell the riddle to travelling heading towards Thebes. If the traveller answers the riddle correctly, the traveller would be allowed to pass her. Giving the wrong answer, the Sphinx would kill and devour the traveller.

When Creon became regent at the death of King Laius, he offered the kingdom of Thebes and his beautiful sister, Jocasta (newly widowed) in marriage. When Oedipus correctly answered the riddle, the Sphinx killed itself by jumping off the cliff. Oedipus became king, and unwittingly married his mother (Jocasta) and became father of their children.

In Egyptian mythology, the Sphinx appeared to be wingless.

Further reading: "Oedipus and Narcissus"

Triton
Triton was a fish-tailed sea god, the son and herald of Poseidon, king of the seas. He stilled the waves with the blow of a conch-shell trumpet. Triton was also described as the god of the giant, Libyan, salt-lake Tritonis. When the Argonauts were stranded in the desert he assisted them in finding passage from the lake back to the sea.

Trtion was depicted in Greek vase painting as fish-tailed merman, sometimes bearded, sometimes youthful. In Greek sculpture and mosaic he was often given twin fish or dolphin tails. As Poseidon's herald, he had a winged brow and conch-shell trumpet.

Typhon
Typhon was a giant winged monster with a hundred heads. Typhon was an offspring of Gaea ("Earth") and Tartarus. Typhon was a gigantic winged monster that was part man and part beast. Typhon was also taller than the tallest mountain. Under Typhon's arms there was a hundred dragon-heads. Below his thighs were the massive coils of vipers. Typhon was a terribly horrifying sight and was deadly since flame would gush from his mouth.

Typhon fathered many monsters upon Echidna: Cerberus, Chimaera, Orthus, the Hydra, Nemean Lion, Sphinx, Caucasian Eagle, Crommyonian Sow and vultures. According to Hyginus, Typhon was said to be father of Scylla.

Even though the Olympians had recently won the war against the Titans, the younger gods feared to face the monsters. Zeus tried to fight Typhon, until the monster cut off Zeus' sinews from his hands and feet. This prevented Zeus from using his thunderbolts, Zeus' most deadly weapon. Zeus was helpless and could not prevent Typhon from imprisoning Zeus in a cave. After some time, Hermes, the son of Zeus, recovered the sinews and rescued his father. When the sinews were restored to Zeus, he returned to fight Typhon with his thunderbolts. Zeus killed the monster by blasting his thunderbolts at Typhon, before burying the creature under Mount Aetna (Etna) or the entire island of Sicily.

Argus
Argus Panoptes was a watchman with a hundred eyes. Hera had set Argus to watching Io, who had been transformed into a cow. Hera wanted to keep Zeus away from Io. With a hundred eyes watching Io, Zeus had no hope of spiriting Io away without detection from Argus. Even when Argus slept, some of his eyes would continue to watch, while the rest of the eyes were closed.
Zeus decided to send his resourceful son, Hermes. Hermes was dressed as a shepherd. Hermes lulled Argus to sleep, before the god killed the watchman with his sword. Hera rewarded Argus for his service, by placing his eyes on the tail of the peacock, which was her favourite bird.

Centaur
The Centaurs were a tribe of half-man and half-horse, living in Magnesia, a coastal region in Thessaly. The Centaur was depicted in arts to have a head, chest and arms of a man, while the rest of his body was that of a horse.

There were several different stories of their origin. One version says that the Centaurs were said to be descendants of Centaurus, the son of Apollo and Stilbe, thus brother of Lapithus, who became descendants of the Thessalian tribe, known as the Lapiths. A more popular version say that this Centaurus was a son of Ixion, the king of Thessaly, and the the cloud, possibly named Nephele, who was created by Zeus, made to look like Hera. In both version, Centaurus mated with the mares from Magnesia, southern Thessaly, which produced half-horse, half-man offspring. The Centaurs were also known as Hippocentaurs.

The Centaurs were known for their inability to drink alcohol. They become unruly when drunk. There were frequent clashes between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. The height of conflict was reached during the wedding of Peirithoüs & Hippodameia. Peirithoüs (Peirithous) was king of the Lapiths and friend of Theseus. Two of the Centaurs were prominent at the wedding, Eurytion and Nessus; Heracles would killed them later. With the help of some of Peirithoüs' guests, they were able to drive the Centaurs out of Thessaly. Most fled to Arcadia where they encountered Heracles, during his 4th Labour.

There were two friendly Centaurs to humans, Cheiron and Pholus.

Chimera
Himera (or Chimaera) was a fire-breathing monster that lived in the mountains around Lycia. Chimaera was another monstrous offspring of Typhon and Echidna. Chimaera had the head and body of a lion, legs of a goat, and had a snake instead of a tail. Some images of the Chimaera showed it has a head of goat as well as that of the lion.

Iobates, king of Lycia, received a message from his son-in-law, King Proëtus (Proetus) of Tiryns, to kill Bellerophon, an exiled Corinthian prince. The gods frowned upon host who killed a guest, so Iobates decided to send Bellerophon to his death, requesting the hero to kill the monster Chimaera for him. To avoid the fire from Chimaera, Bellerophon won and tamed Pegasus, the winged steed. Bellerophon was able to kill Chimaera with his bow and arrows, at a safe distance from the monster.

Note:
Texts were taken and adjusted from Timeless Myths, Washington State University and Theoi Greek Mythology

Euripides' Andromache - Characters and their family trees

2010-01-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Trojan war widow Andromache (remember that Achilles had slain Hector before receiving Paris' deadly arrow) is the main character of this twisted family drama: a captive woman who has a child with her husband's killer; the jealousy of a princess who can't give his husband a heir, a grandfather ruined by the killing of the last member of his family, a prince who claims his rights over an already wedded woman ... that's Euripides' Andromache !

The family trees behind Euripides' Andromache

The story
Once Troy had fallen Achilles' son Neoptolemus takes Hector's wife Andromache as a battle price and carries her to his homeland Phthia, where she has to live side by side with his formal wife Hermione, daughter of king and queen of Sparta Menelaus and Helen. Infertile Hermione could give no son to his husband, who later has an offspring with the Trojan prisioner.

Filled with anger and jealousy, Hermione plots the killing of Andromache's son while Neoptolemus is away in Delphi to consult the city's famed oracle. Peleus, father of Achilles and grandfather of Neoptolemus saves the kid from his bloody destiny.

Orestes, son of Clyemnestra and Mycenaen king Agamemnon arrives at the place and carries Hermione away, saying he has rights on her for their families had arranged their marriage (in order to unite the cities of Sparta and Mycenae) prior to the bonding of Hermione and Neoptolemus. As the Spartan princess was fearing for her life, she is taken by Orestes with full consent.

Hermione now has no need to worry for her Phtihan husband: Orestes had sent his people to kill him at Delphi.

The people of this story

Helen: queen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus; the human cause of the Trojan war. Son of Zeus and Leda; sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux (The Dioscuri)

Menelaus: king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon.

Orestes: son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Killed his mother to avenge the murder of his father (read Aeschylus' "The Oresteia").

Neoptolemus: son of Achilles, who helped the Greeks in their battle against Troy.

Andromache: wife of Trojan prince Hector, who was fiercely killed by Achilles in the battlefield.

Map of the Greek World

2010-01-04T14:42:00.000-08:00

For the Greek people around VII or VI BC, the world was "Mediterranean": the geography of planet Earth consisted of the Mediterranean Sea, minor extensions of water related to the former and the land surrounding them.

The World according to Hecataeus of Miletus - 550 BC

This Homeric Conception of the world was best put in paper in a map designed by Hecataeus of Miletus around 550 BC, were we can distinguish:

- The world was a huge mass of land floating in the middle of the Ocean.
- The land was divided by the Mediterranean into two big pieces: Europa in the North and Asia in the South.
- If you sailed west, you would get to the "Pillars of Heracles" (today known as "The Strait of Gibraltar").
- The Caspian Sea, the place where Jason and the Argonauts had to go in order to recover the Golden Fleece, was the furthest Eastern-point of the planet.

Below this paragraph, the best ancient-modern map of Hellas (the Ancient Greek name for ancient and modern Greece) I've found in the Internet, which will let you easily locate the places mentioned by all the post-Homeric poets such as Euripides, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Aeschylus and "the rest".

Classical Greek World Map

Laconian Sparta, Boeotian Thebes, Attican Athens, Argolid Troezen, Mycenae, Aulis, Ithaca, Troy, Marathon, Delphi ... every region and city found in classical literature.

Macaria, martyred for her beloved

2009-12-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

Zeus mated with the mortal Alcmene and had a son whom they named "Heracles". Hera, wife of Zeus, became mad and thus persecuted the hero throughout his entire life ... and even after his death.

After Heracles had died by his unwitting wife Deienira and turned into a God, his cousin Eurystheus - king of Argos and commander of his dangerous Twelve Labors - continued to persecute the family. Wherever these orphan refugees went, the evil ruler Eurystheus would order their expelle. After several years of wandering, the sons and daughters of Heracles (known as The Heracleidae or Heraclids) finally found shelter in Athens, ruled by the son of great Theseus, king Demophon.

Note 1: remember that Heracles once saved Theseus from the depths of Hell. He had been imprisoned by Hades, who magically bound them to a bench, because they had attempted to kidnap Persephone.

Note 2: Heracles had a numerous number of descendants, but the term "Heracleidae" apply particularly to the children he had with Deianira: Hyllus, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, Telephus and Macaria

Powerful Eurystheus, on his demand for their surrender being refused, attacked Athens. Finding the future of his city doomed, Demophon went to seek advice from the Oracle, which told him that the only way to defeat their enemy was to sacrifice a noble young girl in order to please Goddess Persephone. Macaria offered her life, and the ritual took place.

Eurystheus was defeated and slain. Macaria had saved Athens and his entire family.

Euripides' tragedy "The Heracleidae" (plot)

Iolaus, Heracles' old comrade, and his children, Macaria and her brothers and sisters have hidden from Eurystheus in Athens, which was ruled by King Demophon; as the first scene makes clear, their expectation is that the blood relationship of the kings with Heracles and their father's past indebtedness to Theseus, will finally provide them sanctuary. As Eurysttheus prepared to attack, an oracle told Demophon that he would win if and only if a noble woman was sacrificed to Persephone. Macaria volunteered for the sacrifice.

Further reading: Herakles: human, hero, demigod or god ?

Iphigenia is alive !

2009-12-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the youngest daughter of king Agamemnon, Iphigenia, who was sacrificed at Aulis in order to appease the anger of Artemis and let the Greek fleet sail to Troy? We were framed! She is not resting in the kingdom of Hades; all this time she´s been living in Tauris as a priestess to the Goddess.

Iphigenia is saved from her own sacrifice by the Goddess Artemis

According to Euripides´ award winning "Iphigenia in Tauris", Artemis abducted the princess before being burnt at the pyre and dropped her in that faraway citadel to become her servant. No one ever noticed the body-replacement of Iphigenia for that of a deer: the blood that gushed out of the flames was no human.

Long ago a sacred statue with the image of Artemis fell from heaven and appeared in the coast of Tauris, a city ruled by notorious King Thoas. Since that episode, the Taurian society devoted their life to the worshipping of the Goddess, sacrificing every foreigner that appeared in their land. Iphigenia, once rescued from the pyre, was commanded to lead this killing of outlanders.

The many, many stories of Agamemnon´s offsprings now finally get connected:

- Iphigenia is sacrificed in Aulis ("Iphigenia in Aulis" by Euripides)

- Agamemnon, after having conquered Troy, sails back home ("The Iliad" by Homer)

- Agamemnon arrives at Mycenae and is killed by his wife Clytemnestra, who avenges the prior killing of her daughter Iphigenia ("Agamemnon" by Aeschylus)

- Son and daughter, Orestes and Iphigenia, avenge their dad Agamemnon by killing their mother Clytemnestra ("The Libation Bearers" by Aeschylus)

- Orestes escapes the Erinyes after having comited matricide ("The Eumenides" by Aeschylus)

- Orestes is commanded by the God Apollo to sail to Tauris and rescue the sacred statue of Artemis (Euripides´ Iphigenia in Tauris)

Orestes now lands in Tauris together with his companion Pylades. Unaware of the true identity of the foreigners, Thoas´ people capture them both and readies their bodies for the sacrifice. In the exact moment when they are to be killed, brother and sister recognize each other.

Orestes and Iphigenia steal the sacred figure of Artemis and escape back home.

Hippolytus: the battle between Lust and Continence

2009-10-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

The incestuous, profound, unintended and unintentional love between stepmother and stepson unleash the most tragic of all classical tragedies: Euripdes' Hippolytus.

Don't mess with the Gods: abide by their rules or perish.

The anger of a deity who feels dishonored by the choice made by a human; the wrath of the Goddess of Love - Aphrodite - who can't stand her impotence for not being able to subdue the chaste Hippolytus to her powers of passion and desire. The rivalry of two opposites: Virginity (Artemis) and Sex (Aphrodite), and the prevail of the latter. A world ruled by lust and desire were chastity has no place.

