Download Unit IV: Roman Mythology Introduction This unit will deal with myths

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Unit IV: Roman Mythology
Introduction
This unit will deal with myths about major Greek heroes, but it will also introduce you to stories
about Roman gods and goddesses. So a few words are in order about the difference between
Greek and Roman mythology. Two points are especially important to remember:
1. The native Italian gods were not originally anthropomorphic; they were more closely
associated with cult than with myths.
2. Purely Italian legends were not written down in Latin before about the 3rd century, and the
influence of Greek mythology was so strong that the Roman myths we have are mostly
adapted from Greek sources. This means they are often literary creations.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
In this last unit of the course, you will for the most part be reading selections from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. Ovid was a Roman poet (check out the short biography for details about when
he lived and what he wrote), and he is no longer working in the oral tradition of Homer and
Hesiod. These poets are, nonetheless, still his models, and thus he begins his poem with a nod to
the gods (who take the place of the Muses for this purpose) and a declaration of his theme:
My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods who made these changes,
Will help me—or I hope so—with a poem
That runs from the world’s beginning to our own days.
You have already read Ovid’s account of creation and the decline of man, so your reading for
this unit will begin with the story of Apollo and Daphne. You will quickly notice, I think, that
the myths Ovid is telling are quite different from those you have been studying. They are, for the
most part, not tied to religion or cult or ritual in the same way. Ovid seems instead to be having
fun with the stories, to be playing with them in a literary way.
If you have never read any of these stories before, it will be hard to keep track of everything, so
I’d recommend keeping notes on each story as you go. For many of these, the aetiological and
the structural approaches to myth will be most helpful. So, as you read the Ovid assignments,
think about what each myth may be explaining and which myths seem very similar to each other.
Notice too how Ovid ties together all these different stories. Sometimes he will use ring
composition (as you saw in the Odyssey and even in some of the Homeric Hymns); sometimes he
will follow a family tree. Remember that there are genealogies only a click away to help you
follow the cast of characters.
Interwoven with the minor stories here, are stories about some of the major Greek heroes. Ovid
assumed his audience already knew those stories, so he can be infuriatingly elliptical in
presenting them. Use the posted notes for some outlines to help you keep the story lines clear.
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Using part of your first reading assignment, here is a brief outline of the kind of notes you might
want to keep (although my summaries will be longer than you should write):
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Part 1. Romans and their Gods
Introduction
Read Metamorphoses, Book 1, pp. 16–27; Book 2, pp. 28–45.
Names for Ovid, Books 1, 2.
Daphne
Cupid
Io
Argus
Syrinx
Styx
Phaethon
Cygnus
Arcas
Callisto
Janus
Capitoline Triad
Penates
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Apollo and Daphne: explains why the laurel tree is sacred to Apollo
Soon after he has killed the python at Delphi, Apollo sees little Cupid with his bow and arrows,
and scorns the youngster for daring to play with Apollo’s weapons. This makes Cupid really
mad, so he shoots Apollo with an arrow that causes him to fall in love and Daphne, a river
nymph, with an arrow that makes her reject love. (Ovid makes her sound a bit like Hippolytus,
though without his hubris.) When Apollo sees Daphne, he falls immediately in love and pursues
her, but she flees. Ovid adds a wonderful touch to his description: “Run more slowly,” says
Apollo, “and I will chase you more slowly!” Daphne prays to her father to change her shape
(remember that water deities have this power). Ovid explains the rest:
And hardly had she finished,
When her limbs grew numb and heavy, her soft breasts
Were closed with delicate bark, her hair was leaves,
Her arms branches, and her speedy feet
Rooted and held, and her head became a tree top,
Everything gone except her grace, her shining.
Apollo loved her still.
Transition: all the rivers go to Tempe except Inachus who is mourning the loss of his daughter,
Io.
Jove and Io: explains why the peacock’s tail has eyes on it
Jove sees Io, falls in love and pursues her, but she flees. (Does this sound familiar...?) But,
being Jove, he catches up and, as Ovid puts it, “takes her.” Meanwhile, Juno looks down from
heaven and notices an unexpected gathering of clouds. She looks around to see where her
husband is and knows something is up. “I am either wrong, or being wronged,” she says. So she
descends to earth and breaks up the clouds, only to find Jove standing by a beautiful cow.
(Again, being Jove, he was quicker than she and transformed Io just in time.)
To make her husband squirm, Juno begins asking a lot of questions about this cow—who owns
her?, where did she come from? and so on. Jove, who is apparently not always too quick on his
feet, blurts out that she just sprang up out of the ground. So Juno asks if she can have her as a
present, and Jove is forced to say yes. Juno sets as a guardian over Io, the monster Argus.