"Freedom is merely an illusion, a dreamlike thing, for Fate is the master of all of us. Like slaves, we must submit".

Once again, a story that reflects the poor and submissive condition of human existence: no life of your own, a life that belongs to the unpredictable and selfish will of the Gods.

The Plot

The goddess Aphrodite is much incensed because Hippolytus, bastard son of King Theseus of Trozên and the Amazon "Hippolyte", worships only pure Artemis. She resolves, therefore, to bring about his death through the very sex that he has scorned, and scorning, has thus offered insult to the mighty Aphrodite.

For some months past, Phaedra, beloved wife of Theseus, has hidden in her inmost heart a secret passion for the manly Hippolytus. Through unsatiated desire and secret shame she has wasted away until her old nurse despairs of her life. Finally, after much coaxing, the old nurse learns her secret. On pretense of making a love-philter that will cure Phaedra of her unholy love, the nurse confesses her mistress' secret to Hippolytus. The latter in anger scorns and upbraids Phaedra. Only his oath of secrecy given to the nurse, he admits, keeps him from confessing his stepmother's shame to the King as soon as His Majesty returns.

Phaedra, in her half-crazed state, scarcely heeds him. She sees honor gone and her life ruined through her old servant's mistaken kindness, for she really believes that Hippolytus means to tell the King. In despair she hangs herself. Before the dread deed, however, she has written on her tablet, sealed with a royal seal, the charge that Hippolytus has dishonored her. On the King's arrival the first thing he notes is the tablet fastened to his dead wife's wrist. Grief-stricken, he opens it believing that it will contain some final directions for the care of their children, only to be shocked by the terrible accusation against Hippolytus.

The Prince's protestations of innocence are unavailing against the King's unreasoning anger, and his oath prevents his speaking the whole truth. Theseus condemns his son to life-long exile and in addition prays to his ancestor, Poseidon, powerful god of the sea, to destroy the ravisher of his dear wife.

Hippolytus, knowing the futility of further arguments, mounts his chariot to drive along the seashore until he shall reach his father's boundaries. As he drives, a terrible monster, riding a huge wave, so frightens his spirited horses that he is dashed against the rocks and is carried back, dying, to his father's presence. While he is still conscious Artemis appears in a cloud and explains to Theseus how cruelly Aphrodite had plotted against Hippolytus. Thus both the youth and Phaedra are revealed as the innocent victims of a goddess' jealousy and their honor is vindicated.

Note: summary taken from Moonstruck

Best extracts of the play

- The nurse, having heard Phaedra's in love with his stepson, tries to comfort her mistress by reminding her that mortals are helpless to the desire of the Gods. It's impossible for a simple woman to escape the longings of a God.

Nurse: "Give up your railing. It's only insolent pride to wish to be superior to the Gods. Endure your love, the Gods have willed it so. You are sick (...)"

- When Hippolytus learns by the Nurse that his stepmother is in love with him.

Hippolytus: "Women ! (...) Why, why, Lord Zeus did put you in the world, in the light of the sun? If you were so determined to breed the race of man, the source of it should not be women. (...) how great a curse is woman (...) beauty heaped on vileness (...) I'll hate you women, and hate you and hate you, and never have enough hating."

- The moment Theseus arrives home and curses his son for having murdered Phaedra.

Theseus: "Citizens, Hippolytus has dared to rape my wife. He has dishonored God's holy sunlight. Father Poseidon (...) I pray, kill my son (...) I banish him from this land's boundaries. So fate shall strike him, one way or the other, either Poseidon will respect my curse, and send him dead into the House of Hades, or exiled from this land (...)".

- When Artemis appears to Theseus and the hole truth is revealed.

Artemis: "I call on the noble king [Theseus] to hear me ! It is Artemis, child of Leto. Miserable man (...) you have murdered your son! (...) I have come here for this - to show you that your son's heart was always just, so just that for his good name he endured to die. I will show you, too, the frenzied love that seized your wife, or I may call it, a noble innocence. For that most hated Goddess [Aphrodite], hated by all of us whose joy is virginity, drove her with love's sharp prickings to desire your son. She tried to overcome her love with the mind's power, but at last against her will, she fell by the nurse's stratagems (...) who told your son under oath her mistress loved him (...) But he, just man, did not fall in with her counsels, and even when reviled by you refused to break the oath he had pledged. But your wife fearing lest she be proved the sinner wrote a letter, a letter full of lies, and so she killed your son by treachery (...)".

- The closing dialogue between the Goddess Artemis, father (Theseus) and son (Hippolytus): with his last breath, a dying son forgives his murderous father for having killed him.

Aphrodite:"You have sinned indeed, but you may win pardon. For it was Cypris [Aphrodite] who managed the things this way to gratify her anger against Hippolytus" (...)".

Hippolytus: "O father, this is sorrow for you indeed".

Theseus: "I, too, am dead now. I have no more joy in life".

Hippolytus: "I sorrow for you in this more than myself" (...) The darkness is upon my eyes already. Father, lay hold on me and lift me up". (...)

Theseus: "And so you leave me, my hand stained with murder."

Hippolytus: "No, for I free you from all guilt in this".

As I tried to introduce in the opening, I find Euripides' Hippolytus to be the most tragic and emotionally devastating of classical poems. Thus, I encourage you to stop watching those brain-washing soap operas that appear on TV and start reading this writer's awesome play!

> Click here to read the entire play

Plato's Symposium - Aristophanes's speech

2009-10-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

What is the nature of love? What purpose does love have?

In trying to find an answer to this inquiry, Plato writes his philosophical Symposium, a book comprising "a story within a story, within a story" that deals with the topics of knowledge and love. According to the play, a group of sophisticated and enlightened people are invited to a meeting in order to debate on these two matters.

Among these guests is our master comedian Aristophanes, who tries to explain why people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love partner.

These are more or less the ideas on love that Plato puts in his mouth:

Plato's Symposium - Aristophanes's speech - On Love

In primal times people were globular spheres who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels. There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous," who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods. Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half.

After chopping the people in half, Zeus turned half their faces around and pulled the skin tight and stitched it up to form the belly button. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature.

Aristophanes - The Complete Plays

2009-10-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

After having analyzed during the last months a bunch of plays written by the comedian Aristophanes, I guess now it's a good time to make a little review of all his masterpieces.

Greek's Theater of Dionysus, in Athens

Of the many comedies produced by this Greek author, only eleven of them have survived and reached our modern times in a complete state: Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Peace, Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria Festival, Frogs, A Parliament of Women and Plutus (Wealth). Among all these poems, I've already shared with you the three ones I found most captivating: The Acharnians, Clouds and Lysistrata.

How would I describe his plays ?
I if had the possibility to gather all Aristophanes's plays in a single and illustrating label I wouldn't hesitate to choose "ABSURD" or any of its equivalents: ridiculous, laughable, risible, idiotic, stupid, foolish, silly, insane, unreasonable, irrational, illogical, incongruous, senseless, crazy. Aristhopnahes was the first known artist to make Comedy and Entertaining a serious business ... and he did it in a outstanding way.

What drew most of my attention ?
The vast theatrical mastery the audience ought to have in order to get a complete understanding of his plays, or even to just "follow" them. You would miss half of them shouldn't you have first read or heard about the other many stories and authors he constantly parodies and quotes: the great Homer, Socrates, Aesop ... or even his arch-rivals Sophocles, Euripides or Aeschylus and their many, many performed plays.

Why read Aristophanes ?

The easiest and most direct response would be "You can't travel the road of Classical Mythology without paying a visit to Aristophanes". Apart from this "canned answer", my personal reply would be "the much he makes you think !"; disguised in foolish, entertaining and perspicacious dialogues, deep topics reach the surface. Aristophnes makes his audience laugh and enjoy the moment, and leaves them with a great number of profound things in which to turn their minds to.

And what about the rest of the poems ?

Can't let you empty handed; here is a little summary of 4 of his other plays:

- Peace: Trygaeus, sick of war (27 years have passed since the beginning of The Peloponnesian War), flies to Olympus on a gigantic beetle - parodying Bellerophon's aerial journey on Pegasus - to ask Zeus what he is doing about the conflict. But Zeus has washed his hands of humanity and is allowing War (who has trapped Peace inside a cave) to have free rein. Finally, Peace is rescued and brought back in triumph to Earth.

- Birds: two middle-aged Athenians, fed up with the world they live in, decide to go in search for a better one. Under the direction of two pet birds, they seek advice from Tereus, who used to be human but is now a hoopoe: why not join the birds and create a new and invincible empire ? An aerial city (later baptized "Cloudcuckooland") placed between the Earth and the high Sky, where Gods and humans alike would have to pay tributes to them.

No doubt, this is the most absurd of all Aristophanes's plays !

- Frogs: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are all dead, and there are no more good poets or good theater; so Dionysus, patron of the stage, decides to go down to Hades and bring back the best of the three. An artistic contest begins between the play writers; Aeschylus gets the first prize, and accompanies Dionysus back to the mortal world.

- Plutus (Wealth): Zeus once blinded Plutus so that he couldn't tell the difference between god and bad people (being rich has nothing to do with being good). Chremyslus, an Athenian citizen, decides to take him to Aesclepius, god of healing, to get his sight back. On their way they come across Poverty who tells them they are making a big mistake: "without the fear of poverty, mortals would have no motive to make an effort". Plutus then gets his sight back.

Odysseus's Journey in a present-day map

2009-10-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

Meet the destinations Odysseus visited in his way home to Ithaca.

The epic voyage of Odysseus seen inside a Google Map

After the epic war held in Troy, Homer tells us the story of Ithaca's king, who travelled by sea for 10 years before reaching his homeland. (Take a sneak peek of "The Odyssey")

I've just found in the web a user-defined Google Map containing placemarks of Odysseus's probable destinations, together with a small summary of the tale involved in each place:

Note: never forget that Homer's geography of the Odyssey is somewhat inconsistent. You should take it in a mythical way rather than literal.

1- Troy: where the war between Agamemnon's Achaeans and Priam's Trojans was held (Homer's Iliad).

2- Ismaros (Ismara): After their departure from Troy, Odysseus and his companions stop at Ismaros. They sack the town, situated on an island, and then engage in a fierce battle with the Cicones, the inhabitants of the adjacent region. They kill the men and divide the women and treasures among themselves and after that start to feast, although Odysseus proposes to leave. The Cicones, who in the meantime go for help, come back in the morning in great quantities. Odysseus manages to escape after heavy losses and embarks with the survivors to continue towards his homeland, Ithaca, but shortly after sailing they are caught in a northerly storm.

3- The Land Of The Lotus Eaters (Modern day Djurba, Tunisia): "(...) on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on the shore near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk (...) went about among the Lotus-Eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back (...).

4- Land Of The Cyclopes (SE Sicily)

5- Island of Aeolia (isle at N Sicily): Odysseus flees here after the ravaging of his men by Polyphemus, and their subsequent escape from the land of the Cyclopes. Aelouss, son of Hippotas, gives Odysseus a bag of winds to head home with, and the journey goes well until his men open the bag and are cast back into the waters of the Mediterranean.

6- Ithaca: he actually never reached at this point.

7- Return to Aeolia

8- Telepylos: the mythological city of the Laestrygonians. When Odysseus reached the city in the Odyssey, he sent three scouts to explore the island. They came across the King, a giant cannibal, who then ate one of the men, causing the other scouts to run away. Most of Odysseus' men are killed in the incident, but his boat is moored outside the Laestrygonians' harbour. He is able to sail away, without the bombardment of rocks received by the rest of the fleet who did moor within the harbour. Only fifty-two men escaped.

9- Aeaea: the land of the sorceress Circe, who detained Odysseus and turned his men into swine.

10- The underworld: the Acheron River.

11- Return to Aeaea

12- Anthemoessa: the land of the sirens. All locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks. Sailors who sailed near were compelled by the Sirens' enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast.

13- Strait of Messina: were the 2 monsters were waiting for Odyssey. Scylla and Charybdis

14- Land Of Hyperion: one of the 12 Titan Gods; related to the Sun.

15- Ithaca: homeland.

The Odyssey

2009-09-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

This is the story of Odysseus, mythology's greatest mortal hero

Video coming from The History Channel

Apart from being considered Episode II of Classical Mythology's Bible (being Homer's Iliad the former), The Odyssey is one of the most fascinating, adventurous and imaginative stories ever written. It's the tale of Odysseus, mythology's greatest mortal hero, written 800 years before the time of Jesus.

Odysseus, the mastermind of the Trojan Horse, is the main character of this epic. After having defeated the Trojans in their land, it's time for the king of Ithaca to return home to his beloved wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. Nevertheless, what was supposed to be an easy task ended in a 10 year journey across all the Mediterranean Sea. He's done the worst of things: he has angered the Sea God Poseidon.

In this 5 episode movie you'll encounter a good synopsis of the legend. Though not precisely accurate, it's a very complete source to get a surfrace understanding of Odysseus adventures.

Most fascinating deeds during his journey

- The Trojan Horse craftsmanship: he retells how he deceived the Trojans into letting the Wooden horse inside their walls, a thing that became their doom.

- The Lotus eaters: a bizarre drug that almost ended their journey.

- The blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemus: Odysseus couldn't make it worse than putting the son of Poseidon's eye out and letting him know who had done it (read The "no men" artistry)

- Aeolus, the master of winds: the king who captured the mighty winds inside a bag and gave it to Odysseus in order to help him back home. When Ithaca was on sight, his crew accidentally opened the bag and unleashed the destructive winds which deprived them from reaching land.

- The witch-goddess Circe: who turned his crew (what was left of them) into swines.

- His journey to the Underworld (Hades): place were he went in order to learn from the seer Tiresias how to sail back to Ithaca. He encounters the spirits of Agamemnon and Achilles.

- The land of the Sirens: Odysseus and his crew are tied to the ship to escape the enchantments of these creatures and avoid getting shipwrecked.

- Scylla and Charybdis: while trying to cross the Strait of Messina, these two monsters were waiting for him.

- The Nymph Calysto: who kept him captive for seven years.

- His final return home: where he reveals himself to his son Telemachus.

- The killing of Penelope's suitors: after having showed his virtuosity with the bow.

- The encounter with Penelope: after an intimate story, his wife finally recognizes him and falls into his arms.

Enjoy it !!

The story of Zeus - God of Gods

2009-09-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

A son battles his father for control of the Universe and seizes more power than any God ever had.

Video coming from The History Channel

I was surfing the Internet for different Classical Mythology material in order to share with you, and I came across a series of episode coming from the award winning History Channel.

Just as Cronus had overthrown his father Uranus,

now it's Zeus's time.

Up to this moment, I've been keeping a single posting architecture: landscape picture + text. After having found this and many other interesting videos, I guess I'll restructure my orthodox kind of writing this blog and extend my sources with the help of You Tube's embedding feature.

Take a look at this cinematographic 5-episode-video. It's not the same as reading Hesiod's Theogony book, but those of you who prefer watching than reading, you''l find it more than fluent and entertaining. Even those of you who are fond of reading, I suggest you still don't miss it: simple, graceful and accurate.

Aesop's fables

2009-09-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

This is the story of a slave who gained his freedom by captivating his audience with animal tales filled with moral content: "The Fables of Aesop".

The law of the jungle prevails in the world of men

Little is really known about the life of this writer; even some experts maintain that he never actually existed. Nevertheless I'll try to summarize what has been best "accepted" about his time on earth:

Aesop was a 6th century BC warrior, sold into slavery to a citizen of Samos (East of Turkey) called Xanthus. After having earned big reputation for telling astonishing animal tales in important discussions and negotiations - which indeed impressed his listeners - he supposedly gained his freedom. He is attributed with the writing of a compilation of 358 fables, though the inconsistencies found in his characters and settings tend to make us believe that the tales had come from various and different sources.

Fable: narrative form, usually featuring animals that behave and speak as human beings, told in order to highlight human follies and weaknesses. A moral—or lesson for behaviour—is woven into the story and often explicitly formulated at the end.

The idea of representing human types as animals has the advantage of a profound simplicity, but is not simplistic.

Why do we put Aesop under the "tag" of Classical Mythology ? I guess I can point three main reasons:

1- His tales involve the Olympian Gods and Goddesses, and thus some of the things we got to know about Zeus, Hermes or Athena were learnt from him.

2- Just as Ovid told us the story of the first spider (the weaver "Arachne" who made Athena furious and was consequently turned into this 8 legged insect), Aesop had already written similar tales 600 years before: Why does the tortoise carry his "home" in his back ? Because Zeus punished the animal for not attending the God´s wedding party. "I´d rather stay home" were the words who sentenced the tortoise to carry forever his house with him.

3- Many play writers, being Aristophanes at the top of the list, have included Aesop's tales in their plays. It seems that all the audience of that time (-800 to -400 approx) knew these stories by heart.

Coming next is one of Aesop´s fables, but I suggest you read this other posting first: "The power of Allegories"

The ant and the grasshopper

In times of abundance we should plan ahead lest we suffer distress when times change.

During the wintertime, an ant was living off the grain that he had stored up for himself during the summer. The grasshopper came to the ant and asked him to share some of his grain. The ant said to the grasshopper, 'And what were you doing all summer long, since you weren't gathering grain to eat?' The grasshopper replied, 'Because I was busy singing I didn't have time for the harvest.' The ant laughed at the grasshopper's reply, and hid his heaps of grain deeper in the ground. 'Since you sang like a fool in the summer,' said the ant, 'you better be prepared to dance the winter away!'

Lysistrata - by Aristophanes

2009-08-19T08:04:00.001-07:00

In order to put an end to war Lysistrata hits on a startling way of forcing husbands to stay home and become pacifists: deny them sex !

I hit on a way to stop the war: forgo sex !

Society in classical Greek times is known to have been patriarchal and misogynistic (hatred of women), segregating females from public life and confinig them to soldier-raising and housework tasks. Nonetheless, Aristophanes comes again with a satirical and absurd masterpiece that reconciles women, making them intelligent schemers of a worldwide plot to bring war to an end.

Just to gain a little comprehension of the time and setting needed to fully understand the poem I must point out that this play was written in 411 BC, which situates it in the center of The Peloponessian War (431 BC to 404 BC) with Athens and Sparta fighting for supremacy in the Greek mainland.

The story

While men are away in battle, Lysistrata - an average Athenian wife - gathers women from all over the Peloponnese to share her stratagem against male and their endless desire to battle.

- The salvation of our State rests with us (...)

- If all us women united en masse - Beotians, Spartans, and us - we all together could save Greece (...)

And here comes the brilliantly unexpected slant, funny enough to make the reader think:

- Precisely that's what we're going to need to save Greece: a seductive wardrobe, our rouge, our negligees (...) to stop every living man (...) from ever lifting a shield or (...) springing a dagger (...)

- What we are going to have to forgo is ... penis (...)

- (...) Imagine it: us lolling around all tarted up, our pussies' sweet little triangles neatly plucked, and we float past them in our see-throughs, and our men get stiff as rods and want to screw, but we elude them and hold ourselves aloof - why, they'll sue for peace real quick. That you can bet.

Women realize they can gain total control of men through sex; or in this case ... through the absence of it. Now take a look at the sexual, entertaining and hysterical oath women do:

- No man whatsoever, whether husband or lover shall (...) come near me with a rampant cock. (...) I'll live at home in continence unrutting (...) all tarted up in my saffron frock (...) so that my husband is bursting to erupt (...) while I stay aloof and adamant (...).

- Set him on fire with pangs of desire. Tantalize him to the hilt (...) Promise him his every want except what on the wine cup we swore we wouldn't.

By now you might have guessed the end of the story: because of the boycott of sex by the women of both Athens and Sparta men start to show signs of priapism (painful and persistent erection of the penis). They have no way out but to submit to women's will and sign peace with each other.

- Now that everything's worked out so well its time you Spartans got back your wives, and you Athenians yours. So, my dears, let each husband stand beside his woman while each wife stands beside her husband. And let us celebrate this happy bond and thank the gods with dance. And let us swear never to make the same mistakes again and be so dense (...).

Greek History Timeline

2009-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

From the first mythological poems of Homer and Hesiod (800 BC) to the Roman conquer of the Hellenistic world in 146 BC.

All the classical poets, battles, philosophers and the like ... in a single timeline

A unified timeline were to observe the coexistance and correlativity of poets, batlles, philosophers and politicians:

- Hesiod, Homer, Aesop, Sappho, Aeschylus, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Virgil, Ovid.

- Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Democritus, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle.

- Illiad and Odyssey (Homer), Theogony (Hesiod), The Frogs (Aristophanes), Socratic Dialogues (Plato), Odes (Pindar), The Oresteia and Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus), Antigone and Ajax (Sophocles), Medea and Electra (Euripides), The Aeneid (Virgil), Metamorphoses (Ovid).

- Persian Wars, Peloponnesian War, Battle of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, Battle of Corinth and Leuctra.

- First Olympic Game, Solon, Pericles, Birth of Democracy, Alexander The Great, Macedonian Greece, Conquer of Greece by the Romans.

- Classical, Hellenistic and Roman eras.

Further reading > Simplified Greek History

Seven against Thebes - by Aeschylus

2009-08-09T16:46:00.001-07:00

This is the story of the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, who battled for the kingdom of the seven-gated Thebes.

Eteocles and Polynices - both men lie dead, each murdered by the other

This drama, written in 467 BC, is the chronological continuance of the famous tragedy Oedipus King / Rex. After the incestuous birth of Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone and Ismene followed by the discovery of Oedipus' true story (recall that he had unintentionally killed his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta), Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus leaves Thebes to die in exile.

(...) "No mother more unfortunate than she who bore these boys, oh, none more doomed among all women, so many as are mothers on this earth " (...)

Before departing, Oedipus instructs his two sons Eteocles and Polynices to co-rule the city, leading alternately year by year. However, after the first 365 days of reign had passed, Eteocles refuses to give up his power and Polynices joins the Argives to reclaim his throne by force.

Great warriors from both sides face each other in single combat, and the Seven Gates that surround the city of Thebes become the perfect setting of each battle. Eteocles and Polynices engage in the final crusade; two brothers fated to death by the curse of their own family. They are both killed by the hands of the other; the Eumenides (also known as Furies or Erinyes - deities of vengeance) have succeeded in their duties.

(...) "Both men lie dead, each murdered by the other" (...)

(...) "Their destinies identical, the fate of one that of the other; in one stroke oblivion enveloped their doomed clan" (...)

Now Eteocles is given a king-like burial, while his brother's body is left to the crows.

(...) "this body here, Eteocles, for his great dedication to the State (...) has died as a youthful patriot ought to die, repelling enemies of his native place".

(...) "As for this, the corpse of Polynices, (...) if a certain god had not stepped in to guide his brother's spear - would have overturned the city and laid waste our Cadmean realm: he shall be cast beyond the gates, unburied, a meal for dogs".

The story opens the door to Sophocles' tragedy "Antigone"; it ends where the latter starts.

Antigone: "(...) Regardless of consequences I will take the risk of opposing the authorities and bury my brother" (...)

Now picture the final moment of the play: Ismene carrying her brother Eteocles with the people of the city, and Antigone on his own, carrying the lifeless body of Polynices.

JMD: Another excellent piece of work from Aeschylus ... what else can I tell you ??

The Persians - by Aeschylus

2009-08-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

Eight years after the defeat of Xerxes in The Battle of Salamis (480 BC), Aeschylus writes this tragedy, a masterpiece produced to celebrate the most important Greek victory in the Persian Wars.

After defeating the legendary 300 Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae, the Persians headed south of the Peloponnese and were ready to take the whole Hellenic world: the Greek civilization was sentenced to slavery. Although heavily outnumbered, the Greek Allies brought the Persian fleet to battle again in the Straits of Salamis, which ended in Xerxes's defeat, and his returning home empty-handed.

One year later, Persia completely withdrew his army from Greek land and sea, together with its perished desire to conquer them.

A number of historians believe that a Persian victory would have stilted the development of Ancient Greece, and by extension 'western civilization' per se, and has led them to claim that Salamis is one of the most significant battles in human history.

Aeschylus's "The Persians" is the Athenians' exultation in the recent ruin of their enemies; Greeks are to delight in the ruin of the Persian empire, and to exult in their anguish.

The Story

It's 480 BC. The news of Xerxes's victorious military campaign in the northern Peloponnese have already reached the Persians' ears. The final battle is taking place (Battle of Salamis) and the Queen of Persia is confidently awaiting the Herald to bring the news of the destruction of the Greeks.

The Herald now appears, but his news are not what she had expected. The announcement leaves the Queen wide-mouth-opened, not able to pronounce a single word: Xerxes, son of great Darius and holy leader of the Persians, was defeated.

My top ranked passages

- (...) What the gods permit is clearly what they command. To suppose otherwise it to hate heaven and therefore deserve death's rough correction (...)

- (...) What Darius made, Xerxes enlarges. (...) The world will be Persian, and all the better for it (...)

The Herald addressing the Queen

- (...) "Persia, cities of Asia, hear me ! My dreadful duty is bringing the news all at once. It is bitter indeed, for the battle is lost. We are defeated" (...)

- (...) "It pains me to say but ours was the stronger force. The Greeks had three hundred ten vessels to Xerxes's' thousand or more. Such an imbalance ought to have made us the victors, but gods or the fates, or the mere whims of the winds redressed the odds and held us off. They counter-attacked and whipped us soundly" (...)

- (...) " They were waiting for us, there at the narrow mouth of the bay, on both our flanks, and when signal trumpets blared, their armada converged on us like dogs on a doe" (...)