(Don’t confuse him with Odysseus’ dog, please.) Argus is a great guard because he has a
hundred eyes and no more than two ever shut when he sleeps. Read Ovid’s description of poor
Io trying to reach out her arms or speak or even just look at her reflection in the river. His
interest in how it feels to have your shape change will be clear in future stories too.
Well, Io is finally able to communicate to her father who she is by scratching her name in the
dust. (I always think she’s lucky not to be named Shelmerdine!) Inachus is distraught (he’d
wanted grandchildren, not grandcows). Finally Jove takes pity on these two; he calls Mercury
and tells him to kill Argus. Mercury lulls Argus to sleep (all his eyes at once) by playing a tune
on a reed pipe and telling a story:
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(Here’s a ring composition.) Once upon a time there was a woodland nymph named Syrinx
who had many suitors, but she aspired to be like Diana and spurned them all. The god Pan
sees her one day, falls in love and pursues her, but she flees (sound familiar?). Just as he
catches up to her, she reaches the riverbank, where she implores her sisters to transform her,
and she changes into water reeds, which he took and made into a musical instrument, the pan
pipes. (Now back to the main story.)
Argus, hearing this story, falls asleep, and Mercury kills him “All the light in all those eyes went
out forever, a hundred eyes, one darkness,” says Ovid. Juno takes the eyes and puts them on the
feathers of the peacock. Then, to punish Io, she sends a gadfly to torment her across the earth.
(This is what was happening when you met Io in the Prometheus Bound earlier in the course.)
When she gets to the river Nile, Jove takes pity on her, comes clean to his wife, and begs her to
stop the gadfly. Then he restores Io back to her human shape, though Ovid tells us that at first
she is afraid to speak for fear her words will come out as a moo. She is worshipped as a goddess
and bears a son Epaphus.
Transition: Epaphus has a good friend named Phaethon.
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Phaethon—The Greek Background
The story of Phaethon is the longest episode in Ovid’s poem, but notice that Phaethon himself
does not undergo a metamorphosis in it. Before we look at Ovid’s account, let me tell you a bit
about the Greek traditions that lie behind the figure of Phaethon. Hang on, this ride will be a
little wild, but it will provide a good illustration of a number of approaches to interpreting myths.
In Hesiod we get a geneaology of Phaethon as a mortal man. Right after describing how Eos
(Dawn) bore the hero Memnon to Tithonos, Hesiod tells us (Theogony 986-991):
And to Kephalos she bore a splendid son, strong Phaethon, a man like the gods. When he
(Phaethon) was young and still had the tender bloom of glorious youth, a boy with childish
thoughts, laughter-loving Aphrodite snatched him up and made him the innermost keeper of
her holy temple, a godlike demi-god.
You probably don’t remember this detail, but in the Hippolytus, when the Nurse is trying to
convince Phaedra that her love for Hippolytus is sent by the gods, and that even the gods
themselves are subject to the power of love, she says the following (451-456):
Those who know the writings of the ancients. . .
know how Zeus once desired a union
with Semele, and they know how beautiful-shining Eos
once snatched Kephalos up into the company of the gods
because of desire. . . .
And remember too what Kalypso says to Hermes when he comes down to tell her she must
release Odysseus (Fagles translation, 5.130–137). Among the examples she gives is that of Eos
taking the hunter, Orion, to be her husband until he is killed by Artemis.
Add these examples to those you read in the Homeric Hymns to Demeter and to Aphrodite, and
you have the following examples of a young mortal being abducted by a god:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Hades abducts Persephone
Zeus abducts Ganymede
Eos abducts Tithonos
Eos abducts Kephalos
Aphrodite abducts Phaethon
Eos abducts Orion
(There other examples too, but these will do for the present argument.)
A structural approach to these myths would explain that each of them has to do with death,
mortality, and immortality. This is, of course, what Kalypso had in mind for Odysseus. Hidden
on her island, he is essentially dead (at least to his family and friends). Some scholars see his
subsequent trip through the waters of the ocean and re-emergence at Phaiakia as a literal rebirth.
So, too, there is more to interpreting the story of Phaethon. In Homer phaethon (“shining”) is
used both as an epithet of Helios, the sun god (look at Fagles’ Odyssey book 23.530 for one
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example), and as the name of one of Dawn’s horses (Fagles 23.280). On this evidence, someone
approaching the myth of Phaethon as an allegory of nature might say he is merely a doublet for
the sun himself. If we interpret the Hesiodic tradition as a solar myth, we can explain it as
follows:
1. Phaethon (the sun) is born from Eos (dawn) symbolizing the sunrise at the break of each
day.