Words coming from the Prologue

- (...) "Xerxes at Salamis could have won and would have, if he had only been patient. The Greeks, cut off, would indeed have run in a matter of days. The attack was absurd, a risk that the Persians need never have taken (...) The Persians either way, are losers. The Greeks, by their valor or merely luck, have won. As their prize, they get to pick or even invent what version they like" (...)

- (...) "Asia's moment is over, The world is now Greek (...) We were lords of the world, and now we are slaves !" (...)

Simplified greek history

2009-07-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

We've been sharing mythology tales for a while now. I think it's a good time to make a little halt in these folk-allegories and try to expand our knowledge about the real history of this Greek Civilization, birthplace of our culture.

Where it all began

Leaving prehistoric times aside, the first Greek culture to appear is the one known as "Minoan civilization", a kingdom situated in the island of Crete that spanned from around the year 2700 BC to 1400 BC. This early society was ruled by king Minos, one of the legendary judges of the underworld, according to Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy.

Around 1400 BC Crete was invaded and devastated by a Greek-mainland civilization localized in the city of Mycenae, who absorbed the new culture and flourished with it: The Mycenaean Civilization

Near 1100 BC, a nomad-barbarian culture took Greece and destroyed everything found on their way; no trace to historians was left on the period that lasted from the fall of the Mycenaean culture to 800 BC, an epoch commonly known as "the dark age".

We are going to focus in the Classical Greece (also known as Ancient Greece), a period that isn't precisely defined, but is traditionally placed between 776 BC - moment when the first Olympic Game was held - and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC; from the rise of the first Greek city-states to the moment when Greek culture started contagiously bursting all over the world.

Athens and Sparta

The basic unit of politics in Ancient Greece was the polis, independent city-states (at least in theory) that joined each other for cross-commerce and protection. This meant that when Greece went to war (for example, against the Persian Empire), it took the form of an alliance against the enemy. Athens and Sparta were the most powerful of these cities, something which led them to a long-lasting confrontation for supremacy in land and sea (see "The Wars"), each of the two leading their own alliance (Delian and Peloponnesian League respectively)

The Wars

Two major wars shaped the Ancient Greek world:

(1) The Persian Wars (500–448 BC): Ionian Greek cities revolted from the Persian Empire and were supported by some of the mainland cities, eventually led by Athens. The most notable battles of this mega-clash include:

- Marathon (490 BC) legendary known for the 42-kilometer-run that the Greek soldier Pheidippides did from Marathon to Athens to warn the latter city of the eminent arrival of the enemy. The Greeks prevailed, and the Persian naval force is set back to Asia.

- Thermopylae (480 BC): Leonidas's 300 Spartans epic defense. On the arrival of Xerxes, the heroes held the narrow pass into Greece against the hole Persian army for three days, delaying the entrance of the Persians and giving the Greek armada enough time to prepare for war.

- Salamis (480 BC): the decisive battle between both civilizations; Greeks were victorious.

(2) The Peloponnesian War: the 27 year battle for supremacy held between Athens and Sparta along with their correspondent allies (431 BC to 404 BC). Under Spartan leadership, the Peloponnesian League defeated Athens and its supporters in 404 BC.

The war left devastation, followed by a period of Theban dominance in Greece. In 346 BC Thebes called upon Philip II of Macedon for aid, who in exchange quickly and easily conquered the exhausted cities of Greece. The basic unit of politics from that point was the empire, and the Hellenistic Age had begun.

The Hellenistic period of Greek history begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends with the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 BC. Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture (indeed Greek culture would be the one to conquer Roman life), it did mark the end of Greek political independence.

The Philosophers

- Heraclitus: "fire is the origin of all things" (...) "permanence is an illusion as all things are in perpetual flux".

- Democritus: founder of the atomistic theory of matter: "all matter is made up of various imperishable, indivisible elements".

- Parmenides: "being is the basic substance and ultimate reality of which all things are composed" (...) "motion and change are just sensory illusions".

- Socrates: teacher of Plato. He represented the turning-point in Greek philosophy.

- Plato: pupil of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. Knowledge based upon consideration of ideal forms outside the material world; proposed ideal form of government based on abstract principles in which philosophy ruled. The world of ideas.

- Aristotle: pupil of Aristotle. Wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, and ethics. Along with Socrates and Plato, he was one of the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers.

The myth-writers
Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Sappho

The historians
Herodotus, Thucydides

The politicians
Themistocles, Pericles, Lysander, Epaminondas, Alcibiades, Philip II of Macedon, and his son Alexander the Great

Clouds - by Aristophanes

2009-07-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Aristophanes, a conservative young man of only 23 or so, doesn't have a very high opinion of the "New Thought" going around, expressed and promoted by the Sophists and especially by Socrates, whom Aristophanes rather unfairly lumps together with them. Clouds is a lively spoof of the new ideas about the education of the youth. Aristophanes sets out to have fun damning them and reducing the new techniques to absurdity

The story

Strepsiades is in despair because of the debts his horse-loving son - Phidippides - has landed him in. He has heard of Socrates and the Thinkpot, where for a fee one can learn to prove that wrong is right, and he decides to send his son there to be taught how to prove that a debt is not a debt; in other words: to learn how to cheat and deceive.

Sometimes later, Socrates presents Phidippides to his father as a perfect sophist.

Creditors appear one after the other clamoring for payment and Strepsiades, using the little he learned, is able to confound them each in turn. Both father and son start having disagreements, which ends in Phidippides trying to punish his father. When the former says he is going to beat his mother too, Strepsiades, horror-stricken at the reversal of values, runs to the Thinkpot and burns it down.

Best passages

The way Aristophanes describes Socrates and the Sophists

- (...) I don't exactly know but they are deep-ruminating cerebrationalists nice beautiful people

- (...) Boy, are they poison ! You are talking of a bunch of frauds: that barefoot dough-faced lot like that pitiful Socrates

- (...) Stinking liar (...) chattering charlatan, a fox, piss hole, slimy talker, a fraud

- (...) you wonderful old fraud !

Sophist's non-sense parody, in a dialogue between Strepsiades and one of his creditors

Creditor: And I'm inclined to think you're getting a writ served on you if you don't pay up.

Strepsiades: And are you inclined to think that Zeus rains freshwater every time it rains, or does te sun suck up the water that's already there ?

Creditor: I don't know and I don't care

Strepsiades: Then how can you possibly ask for money when you're so meteorogically illiterate ? (...)

Strepsiades: But do you think the sea is fuller now than it used to be ?

Creditor: Of course not, it's the same. To be fuller would be against nature.

Strepsiades: Really, you poor nit! So if the sea never gets fuller even if rivers pour into it, how can you possibly expect your money to get fuller?

The reversal of values, when Phidippides is trying to convince his father that he really deserves to be punished by him.

Phidippides: (...) did you ever spank me as a boy ?

Strepsiades: Naturally, I did, for your good because I cared.

Phidippides:Tell me then, shouldn't I now show, if spanking is evidence of caring, that I do care by giving you a spanking ? And is it fair that your carcass be spank-proof but not mine ? (...)

Strepsiades: Nowhere is there a law to treat a father in that way.

Phidippides: (...) can't I have a turn, too, at making a law to fit tomorrow's sons: one that lets them beat their fathers in return ?

Note: Adapted from Paul Roche's translation.

The Acharnians - by Aristophanes

2009-05-25T14:38:00.001-07:00

A highly satirical play that appeals for the end of The Peloponnesian War. From phallic speeches to a woman trying to sell her daughters off as pigs, the story provides an imaginative and absurd humour that entertain from start to finish. A must read !

Short plot

Dicaeopolis, an Athenian citizen living during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, publicly denounces the absurdity and sheer stupidity of war. Sarcastic and critical towards the 'demagogic' politicians and the military, Aristophanes puts in the main character's mouth the wanting for the simple liberties and happiness that come with peace. The author's piercing and crude attacks mainly aim at Cleon, head of the democratic state, who is accused by Aristophanes of plunging Athens into continuous and senseless armed campaigns that lead his city to defeat and decline.

In an absurd twist of the play, an ordinary Greek farmer succeeds where all the politicians could not: he personally travels to Sparta and signs a private peace treaty with the enemy.

Written and performed in 425 BC, The Acharninas won first place at the Lenaia Festival, probably the most famous play-contest of ancient Greece.

A detailed setting of the play

The long struggle (25+ years) between Athens and Sparta - best known as 'The Peloponnesian War' - broke out early in 431 B.C. Athens kept for a considerable time the command of the sea, but was unable to resist in the field the overwhelming forces of Sparta and her allies. Early in the first year of the war, Archidamus, one of the kings of Sparta, entered the Athenian territory at the head of an army of eighty thousand men. Pericles, who was then the leading statesman of Athens, had persuaded his countrymen to dismantle their country-houses and farms, and bring all their movable property within the walls of the fortressed city. Still the sight of the ravages of the invading host, which, of course, could be plainly seen from the walls, roused the people almost to madness. The Athenians, though excelling in maritime pursuits, were passionately fond of a country life, and it was almost more than they could bear to see their farms and orchards and olive-yards wasted with fire. Inferior as they were in numbers, they loudly demanded to be led out against the invaders, and it was as much as Pericles could do to keep them within the walls.

The inhabitants of Acharnia, a town in the north of Athens, were prominent among the malcontents. The area was one of the richest and most populous of the townships of Attica, well known for his charcoal-burning; no place was more interested in the question of peace and war, as it was here that the Spartan king pitched his camp.

The invasion was repeated year after year, though on some few occasions various things happened to prevent it. Not only did Athenians lose greatly by the desolation of their country, but they suffered much by being cooped up within the walls of the city. And it was but a small satisfaction to retaliate by ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesians, and by annually invading the territory of Megara, a city which had concluded an alliance with Sparta.

There had always been a peace party in the state, and when Pericles died, early in the third year of the war, this party became more powerful. At the same time the war party conducted affairs less prudently. The cautious policy of Pericles was discarded for remote expeditions and out-of-the-way schemes.

Aristophanes sets forth the views of the advocates of peace. He expresses the feeling of distress caused by the desolation of the country, and also the dislike felt by prudent politicians for the extravagant ideas of the war party.

Note: this is my simplified and revised version of an introduction made by Alfred Church for "The Baldwin Project".

The Oresteia - by Aeschylus

2009-05-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

I've just finished re-reading Aeschylus' tragedy "The Oresteia", the story of the cursed royal family of Mycenae: blood that cries for more blood.

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The remorse of Orestes (1862)
Orestes is tormented and haunted by the Furies after having murdered Clytemnestra

The Cast

Agamemnon: king of Mycenae, leader of the Greek armada against Troy.
Clytemnestra: wife of Agamemnon.
Orestes, Iphigenia, Electra: children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
Aeghistus: Clytemnestra's lover, cousin of Agamemnon.
Cassandra: daughter of Priam (king of Troy), Agamemnon's lover and captive.
The Furies: the three female deities of vengeance, persecutors of mortals who killed members of their own family.

Note: I would suggest you start reading "The anger of Achilles"

The story

Divided into three "acts" (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides) the trilogy goes around the numerous family-bloody-homicides in the house of Atreus: "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand" seem to be the essence of each murderous act. Along the play we come across filicide (the killing of one's children), mariticide (the killing of one's husband) and matricide (the killing of one's mother) in a chronological order subject to a pay-back desire. Mother and siblings join their partners side by side and enjoy the butchering of each other.

- Agamemnon kills his daughter Iphigenia
At the start of the Trojan expedition Agamemnon has to take the unwanted decision of sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the goddess Artemis and gain favourable winds to sail to Troy. Clytemnestra, his wife, will never forgive him.

"Tragedy is not a struggle between good and evil, but a contest between two mutually exclusive goods" (David R. Slavitt)

- Clytemnestra avenges her daughter by killing Agamemnon
The victorious leader of the Achaean army returns from Troy with her captive Cassandra. As soon as they steps inside his house, his wife and her lover (Aeghistus) stab them to death in a bloody bath rejoiced by bothe killers.

Clytemnestra: "I killed him, struck him down (...) I'm proud. I threw his robe around him (...) and he couldn't see, or fight or escape, and I stabbed him. Twice ! (...) He bled like a pig! It spurted out and splashed me, and I was delighted. A farmer, wet in the rain of the spring that will give him his crops, could not be more happy and grateful than I was then! I bloomed like a whole garden of flowers in that downpour of Agamemnon's blood. (...) "

Aeschylus (The Oresteia) / Euripides (Oedipus Rex): "Call no man's life happy until it has come to its end".

Agamemnon thought he had everything (honor, esteem, respect, power ... ) in order to find out he was sentenced to die in the hands of his own wife.

- Orestes and Electra kill their mother Clytemnestra
Back from exile, Orestes joins his sister Electra and plot the murder of Aeghistus and Clytemnestra to avenge the killing of their father Agamemnon.

Apart from the numerous homicides of the royal family, the Furies gain a significant role in the play as the persecutors of our main character Orestes. The son of Agamemnon has to run away and seek for the help of Apollo, god and principal promoter of Orestes' matricide. To escape the avenging deities the mortal agrees to put his fate in the hands of Athena, who acts as judge of the first-ever court trial held. Orestes is acquitted of murder and after a long and hard negotiating period with the Erinyes (another name for "The Fates"), the latter join Athena in the process of glorifying the city of Athens.

Seen form a different angle and taking to account that Aeschylus wrote the play in Pericles' time, the story unveils the beginning of the democratic system in Athens.

Afterlife, the sedation of the rebel

2009-04-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

Primitive societies were truly anarchic; chaos prevailed everywhere. There was no distinction between right and wrong, good or evil: "take what you want, do whatever you like .. but get prepared to expose your physical health in exchange".

Since early men started to evolve and grow in number, mankind had to find new suitable ways to organize themselves: the "pater familas" once guiding small families had now turned into rulers that had to deal with vast extents of territory and great quantities of people. Primordial methods of controlling crowds had become anachronic with the existence of this new reality: punishment by the only means of force & strength was doomed long since.

The famous Greek city-states (known as "polis") were the first true intents to organize crowds as proper societies: each men had an assigned role in the state, and the act of the inhabitants were supposed to seek the "common wealth". Laws were soon formulated as an instrument to structure and frame the behaviour of citizens: everybody now knew what was commonly believed to be "right" and "wrong", and what punishment you had to face if you chose to commit an act against this established code of conduct and responsibilities.

Anyhow ... how is it possible to enforce these well-installed-laws if the people that are somehow chosen to guide the city are far outnumbered by common citizens ? How is it possible to restrain people from murdering, stealing, raping or cheating if the controlling force will never be able to match in number the size of the populace ? How is it possible to limit people's freedom if their proper nature moves them to do more or less what they desire, no matter outside restriction that can exist ?

The answer is straightforward: it's not possible; no form of temporal organization can achieve this quest. It was not until the common belief of the existence of an eternal afterlife that people started to "cool down"; it was not until they feared of an endless punishment in the afterlife that they really started to behave.

The evolution of moral and ethical behaviour goes side by side with the evolution of religion. When caciques, lords, commanders, kings and emperors realized the power that eternal punishment and reward had on people, they started to organize the primitive and private magic mysteries into well systematized cults.

If you behave in your mortal stay, you'll be rewarded with eternal happiness, otherwise you'll suffer endless punishment from the moment your immortal soul leaves your body. Simple as it sounds, this was the best-found equation to supervise the mass. There's no better way to control a society rather than by self-member-control.

In the following lines we will go through the main written-ambassadors that relate the evolution of afterlife beliefs in society; we'll do our best in trying to stress how the conception of soul-immortality developed in a continuous way to make people behave.

Homer's Odyssey (750 BC)

Homer pictures the first setting known to us of the Underworld, a place in the map that could be reached by boat if you just knew the correct path to it. In his journey back home, Odysseus travels to the Underworld to seek advice from the seer Tiresias on how to reach his beloved Ithaca. Once there, he finds a dull and dark place where souls moan in an eternal pain; everyone is walking heavy footed, with their heads aimlessly facing the floor. There's no distinction between kings, commanders and ordinary people among the spirits, no contrast between sinners and good people: everything is equaled for the worse.

In his search for Tiresias he meets Achilles:

(...)

Odysseus: "How do you like being in the Afterworld after having been so great in your living days ?"

Achilles: “O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plough as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead."
(...)

Homer's afterlife is truly pessimistic, there's a single living death for all of us no matter what we've done in mortal times; we find no incentive in life to live in grace, no compulsion to live a moral life, for we all end up in hell. Life is nasty, but when we die it gets even worse !

Plato's Myth of Er (350 BC)

Taking Homer's Underworld as a starting point, the last book of his "Republic" concludes with the tale of a soldier named "Er" who died in war, and after ten days his body came back to life in order to tell the story of his stay in the Land of the Dead.

Let's sum up Plato's myth: when the body dies, the soul accomplishes a hundred years grace (in the Heavens) or punishment (in Hell). The soul then reincarnates in a new body, after having drunk from the river of forgetfulness (Lethe).

Once again, just as in Homer's book, we find a finite body that perishes and frees an infinite soul. What is perfectly observed in the tale is the introduction of a reward for moral people and a punishment for immoral ones: there's a sky for the good and a hell for those who misbehaved in earthly times.

[ Any similarity with judeo-christian belief is mere coincidence ].

Plato's Republic tried to bring up a formula for constructing the "Ideal State", and as we mentioned in the beginning of this article, society can only be controlled by self-citizen-control. Hence, the need of the afterlife dicotomy "reward / punishment" was needed to be present.

Virgil's Aeneid (20 BC)

If Virgil lived nowadays, we would accuse him of copycat authoring; his Aeneid bears more than a resemblance to Homer's Odyssey: the same Greek story now verbally rendered for Romans and by a Roman.

Aeneas' descent to the Underworld is much like Odysseus', nevertheless we can pinpoint special differences in the setting of his Underworld: Virgil is more than seven hundreds years younger than Virgil, and he breaths in a time and place where living is more optimistic. Life has a real purpose, and if you do good in your temporal stay, you'll find endless happiness in your afterlife. Unlike Plato, we find no Sky in the Underworld, but instead a special place for kings, queens, heroes and virtuous people called "Elysium" (also known as Elysian Fields) where they have a joyful visit. For sinners, there's a special place of torment waiting for them following the judgement day: Tartarus.

"This is the place where the road divides and leads in two directions: our way is to the right, and extends under the ramparts of Dis to Elysium, but the left path leads to the evil realms of Tartarus, where penalties for sin are exacted"

It is important to notice the ethical standards he applies, not found in Homer.

Dante's Divine Comedy (1300 AD)

As regards for the evolution of afterlife-salvation and its connection with moral behaviour, The Divine Comedy makes a perfect match between the Christian and Pagan beliefs; Dante smoothly combines the classical myths with medieval doctrines in a story that starts with the descent to the Underworld (Hell), and the subsequent ascent to the celestial Paradise after having climbed the Mountain of Purgatory. [keep on reading]

Dante takes the myths of Homer, Plato and Virgil together and updates them into a new allegory made for Christians, were salvation is found in the belief of a single God who rules the Afterworld of the right and the good.

Once again the moral search of a moral life is found: if you've done good and believed in God while on Earth, you'll be able to reach your reward when your eternal soul leaves your body.

The scientific approach of mythology

2009-03-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

The proper nature of a human being pushes him to try to understand everything he can see, touch or even feel. May it be the heat produced by the rising Sun, the circular movements of the Earth, the continuous flow of Rivers, the water that falls from the Sky, or yet the origin of the Seasons ... since the beginning of time primitive cultures have been trying to explain things in a way they could possibly comprehend. These early civilizations had great knowledge-barriers that were gradually eroded with the passing centuries, early barriers which left them with no choice but to strongly rely on religion as a source for giving explanations to their surroundings: stories involving spirits, magic, gods and goddesses appear as true statements for natural phenomena.

Explanations could not be found or discovered, but nevertheless explanations had to be given:

Why is their a moving light during daytime ? What about the moon ? A god named "Helios" wakes up very early, jumps into his magic-horse-powered-chariot and drives it across the sky carrying the Sun itself to the opposite point bringing light and heat to the Earth below. In that final moment, the goddess Selene starts a similar journey, but this time her passenger is the Moon. (read more)

Why can a whirlpool suddenly appear in the middle of the Ocean ? A huge and ugly monster residing down the water moves his head towards the sky and swallows all the fluid he can get pass through his gigantic mouth. (read more)

How does the Earth stand still ? The Titan god Atlas is carrying the Globe on his shoulders, a punishment made by Zeus after having defeated him in the Titanomachy. (read more)

Why do mountains erupt ? The Olympian Hephaestus (r. Vulcan), god of Fire and Blacksmith of heroes and deities, is working hard inside the volcanic mountain forging new metal armour.

Why are there four seasons ? The goddess Persephone (r. Proserpine) was abducted by Hades (r. Pluto), god of the Underworld, and forced to live in his gloomy kingdom. Her mother Demeter (r. Ceres), goddess of the harvest, became depressed causing life on earth to come to a standstill. Seeing the Earth nearly devastated, Zeus commands that Persephone would live half of the year with her mother and the other half below the surface. While mother and daughter are together, Demeter is happy and grains grow (spring + summer). During the six months of separation plants fade (autumn + winter).

Scientific knowledge has been developing since the first man came into being, and with it the enrichment of every possible explanation to a phenomenon. The more the science advances, the less need for religion to appear and explain what can now be rationally understood. Stories of god and goddesses have changed shape, but nevertheless they are still there: science hasn't caused the extinction of mythology, but forced it to morph. What was first written as science-myths (true beliefs) later turned into fantasy stories that gained a new and totally different purpose: entertain. What was first the source of science, had now become the starting point of fantasy and ecstasy.

It's impossible to place that point in time when these men morphed from true-believers to true-entertainers, but what we know for certain is that when society started to leave their animistic conception of the world (the belief that spirits reside in phenomenon such as "The Sun") to an anthropomorphic one, their new journey had just begun. The animistic Sun can't be treated by men, it just stays on top of the Sky and gives heat and light to the World as is. But the anthropomorphic Helios is much like humans, and if we pay him high tributes, maybe we can influence the way he behaves and get extra hours of light for our own plants. The latter approach is more optimistic, fun and absurd ... and they will probably catch your attention with their peculiar and queer way of describing phenomena.

Give it a try: start reading Hesiod's Creation Myth (Theogony - 8th century BC) and then pass on to Ovid's Metamorphoses (1st century AD). Guess you will be able to clearly identify these two really different approaches to the same topic: while Hesiod was a true believer of his words, Ovid takes all that Hesiod had previously written down and turns it into an entertaining masterpiece.

The anger of Achilles

2009-03-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is brought to the presence of Achilles on the pretext that she is to become his wife. The artist captures the exact moment when Agamemnon reveals his true intention of sacrificing Iphigenia to the Gods before setting sails to Troy with his full armada. Achilles draws his sword in anger to strike him, while Clytemnestra weeps bitter tears, knowing she is to lose her beloved daughter.

Oil on Canvas by by Jacques Louis David

From left to right: Achilles, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia and Agamemnon.

Mythology consists of an enormous number of different interconnected tales, with Homer's two masterpieces ('The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey') acting as a kind of hub to all of them. Full dialogues, chapters and books have been created taking something from both stories, always tending to add details that lead the reader to a further understanding of the 'Behind the Scenes' of this war saga against Troy and the returning of Odysseus to his homeland. Tales are so profound and rich in their essence that even different artists found the need to write about the same single character or event with their personal approach, such as the case of the stories of 'Electra' or 'Oedipus', written in different moments by Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.

This interwoven of stories is perhaps the main reason why when you start reading any classical book (such as Aeschylus' "Oresteia"), you'll find the need to keep on reading other tales and authors: the more you read, the less you know.

The story behind the painting

Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, married Clytemnestra and made her mother of four children: Iphigenia, Electra, Orestes and Chrysothemis. After the abduction of Helen by the Trojan prince Paris, the Greeks - commanded by Agamemnon - join forces and get prepared to set sails to Asia Minor in order to recover the honour of Menelaus, husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon. When the Greek fleet is preparing at Aulis to depart for Troy to begin the Trojan War, the goddess Artemis, still angered with Agamemnon for his killing of a sacred animal of hers, becalm the winds. The prophet Calchas tells Atreus' son that the only way to appease the goddess and recover the breeze that will lead them to the foreign land, is by offering her daughter Iphigenia in sacrifice. Clytemnestra happily takes her daughter to Aulis framed by Agamemnon that their Iphigenia was to marry mighty Achilles, prince of Myrmidons. Once there, the plot is unveiled, and the princess is sacrificed.

Burst in a mix of anger and sorrow, Clytemnestra swears herself she will take revenge on his murdered daughter. While Agamemnon is fighting the Trojans in their land (remember that the battle lasted for ten years), Clytemnestra commits adultery and marries Aegisthus, who becomes the new king of Mycenae. Not explicitly known to Clytemnestra, the curse on the descendants of Atreus is on its way, a vendetta previously invoked by Thyestes, father of Aegisthus.

The war now is over and Agamemnon sails back to his kingdom with a new war gift in his hands: the Trojan princess Cassandra, his new mate. Clytemnestra prepares a murderous homecoming for Agamemnon in the royal palace, setting were she savagely kills him with the help of Aegisthus. Cassandra doesn't escape death; she is slain together with his partner.

All these years Orestes has been brought up in exile, waiting for his father Agamemnon to return home and claim his kingship. After the news of his father's murder by the hands of Clytemnestra reach his ears, he starts plotting a way to kill both Aegisthus and his own mother. Orestes returns to his homeland and joins her sister Electra in the avenge of their father. Now the usurpers of the throne are dead.

...

Next is a list of some of the books I suggest you read that have to do with this further understanding of the painting.