2. Phaethon’s abduction by Aphrodite symbolizes the death he suffers at the end of each day
as he plunges into the ocean at the western edge of the world as the sun sets.
3. Phaethon (the setting sun) mates with Aphrodite (the goddess of regeneration) and reemerges from the ocean to be reborn each new day at sunrise.
Where does Orion fit into all this? He becomes a constellation in the sky, which also sets into
the ocean and rises from it again; but reversing the pattern of the sun, he sets at daybreak and
rises at night. When Odysseus, following Kalypso’s instructions, set his course in Book 5 of the
Odyssey, we saw him scanning these stars (Fagles 5. 299-302):
. . . the Pleiades and the Plowman late to set
and the Great Bear [Arktos]. . . .
she wheels on her axis always fixed, watching the Hunter [Orion],
and she alone is denied a plunge in the Ocean’s baths.
Continuing our analysis, then:
4. Arktas the constellation, which never sets and is, therefore, immortal, symbolizes
Artemis (goddess of the hunt).
5. The immortal Arktas watches, stalks the mortal Orion, re-enacting in the sky Artemis’
chase and killing of Orion in the myth.
You don’t have to believe any of this solar myth theory, but it doesn’t hurt to be aware of it and,
when we get to Ovid, I will have one more thing to say about all this.
In the meantime, there is another tradition about Phaethon, represented in a lost play of the same
name by Euripides. Enough fragments of that play survive to tell us that Phaethon was about to
marry Aphrodite and that he wound up driving the chariot of the sun. In other versions of this
tradition, he is about to marry the daughter of the sun, but the outcome is the same. It seems
clear that Ovid knew of this Euripidian tradition as well as the Hesiodic one.
Phaethon—Ovid’s Account
Let’s turn now to what Ovid does with the myth of Phaethon. In this account Phaethon is the son
of Clymene and stepson of Merops (a mortal man), but wants proof of his mother’s story that his
real father is the Sun (Phoebus). So he goes to the palace of the Sun to confront the god himself.
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Notice Ovid’s description of the Sun’s palace. It is decorated by Vulcan (the Roman counterpart
of Hephaistos, who decorated the famous shield of Achilles) and shows the universe, complete
with signs of the zodiac; these zodiac symbols will figure in the rest of this story, as you will see.
Phaethon goes to Phoebus and demands proof that he is his son. The sun god approaches his
son—look at the nice detail Ovid gives about how he takes off his diadem of sunlight first so as
not to blind the boy—and swears by the river Styx (the gods’ most awesome oath—remember
the penalty described by Hesiod?) that he will give whatever proof Phaethon wants that he is his
father. (By the way, why does Ovid have him say he has never seen this river?)
Immediately, Phaethon asks for the keys to his father’s car. . . Okay—well, the ancient
equivalent . The chariot of the sun is what Phoebus drives across the heavens every day (this, of
course, is why we see the sun move from east to west in the sky), and he tries to explain how
difficult and even scary it is to make this drive. But Phaethon will have none of it and insists that
his father keep his word. Knowing that this will be, as Ovid puts it, “the gift of death,” Phoebus
hands over the reins to Phaethon with advice to the boy that he steer a middle course, but very
quickly the horses sense that their regular driver is not in charge and the inevitable happens. The
chariot swings out of control, passing the different zodiac animals and veering now far up, then
down towards the earth. Ovid describes the awful scene:
The Moon, in wonder
Watches her brother’s horses running lower
Than her own steeds. The scorched clouds smoke. The mountains
Of earth catch fire, the prairies crack, the rivers
Dry up, the meadows are white-hot, the trees,
The leaves, burn to a crisp, the crops are tinder.
I grieve at minor losses. The great cities
Perish, and their great walls; and nations perish
With all their people: everything is ashes.
Ovid goes on to give three aetions about Africa, Libya, and the Nile river; please take note of
these. As the earth burns, it gapes wide open so that the king and queen of the Underworld blink
in terror at the bright light, the oceans shrink back, and the earth sinks low.
Finally Jove chooses the only way he can to stop the disaster, and blasts Phaethon with one of his
thunderbolts. His poor father, Ovid tells us, refuses to appear, and an entire day passes without
the sun, the universe lighted only by the fires that still burn everywhere. (Ring composition on
other metamorphoses, see below.) The sun threatens not to drive his chariot any more, but the
other gods plead with him and “even Jove asks pardon for that lightning, adding a royal threat or
so,” Ovid says, so Sun goes back to work.
In this account Phaethon doesn’t change his shape, but Ovid does work in two other
metamorphoses which each provide an aetion (explanation) of their own. Phaethon falls to earth
like a comet and is buried, with an epithet proclaiming that if he wasn’t able to drive his father’s
chariot, “at least he fell in splendid daring.” He is mourned by his mother and her daughters,
about whom Ovid says;
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By night and day they call upon their brother
Who will not hear them, ever, and they lie there. . . .