- Iphigenia at Aulis (Euripides): the context and theme of the present painting

- The Iliad (Homer): the war against Troy

- Dialogues of the Gods - The Judgement of the Goddesses (Lucian): the satiric version of 'The Judgement of Paris', reason of the Trojan War
- The Oresteia (Aeschylus) - Orestes' and Electra's vengeance on his murdered father by his wife
- Electra (Euripides, Sophocles) - similar theme to Aeschylus' Orseteia, now focused on the character of Electra
- Thyestes (Seneca) - the curse of the house of Atreus

Oedipus and Narcissus: mythology meets psychology

2009-03-12T01:05:00.000-07:00

Wherever you look inside modern formulations of the inner world of humankind, strong roots and patterns of mythology can be noticed. The tales of Oedipus and Narcissus are among the best known classical allegories related to psychology, but they are not the only ones. Freud's and Jung's theories have almost monopolized the study of myths, especially of the ones shaped in ancient greco-roman times.

Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, is best known for having contributed to psychology with his interpretation of dreams, the theory of the unconscious and with the discovery of the preponderance role of sexuality in humankind (infantile in particular).

Dreams: according to his words "dreams are the fulfillment of wishes that have been repressed and disguised". Having discovered the significance of symbols in the sleeping state, Freud believed that through the creation and retelling of myths, men could achieve the purification of emotional tensions, gaining relief of experiences not able to put in practise in the real world ("catharsis").

(...) every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state (...)

Unconscious & sexuality: in Freudian theory, between the age of 4 and 5, the so called "Phallic / Oedipal phase", the infant experiences sexual attraction for the opposite sex parent, particularly the son’s love for the mother and hostility towards the father. Pleasure is focused on the genitals and both males and females experience the “Oedipus / Electra complex". He also held that the unsuccessful resolution of this sexual complex could result in personality disorders, such as neurosis, paedophilia, homosexuality ... or Narcissism.

Jung, a contemporary of Freud, is credited with the theory of the "collective unconscious": human beings by nature and by instinct are born with predictable and identifiable characteristics. He studied myths and the profound symbolic significance they have, upon which the society as a whole has come to depend. Myths contain "archetypes" which we inherited from our parents, and reside somewhere deep in our minds.

Just as a dog is instinctively driven to dig a hole in the ground to hide his favourite bone, human kind find satisfaction in trying to copy heroic deeds, such as those performed by Herakles or Theseus.

The true stories behind Narcissism (1) and the Oedipus Complex (2)

(1) Narcissus and Echo

Found in Ovid's Metamorphoses, it is a tragic story of self-love and self-destruction.

Narcissus was one of the most handsome mortals, object of passion of girls, boys and perpetual beings, to whom he was totally indifferent. Echo, one of the beautiful Nymphs that lived in the forests, felt desperately in love with him, but got no more from him than the others. This rejection brought her a profound sadness and anguish, which later resulted in her death: her body could never be found, but her voice can still be heard.

Echo once shielded Zeus in one of his infidelities with a sister of hers, stopping Hera from discovering them: Echo saw Zeus' wife about to uncover the sinners when she approached Hera and engaged her in a long conversation, a crafty delay which let Zeus and the nymph scurry to safety. Hera punished Echo: "From now on, your words will be short and sweet; you will answer a call, but never be able to speak first".

Echo's death enraged the gods, and a reprisal soon came over Narcissus: "you will fall in love, but never obtain your desire". And so it was done, Narcissus fell in love with his reflection on a spring of shimmering water:

(...) When I stretch forth my arms to you, you do the same in return; when I laugh, you laugh back, and I have often noted your tears in response to my weeping. (... ) I burn with love for myself, I am the one who fans the flame and bears the torture (...) What I desire is with me; all that I have makes me poor. (...)

Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus faded away and melted, slowly consumed by the fire inside him. His body was never found, however, in his place grew a flower with a trumpet of gold and pale white petals, the narcissus.

(2) Oedipus The King / Rex

The tale of Oedipus is a story of oral tradition. Before being written down, the story of this character was heard from several sources and places, and it seems that the final publications gathered pieces of different birthplaces. Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides ... all wrote down stories of Oedipus. Nevertheless, the best known to us is Oedipus King (Rex) by Sophocles.

Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes respectively, bore prince Oedipus. After having learnt from the Oracle that his own son would kill them, Oedipus is handed to a shepherd who receives orders to finish the newborn's life. Instead of doing so, the shepherd leaves the infant alone in the fields to the fate of gods, before reporting him dead. Oedipus is found by another shepherd who carries the baby to Corinth and hands him to Polybus and Merope, king and queen of the city, who raise him as his own biological son.

Having become a young man, Oedipus learns from the Oracle that he is to kill his father and marry his mother. To escape fate, Oedipus leaves Corinth and reaches Thebes, where he meets his true father on the road (unaware of it) and kills him in an insignificant quarrel, fulfilling part of the prophecy.

After solving the Sphinx's riddle ...

"What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?"

Answer: MAN (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright later, and needs a walking stick in old age)

.. Oedipus is awarded the hand of queen Jocasta, his biological mother.

At the end of the tragedy, after having put up together unwinding tales of different characters, Oedipus and Jocasta discover the real truth. The prophecy was finally fulfilled.

Jocasta ends her life.

You can look at Oedipus' story from two different ways or perspectives:

- Oedipus as a VICTIM: his failure to elude destiny; subject to fate.

- Oedipus as VICTIMIZER: his success in fulfilling his fondest desires of killing his father and thus gaining sexual access to his mother.

It is more than clear that Freud and Jung where deeply concerned with the victimizer Oedipus (incest). Nonetheless, I suggest you keep on reading "Are we puppets of the gods, or real puppeteers of our own lives ?" and let you draw your conclusions of which of the two perspectives is dominant behind the Oedipus allegory.

Open minded or twisted sexual behaviour ?

2009-02-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

What comes to your mind when you close your eyes and try to render the ample concept of SEX in classical times? What characters and settings do appear in that first shower of images? Let me make the opening guess ... drunken warriors raising their filled cups and joyfully partying together? Or maybe the so called "lovers of wisdom" (philosophers) walking bare-footed and pairing with young mates? What about body-oiled athletes competing at open-aired facilities carefully glancing at each other?

It is highly probable that these three situations appear somewhere in your mental silhouettes. There's a universal belief that Greeks and Romans of ancient times had promiscuous and homosexual tendencies, and in fact there's no credulity in this assumption. Classical society praised each and every kind of homosexuality, covering them under manly and picturesque explanations, such as the one Plato gives us in his "Symposium":

"(..) All who are a section halved from the men pursue males; and all the while they are young (...) they love men and take delight in lying by their side and embracing them; these are the best of boys and youths because they are the most manly in nature. (...) Only men of this sort proceed to politics when they grow up. Once they love men they love boys and do not turn their thoughts to marriage and procreation naturally.(...) a man like this is a lover of men as a boy and a lover of boys as a man (...)".

Transposed to present times, we can argument that classical society was sexually "open minded". But if we keep on investigating and happen to come across certain ancient myths, we can infer that more than permissible to non-orthodox ways of sex, Greek and Roman societies were a little more twisted.

As we mentioned in the posting entitled "The Power of Allegories", myths tend to be actual mirrors of real events which happened in past times, only with a touch of hyperbolic and embellished fantasy. Classical mythology is filled of histories which involve different kinds of sex relations; sex could take an enormous variety of forms such as lesbianism, orgies, incests, rapes ... and even bestiality (sex between a man and an animal). Let me retell some of the most famous myths that come to my mind and let you draw your own conclusions about the absolute zoo behaviour of classical society on sex matters:

Patroculs and Achilles: men homosexuality

Behind Homer's Iliad, a story of romantic and sexual relationship between these 2 heroes become evident. Achilles is arrogant and cutting towards every living soul but to his Myrmidon mate, who he jealously defends. Homer tells us that Peleus' son dreams of being left alone with Patroclus to share victory, and that he laments his death in a tender ceremony, a decease that becomes the prime motivation of his return to battle, and the subsequent quest for revenge against Hector, Patroclus' life-taker.

Hyacinth, Zephyrus and Apollo: men homosexuality

Hyacinth was a young and beautiful Spartan prince courted by Apollo and Zephyrus, gods of the hunt and of the West Wind respectively. According to a myth, the two immortals competed for the boy's love, who finally chose Apollo as his mate, driving Zephyrus madly jealous. Once, Apollo was training with the assistance of Hyacinth the athlete contest known as "throwing the discus": the god threw the plate far away and the youngster would go running after it in order to get it back to the hands of his beloved. In one of this attempts, when the discus was airborne, Zephyrus order his winds to blow in a new and violent direction, causing the plate-shaped structure to change direction and hit exactly at Hyacinth's forehead. He immediately died.

The Amazons: lesbianism

Known to be descended from Ares, god of war, the Amazons developed a savage society were men were excluded. Haters of the male gender, they sought for them in order to kill their sons and raise their daughters as Amazons. With no men on sight, and a death-sentence to the one that related with any of them, imagine how they managed to fulfil their sexual instinct and desire.

Artemis and the Nymphs: lesbianism

Artemis, goddess of the hunt and chastity, was always surrounded by 60 beautiful nymphs, daughters of Oceanus and devoting followers of her. In myths where these female characters pop up, they always appear in the woods, bathing together totally naked, playing with water and touching each other with joyful and virginal softness. In this pure and celibate atmosphere, they are too close mates where everything seems to get confused.

Actaeon and Artemis: chastity

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Actaeon is a skilled deer-hunter which happens to lose his path in the woods and unwantingly appears in front of Artemis' beautiful naked body. Now he had to pay for having seen the goddess of sexual-purity uncovered. Artemis wrath turns him into a deer, who soon becomes torn apart by his personal hounds.

Aphrodite: polygamy and infidelity

Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, is also the queen of uncontrolled sexual desire. With the help of his son Cupid, she inflicts blind desire among men and woman, root cause of the polygamous behaviour in every society. Every male and female, except for the 2 goddesses of chastity (Artemis and Athena), are puppets of her disposals: you can't escape infidelity.

Jocasta and Oedipus: incest

In Oedipus King, one of Euripides' most famous tragedies, Oedipus mistakenly kills his father and marries his own mother. After laying in bed, mother and son give birth to four children. Oedipus had formerly run from Corinth to escape his faith, but instead, he was unwillingly following his doomed path.

Pygmalion: inanimated fixation

Another tale in Ovid's Metamorphoses tells us of a sculptor called "Pygmalion" who fell in love with a woman-figured statue of ivory, the outcome of his own artistic hands.

Next come fragments of passages extracted of their strange relationship: "(...) It looked like a real maiden (...) flames of passion burst inside him (...) He kissed her and sexually touched her (...) feeling her parts and breasts with his hands (...) waiting for responses that never came. (...) He placed her on his bed (...)"

Apollo and Daphne: rape and stalking

As a consequence to a minor quarrel between Apollo and Cupid, in which the first laughed at Aphrodite's son for the funny quiver and arrows he carried, the winged god created the biggest of love rejections known to the day: Apollo was struck with the arrow of love-attraction, while Daphne respectively received the arrow of love-repulsion. The story goes on with endless attempts coming from Apollo in order to gain the love of the sea nymph, while the only thing she had in her mind was running away from her stalker. As days, weeks and months went on, the love endeavor turned into rape tryouts. Daphne could no longer stand this obsessive and cruel infatuation, so she asked her father, the river god, for help. Suddenly her lower limbs started to turn into roots, her arms into branches and her body into a trunk: she was becoming a laurel tree. Once the morph was finished, Apollo carefully unplanted the wood-plant and took it to his house. Now he could please his desire whenever he wanted.

Uranus´ genitals

According to the myth of creation found in Hesiod's "Theogony" Aphrodite, queen of love and sexual desire, was born from the genitals of Uranus, father of the mighty Titans.

Keep on reading "The beginning of all times" for a complete description of this tale.

The minotaur and Pasiphae: brutality

As a punish to his husband Minos (king of Crete), Poseidon caused Pasiphae to fall madly in love with a bull. With unbearable desire in her veins, the queen asked Daedalus, the famous architect and inventor, to make a wooden cow where she could fit inside. Pasipahe climbed into the inert cow and approached the bull, with whom she had sex. The offspring of their coupling was a monster half-man and half-bull called "the Minotaur", which only fed on human flesh.

Now what do you think about sex in classical times: shall we call it "open-minded" or twisted ?

Caught between Scylla and Charybdis

2009-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

When you are surrounded and have no place where to go, or even when you have to choose between two equally dreadful alternatives ... you are said to be caught between Scylla and Charybdis.

Illustrated by Verónica Letto

In Book 12 of Homer's Odyssey, in the middle of the journey to his homeland Ithaca, the adventurous hero faces a new fascinating challenge: to sail across the Strait of Messina, a narrow pathway between Calabria (Italy) and Sicily. Odysseus had already been warned of Charybdis and Scylla, the two sea monsters that lived on opposite sides of the strait. They were so close together, that trying to avoid one of them, drove you immediately to the jaws of the other one; it was an inescapable threat to passing sailors.

Scylla lived in a rocky cave; a strange creature with 6 pairs of legs and 6 heads tied to the body by snaky long necks. Whenever a ship passed, each of the heads would grab one of the crew and get him or her swallowed. Scylla was once a sea-nymph loved by Poseidon, the Sea God. His jealous and vengeful wife Amphitrite poisoned the waters in which Scylla bathed, turning her into this carnivorous man-eating monster.

Nobody had ever caught a glimpse of Charybdis. She lived under the sea and was supposed to have an enormous mouth with which she could swallow enormous quantities of water, and belch them out with analogous strength. With every water-devouring coming from her mouth, a sucking whirlpool appeared; with every water-spew an eruption outcame in a geyser-like formation. Charybdis was also originally a sea nymph flooder of lands; a powerful ally of her father Poseidon in the quest of gaining space to his water kingdom. With the help of his thunderbolt, Zeus limited her power and cast her into the sea.

How does the story end ? Odysseus achieves to bypass the challenge, but at a very high cost: he lost six of his crew-members devoured by Scylla's correspondent six heads, and his ship was swallowed by Charybdis making it disappear to the bottom of the sea. Odysseus managed to save his life by clinging to a tree that overhanged the water. With the following Charybdis' water-eruption, the hero swings into the air and lands unconscious in "safe" territory, ready to continue his journey back to Penelope.

Now, whenever you hear once more the British rock group "The Police" sing "Wrapped around your finger" ... you'll clearly understand the second phrase of the song. Try it here (♪).

Meet the Olympians

2009-01-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

Illustrated by Verónica Letto

After the overthrow of the Titans, a fierce confrontation later baptized as 'Titanomachy', a new circle of major deities gained supremacy in the world of Gods: The Olympians. They were an aristocratic dynasty that ruled over the rulers, a patriarchal family headed by Zeus that chose Mount Olympus as their luxurious Pantheon.

Just as their defeated ancestors, these almighty beings resembled humans. They looked and acted like them, sometimes even mirroring their physical and spiritual weaknesses: gods could move faster than any human, were taller and handsomer, they could change shape, disappear and appear, or be lame at the same time. They ate and drank, but their food was ambrosia and nectar was taken for wine. Ichor flowed through their veins instead of blood, a substance lighter and clearer than the red fluid. They could steal, cheat, lie, suffer pain and torment or get wounded just like humans; they even were subject to fate. But there´s a single characteristic which most consistently distinguishes both races: gods could never die.

14 were the great Olympian deities (*) :

Zeus (Jupiter / Jove) the youngest of the Olympians, ruler of rulers. He led his siblings to victory in the Titanomachy; the most powerful of all deities. His power was bigger than all of the other gods joined together. God of the skies, thunder and justice. The thunderbolt was his fearful weapon.

Hera (Juno) Zeus' jealous sister and wife. Queen of the Gods and of the heavens; goddess of women, marriage, and motherhood.

Poseidon (Neptune) god of the waters. With a simple movement of his trident, he could make the Earth shake, and command the seas to cover the lands.

Hades (Pluto) god of the underworld, fearsome figure to those still living. He ruled over the dead who had done either right or wrong while alive: the former group would rest for eternity in the Elysian Fields while the latter would be confined to dark Tartarus.

Hestia (Vesta) goddess of the hearth and home, of the right ordering of domesticity and the family.

Hephaestus (Vulcan) blacksmith of gods and heroes; lord of technology, fire and forges. Made the shield of Achilles, and Helio´s chariot. Got lame when Zeus threw him on to the air, as a consequence of trying to defend his mother (Hera) from Zeus' rage.

Ares (Mars) god of war, frenzy, hatred, and bloodshed; instigator of fights and confrontations.

Apollo god of the hunt, prophecy and of the arts; twin-brother of Artemis.

Artemis (Diana) goddess of the hunt and maidens; the woman´s version of Apollo.

Demeter (Ceres) goddess of fertility, agriculture, nature, and the seasons.

Aphrodite (Venus) goddess of love, desire and fertility. Because of her beauty, other gods would interrupt the peace between them and lead to war. Wife of Hephaestus.

Athena (Minerva) goddess of wisdom, crafts, and strategic battle. Strong and powerful deity who sprang from Zeus' head.

Hermes (Mercury) messenger of the gods, specially confined to the service of Zeus. God of commerce, speed, thieves, and trade.

Dionysus (Bacchus) god of parties and wine, inspirator of ecstasy.

Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings (sons and daughters of Cronus and Rhea). Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, Artemis and Dionysus were children of Zeus with different consorts. Aphrodite was father and mother-less, for she was born from the genitals of Uranus.

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(*) Note: depending on the author - Herodotus, Pindar, Apollodorus or Plato - the Olympians could be 12 or 14; usually Hades and Hestia were left aside. The first due to his realm was under the Earth, and the latter for the relatively little importance she had in ceremonies and myths.

Greek civilization: the lost utopia

2009-01-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

Is the Greek civilization in the middle of an interrupted state of evolution bound to carry on, or were they definitely devastated by the Romans supremacy more than two thousand years ago ?

It's a fact: Greece is the cradle of the civilized world, most predominantly of what is known as the 'western world'. Everything we are inside and outside ourselves, from our conception of freedom and the self, to the format of the state institutions that organize our social lives, or to the way we appreciate beauty and differentiate between right and wrong ... everything we owe it to our ancient Greek comrades.

Now take a glance to Greece today.

Where have those enlightened "lovers of wisdom" such as Socrates, Plato or Aristotle gone ? Where are those worshipped kings, battle strategists and popular leaders such as Agamemnon, Menelaus or Pericles ? Where are the artists such as Phidias, the famous Parthenon sculpture, today ? Have you ever wondered what has happened to them; where has all that ancient magnificence which we all talk and read about gone ?

To the day, there seems no ash remaining from that big "humanist" conflagration that worshipped intelligence and rationality. It seems as if the Macedonians first (338 BC) and then the Romans (146 BC) erased the Greeks from the map, which we certainly know they didn't: the Roman Empire took many different pieces of a great puzzle called "the Greek culture", rearranged it, and then spread those ideals to the world. Latins prevailed, but the Greek culture caused a real outbreak that spanned along lands and seas.

And what about mythology ? Mythology, the core of our interest, doesn't stand aside. There's nothing been more inventive, imaginative and at the same time historical as Classical Mythology writings. Unfortunately, we no longer find the artistic brilliance of a Hesiod, a Homer, a Sophocles or an Euripides; not in Greece, not anywhere in the whole world. Every tale we are told nowadays has something of a story previously generated in the Hellenistic world, but no longer contemporary outstanding artists.

What has happened ? I have no answer. The roots seem to be rotten; it is still a mystery that no evidence to the day foresees a nice ending. I wonder whether they will wake up one day from their lethargy and enlighten this whole world once again.

The beginning of all times

2009-01-18T06:55:00.001-08:00

Very first of all, even before the notion of time and space were created, Chaos came into being, a crude and shapeless mass of elements revolving in continuous strife. Nyx (Night) filled the universe, who appeared together with his siblings Gaia (The Earth), gloomy Tartarus (The Depths) and Eros (Fertlity).

In the middle of such darkness, a feeling of profound loneliness took control of Gaia: nothing could stop her from a shivering pain. Her firstborn offspring was Uranus, the Sky, who immediately embraced his mother and covered her completely with his surrounding dimension. With this full mass spreading, incestuous feelings appeared; they soon became Mother Earth and Father Sky, parents of the immortal race of all blessed gods who were to rule the cosmos.

Out of this love came the strong and one-eyed Cyclopes, three invincible hundred-armed and fifty-headed monsters (know as the Hecatonchires) and the 12 Titans, with Cronus as the youngest and most terrible of the latter race.

Uranus despised his children: as each of them was born, he hid them in the depths of the earth and did not allow them to see the light. Mother Earth could no longer stand this behaviour; she found in young Cronus the perfect ally to ambush his abominable husband and recover her sons and daughters. With the help of a huge sickle her mother had given him, Cronus swiftly cut off his own father´s genitals and threw them to the swelling sea. Earth received all the bloody drops that fell, and when making contact with the land, strong Erinyes (the roman "Furies") and mighty Giants sprang. After being cast adrift for several days, Cronus´ genitals reached the shore of Cythera. White foam arose about from the immortal flesh and in it a beautiful goddess grew: Aphrodite (deity of the foam).

Cronus (roman Saturn) was now the ruler of the world.

Rhea, one of the Titanesses, was chosen by Cronus to become his beloved wife. They united and gave birth to a new race of gods: the Olympians. As Cronus had been told by the Oracle that he was to be out-powered by one of his sons, every time one of them came out of his mother´s womb, he swallowed his child.

Now Rhea felt lonely. While all the other 5 Titanesses played with their children, she had no son or daughter with whom to share her motherhood: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon were in Cronus´ stomach.

Together with Gaia and Uranus, Rhea plotted to take revenge on his child-eater husband: in the exact moment she bore the youngest of the Olympians, little Zeus (roman Jupiter / Jove), she hid him in the island of Crete. Deceiving mighty Cronus, she gave his husband a stone wrapped in infant´s coverings for Zeus, who immediately ended up in the deity´s belly. Soon baby Zeus became mature and was ready to take his father´s place. With the help of his mother, he made the ruler of Titans´s vomit his brothers and sisters, who joined him in his quest. Now it became the time to release the powerful and strong Cyclopes and Hecatonchires, whom Cronus had confined to the depths of the Earth time ago. It was a devastating 10-year battle; Titans vs Olympians in a fierce fight for supremacy (episode known as Titanomachy / Gigantomachy).

The Olympians prevailed.

With the war over, Zeus, ruler of all living gods, divided the kingdoms and designated among his brothers the sovereign to each part of the world: Hades (Pluto) would rule the Underworld and Poseidon (Neptune) the Water, while he himself would take the Land and Sky.

Now the world was in harmony, and ready to receive the first born mortal.

This "creation myth" we´ve just shared is a personal and subjective composite I´ve made grabbing different tales from Hesiod, Homer, Ovid and Aeschylus, authors who have made the best of contributions in trying to explain the genesis of the universe, the gods and humans.

Herakles: human, hero, demigod or god ?

2009-01-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Odysseus, Perseus, Bellerophon, Achilles and Theseus are among a list of the greatest characters of classical mythology. However, there's a single name that outperforms every single living creature of ancient times: Herakles. Since the beginning of times, he's been worshiped interchangeably as both hero and god, in a chicken-and-egg problem. Was he a god who descended to mortal status or a mortal who proceeded up the ontological ladder from hero to god (apotheosis)?

Heroes are human beings blessed by the gods with great and supernatural skills such as strength, speed or shooting accuracy, abilities used in the execution of extraordinary deeds.

A demigod is the offspring of a human and a god, usually the result of an infidelity between a mortal female and a male deity.

Gods look very much like people, and act like them too, only that they are taller, handsomer and can do no wrong. While gods occupy the sky, heroes and demigods have place on the ground. Heroes die, and they do not occupy Mount Olympus after death.

Hercules (Herakle's Roman translation) seem to contradict all of these notions and terms: no single author agrees about the character's life and achievements. Some authors find Herakles at Zeus' pantheon, while others such as Homer describes his soul wandering through Hades (Hell) after her wife´s (Deianeira) poisoning. Writings tell us stories of Herakle´s strategic thinking - such as the tricking of Atlas into taking the sky back onto his shoulders - while others locate his brains in his giant strengthened muscles. We can read of Hercules being a savage hunter or a well educated Chiron´s (centaur) apprentice.

But ... why does this happen? Why can we find so many different versions of a single Herakles ?

Since the invention of tales, mythology has been put at the service of the time of telling and of the teller himself. A tale is ineradicably anthropomorphic, fitting the needs and expectations of both the audience and the teller. Classical myths have a historical dimension with successive layers of development, during which the original tale has been modified to fit the cultural or other circumstances of the time of its retelling. Many of the important myths exist in multiple versions of varying quality, but usually one ancient treatment has been most influential in establishing the prototype or archetype for all subsequent art and thought.

Whatever other versions of the Oedipus story exist, the dramatic treatment by Sophocles has established and imposed the mythical pattern for all time.

In the case of Herakles, many different oral tales scattered along the pan-Hellenic world were gathered in the figure of the hero. Famous authors were "protected" by powerful rulers who influentially turned the art of writing words into nothing more than a projection of their beliefs and moving desire, later translated in Herakle´s acting and thinking: each Herakles had something of the writer, and a little even more of his master.

The character that outlived the mythical figue and arrived to the common reader tell us of a Theban hero, illegitimate son of Zeus with the mortal Alcmene, who was prodigiously strong and brave. He became a god upon his death and married Hera’s daughter Hebe, goddess of youth. His 12 Labours, which form a cycle of stories within the overall set of his adventures, are among his most well known deeds:

Kill the Nemean Lion
Destroy the Lernaean Hydra
Capture the Ceryneian Hind
Capture the Erymanthian Boar
Clean the Augean Stables
Kill the Stymphalian Birds
Capture the Cretan Bull
Round up the Mares of Diomedes
Steal the Girdle of Hippolyte
Herd the Cattle of Geryon
Fetch the Apples of Hesperides
Capture Cerberus

Do you know why he was ordered to do this labors? Driven mad by Hera (as a revenge for her husband's infidelities), Heracles slew his own children. To expiate the crime, Herakles was required to carry out the famous twelve labors set by his archenemy, Eurystheus. If he succeeded, he would be purified of his sin and would be granted immortality.

The power of allegories

2009-01-05T11:48:00.001-08:00

If you need to catch the attention of your audience, tell them a story. If your purpose is to really move them, don't be literal, just concentrate on the setting and paint it with pictures.
JMD

An allegory is actually a story with a meaning partially hidden that lie outside the narrative itself. It's a narration with subtext; a tale that embraces a symbolic significance underneath the literal one. A myth is actually an allegory, usually made up in part of historical events, that helps define the beliefs of people and that tend to evolve as an explanation for rituals and natural phenomena.

Supposing we say "Lisa very much wanted to open the box, but hesitated for fear of the consequences"; this is a plain statement. If we say "In Lisa's mind desire and fear contended for the mastery" we are already beginning to speak allegorically: Lisa's mind has become a battlefield in which two personified emotions are carrying a conflict. From this we can proceed to build a full-blown allegory. We can present Lisa's ambition as a princess imprisoned in a castle, which is attacked by a giant monster called Fear and defended by a knight called Desire. And we can put in as much description of the place and people as will serve to make the story exciting.

The classical world of Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes (among others) is filled with sub-meaning: Herakles' seven labours, Proserpine's abduction from Earth, Arachne's transformation into a spider, Icarus' failed flying plan ... all of them try to tell us something distant from their literal meaning. In their simplest form, they are just extended metaphors.

When Pandora, the first women on Earth, was told not the open the jar which the Gods had given her as a gift, we immediately find a parallel to the Christian allegory of Man's Fall (Eve eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge). Filled with intrigue Pandora disobeys the order and crime, sickness, pain and all illnesses are unleashed out of the pot.

This story can be read literally, or we can enrich these words by going deeper into the tale in order to find its true meaning: men have the power to chose, a freedom that can lead to eternal misfortune.

Whichever the myth you come across in a classical book, you'll find that this way of telling things is much more captivating, easy-reading and finally ... moving for every single reader.

The Divine Comedy

2008-12-30T10:52:00.000-08:00

Written in the early stages of the 14th century by the Italian Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy is an imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife. With mathematical and passioned precision, the artist describes the three states of life after death: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.

Though not a greco-roman story, the many relations this epic poem has with classical mythology (characters, places, stories ... ) make it an entertaining must-read for all of us.

The Plot

- Inferno / Hell
Guided by the great Virgil (author of 'The Aeneid'), Dante begins his journey to the underworld. They both descend the nine concentric circles of Hell, each of them representing a gradual increase in the wickedness of sins, and culminating at the center of the Earth, place where Satan is held. Along the endeavor they come across with a variety of "evil" characters, each one assigned to a special place in Hell according to their earthly sins. All pagans (those born in time of pre-christian religions) and sinners who didn't seek for God while alive belong to Hell.

- Purgatory
Book 2 starts with these pilgrims ascending Mount Purgatory, and meeting Saint Peter. Once again, along their ascent they'll meet different people who are now in the state of purging their souls. They are busy working on their spiritual enlightenment from the stain of sin and getting in condition to be allowed to Paradise. At the top of the mountain, we can find the Garden of Eden.

- Paradise
Dante is no longer accompanied by Virgil, who leaves him to reside once more in Limbo, a place in Hell meant for those who did no god nor wrong, and for the virtuous (like him) who were born before the time of God's revelation and have thus fallen short for their lack of faith. His beloved Beatrice, now guides him through the spheres / planets of Heaven in his continuous search for God.

While the structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based around different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues.

What I liked less of the book

- The book of Paradise. The more the story advances, the more christian-specific and less allegorical-epic it becomes.
- The tremendous need to delve into the political and social context surrounding Dante and his medieval time in order to get a full comprehension of the book.
- From time to time, Dante seems to overuse The Divine Comedy as a way to place his friends in Paradise and his enemies in Hell. All of them are found somewhere in the book, leaving the allegorical richness of the book sometimes behind.

What I liked best

- Dante's notion and treatment of free will: we must abandon any idea that we are slaves of chance; we can consciously exercise choice, and this choice is decisive to all eternity. We have to make the choice between accepting or rejecting God, and discover what we've chosen after life. (I suggest you read this posting)
- The entire book of the Inferno, far the most entertaining and "mythical" of the three.

The origin of deserts and black men

2008-12-21T21:07:00.000-08:00

Phaeton, praising and claiming to be direct descendant of Phoebus (Helios / the Sun God) became an arrogant young boy used to boastful talking about his and his father's achievements. Once, a man sick and tired of hearing young Phaeton, defied him to give true proof of his transcendent lineage. Phaeton was out of words; a mix of anger and shame filled his body. He suddenly realized that the only proof he really had was the story her mother Clymene once told him: "my dear son, you are are the result of a beautiful affair I had with mighty Sun".

This time, Clymene's words wouldn't be able to fulfill Phaeton's desire: he needed to know for himself he was the true son of Phoebus.

Guided by his mother, Phaeton reaches Phoebus' radiant palace. Picture the Sun's royal seat, an imposing building with towering columns resplendent in glittering gold and blazing bronze: "O Phoebus my father, if you will allow me to call you my father, grant me a sign whereby all men must believe that I'm truly your son, and banish this doubt from my own mind".
Phoebus answered: 'Your mother hasn't fooled you, you are truly mine, and in order to back my words I promise to give you anything you ask for".

Phaeton didn't hesitate: "I want to ride the chariot that gives light and heat to Earth, just for one day".

Phoebus wished he had never pronounced those words. The horses that move the chariot are ungovernable, not even great Jove (Zeus) himself can perform the task. Phoebus begged the mortal youngster to withdraw his demand and chose wisely, but he wouldn't do. Phoebus had sworn by the Stygian marsh (*), so he had no choice but to give Phaeton the reins to the chariot. The destiny of mother Earth was, for a day, in the hands of young Phaeton.

The chariot took off. Not long after, the four horse team that pulled the vehicle sensed the strong hands of Phoebus were not in the reins. They ran wild, scorching one and again at random. Phaeton lacked not only the skill to drive the chariot, but also the line of the route the Sun had to draw. Every time the horses went high into the sky, the day became night and people on Earth started to freeze. When the chariot described a path near the Earth's surface, rivers ran dry, trees turned into fire, and ice melted into water.

Mighty Zeus saw the conflagration that was devastating mother Earth, and with no hesitation took one of his thunderbolts and threw it to the chariot's driver. Phaeton immediately died, and harmony was reestablished on Earth.

It is said that once, in Paheton's uncontrollable journey through the sky, the chariot came so close to the Earth, that lands beneath lost all its moisture, turning vast areas into pure sand. This place later became known as 'Northern Africa'. Humans living nearby got their blood about to boil, and their skin turned dark forever.

...

(*) When a god gave their word "by the River Styx", they were making an oath unable to be broken.
This spot - located in the depth of Hell - was also known as the Stygian Marsh.

Story found in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Are we puppets of the gods, or real puppeteers of our own lives ?

2008-12-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

As you may know, determinism and free will are two opposed philosophical positions. When mentioning "free will", we think of the power that we human beings have to guide our own lives, with every act opening a path never described before. Every single moment in our lives is a consequence of the micro-decisions we've been doing through all our existence. We govern our acts on Earth, and become responsible of them.

On the contrary, determinism suggests that every move we make (and even those we don't make) are not a consequence of our desire, but determined by other agents. We may think we chose, but the choice itself was previously made somewhere else by someone or something different from ourselves. In this world, self-defined actions do not exist cause everything is ruled by natural laws and fate.

In the Homeric world, fate, divine intervention and independent human action seem to work together in a strange and confusing coexistence.

The Fates
They are the three deities who preside over the destiny of mankind. Every time a man is born, Clotho prepares the thread of life (spans it from her distaff onto her spindle), Lachesis assigns it a length, and Atropos cuts it. The thread is woven on the loom, which means a new human being will start to exists and that his life will span to the point where the thread was cut, which will become his death.

The Divine Intervention
Gods are said to govern the actions of men; they favour humans according to their desire and can apparently intervene in their destiny.

It is said that only Zeus, the King of the Olympian gods, can weigh the lives of men and that it is he who informs the three sisters of his decisions. In that case, the Fates are viewed only as the instrument of Zeus. Still others claim that not even Zeus is beyond the power of the Fates and that he is subject to their whim. That would make the Fates the most powerful of all the deities.

- Was the decision to invade Troy due to the abduction of Helen (Sparta's queen) from Menelaus' hands, or the consequence of "The Judgement of Paris" and Hera's rage ? (The Iliad)

Note: The Judgement of Paris was a beauty contest that had Hera, Athena and Aphrodite as contestants. Paris was named judge, and chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful of the three. Hera and Athena swore vengeance.

- Athena guided the arrow of Pandarus to wound Menelaus, sabotaging a truce that could potentially lead to the peaceful return of Helen from Troy (The Iliad)

- In his sea-journey Aeneas went shipwrecked and met Dido, queen of Carthage. After losing her husband Sychaeus, Dido had promised him ever-lasting love, and that she was never to fell for any man on earth. Cupid (Eros / son of Aphrodite) threw one of his arrows to Dido and she could do nothing against the god's shot of love: she became infatuated with Aeneas. When he had to set sails to Italy and continue with his trip - for he had a transcendent mission to accomplish - Dido couldn't stand the pain and committed suicide. (The Aeneid)

- Oedipus tried to escape his fate by all means, but the more he tried, the less he achieved it. Against his will, he killed his father Laius and mistakenly married his mother Jocasta, bringing disaster on his city and family. (Oedipus King)

As I mentioned in the opening paragraphs, free will, fate and determinism coexist in Greek and Roman Mythology. The idea of destiny, of what is fixed, is flexible to every author, to every story, or even to every character. Everything is guided for the entertaining and allegorical purposes of the author; there's no engineering need or even desire to follow a single philosophical movement.

Greek and Roman Mythology - Where to start from?

2008-12-03T05:08:00.000-08:00

Time ago, I happened to overhear the names Zeus, Aphrodite, Homer, Achilles and Aeneas ... stories such as the rise of the Titans, the Wanderings of Odysseus, the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur and the 12 labours of Hercules or Herakles ... wonderful places such as Troy, Mount Olympus, the city of Mycenae and Marathon ... horrible monsters like Hydra, Medusa, Cerberus and Cyclops ...

The list goes on forever, having heard of every story, of every god, of every living creature in different contexts and situations. Nevertheless, I found out all of them had something in common, a unique leitmotif that spanned across all these contents: they all belonged to the world commonly known as Greek and Roman Mythology.

Now that I had found the "category" that gathered all these tales and allegories ... it became time to start delving into it. As to my surprise, I found no articles, recipes or even paths or clues from where to start my journey, just a lot of content shuffled in different places prepared to become pieces of my puzzle.

After having read many books and articles, having listened to audio tacks, and watched a bunch of videos and documentaries for some years now, I thought I could give a help to Classical Myth beginners. In proper words: "be the Virgil that guides Dante through the Inferno and Purgatory".

At least ... I'll just give it a try.

The first five books you MUST read to start your journey into Greek mythology

1- Theogony - by Hesiod
The genesis of the world, origin and genealogy of every god: Uranus, Gaia, The Titans (Cronos ...), The Olympians (Zeus ...) and all the creatures that appear in Greek myth

2- The Iliad - by Homer
The epic and tragic story of Achilles and the siege of Troy.
Agamemnon, Menelaus, Paris, Helen and Priam are some of its characters.
Every tale that was written under the Classical Myth umbrella is somehow related to the gods, humans and places invented by Homer in his 2 most celebrated creations: Iliad and Odyssey

3- The Odyssey - by Homer
The wandering of Odysseus (Ulysses) in his journey back home (Ithaca) after Troy was finally taken.
Her faithful wife, Penelope, and her rejected suitors.

4- The Aeneid - by Virgil
The wandering of Aeneas, prince of Troy, and his god-guided journey to Italy, and the foundation of Rome.
Dido's suicide. the Amazons ... all took place in this epic poem.

5- Metamorphoses - by Ovid
A big number of small tales that involve Gods, humans and transformations (morphs) into animals.

Prose or Verse ?

All five-book-recommendations were originally written in old-language-verse.
Nevertheless, you'll be able to easily find different adaptations and translations of these texts into modern prose English.
What version to read ? It depends on your likings, but never forget that prose is easier reading.