So for four days and nights they remain until the find they cannot move. They are turning into
trees and call for their mother, who tries to tear loose the bark from their bodies. But the twigs
she pulls off begin to bleed, and the daughters cry out in pain and begin to weep. As the bark
closes over them, their tears harden and turn to amber, a gem which, Ovid reminds us, is given to
Roman brides in the marriage ritual of his own day. Finally, a distant cousin, Cygnus, mourns
until he turns into a swan. But, remembering the fire sent from heaven to kill his cousin, he fears
heights and keeps to the swamps and doesn’t fly.
Transition: This transition may seem farfetched, but I think it isn’t such a stretch in fact. Ovid
describes how Jove makes the rounds of earth to survey damage, and sees a nymph in Arcady.
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Jove in Arcady = Callisto and Arcas
Ovid never names this girl, but if we know the Greek models, we don’t need her name. She is
none other than Arktas, also called Callisto, the mother of Arcas (who gives his name to
Arkadia—Arcady in the Latin spelling). This story was on Ovid’s mind, I think, because of the
parallels between Phaethon and Orion that we looked at in the last lecture.
The nymph Callisto is a follower of Diana (the Roman counterpart to Artemis), and she stops to
rest in the woods after a morning of hunting. Jove sees her and falls in love, thinking (as Ovid
says), “Juno will never catch me here, or if she does, well, well, it might be worth it.” So he
disguises himself as Diana and approaches the nymph. But he gives himself away by trying to
kiss her, and she struggles so hard that Ovid notes even Juno might have forgiven the girl if
she’d been there! But of course Jove wins out and takes her.
Poor Callisto! When she rejoins Diana and her attendants, she feels guilty and scarcely dares
look up at the goddess. Ovid takes a dig at the purity of the other girls when he notes:
Her blushes told her story; if Diana
Were not, herself, a virgin, she could have noticed
A thousand signs of guilt: the other handmaids
Had a pretty good idea.
Her condition soon becomes impossible to hide, and she is given away one day when everyone
decides to go skinny dipping. Read for yourselves how this story ends. Ovid gives an aetion
here for the Big and Little Dipper, and a different explanation for why they never set, but are
always visible in the sky. Look too, at how he makes the transition between this story and the
story of the Raven.
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Part 2. Founding of Thebes and the House of Thebes
The Myth of Thebes, Part 1
The next half dozen or so stories all have to do with the city of Thebes, so you may want to
consult the genealogy for the “House of Thebes” as you read them. Notice that this family is all
descended from Jove (Zeus) and Io, so if you see certain parallels among the stories, don’t be
surprised. Ovid uses the story of Europa to lead into his account of Cadmus. This is the same
Cadmus (and the same Thebes, for that matter) that you met when you read Euripides’ Bacchae.
Then, in an extended ring composition, the story of Cadmus frames the stories of his children
and grandchildren, and even the remarkable story of the Theban prophet, Tiresias. At the end of
the Cadmus story, Ovid moves on to the story of Perseus, another descendant of Zeus and Io,
although through a different line and born five generations after Cadmus.
Cadmus and Harmonia have five children (“who turned out well,” Ovid says) and grandchildren
who grew to maturity. Ovid chooses to begin his account with one of these grandchildren,
Actaeon, and he ends the book with the story of another grandson, Pentheus (and his cousin,
Dionysos). In between, he tells additional stories that are thematically related but do not deal
with Cadmus’ family.
As you read these stories, pay close attention to the elements in them you have seen before.
What are some of the common themes? One that seems to tie them together for Ovid is the
theme of seeing something one should not. You should find several elements and/or themes in
each story.
Rather than give you complete lectures on these readings, the notes below will suggest points to
pay special attention to in each individual story.
Read Metamorphoses, Book 2, pp. 54–56; Book 3, pp. 57–80; and Book 4, pp. 81–86, 93–99.
Names for Ovid, books 2, 3, 4.
Europa
Cadmus
Boeotia
Thebes
Actaean
Semele
Pentheus and Bacchus (You read about these two in the Bacchae earlier in the course.)
Autonoe
Tiresias (Same prophet as in Odyssey)
Echo
Narcissus
Daughters of Minyas (Know what happens to them, not their names.)
Pyramus
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Thisbe
Athamas
Ino
Oedipus
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Europa
Europa is the daughter of King Agenor of Sidon (look for Sidon and Tyre on the map of the
Middle East along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea), and Jove has fallen in love with her.
Whereas in the myth of Io, he ended up turning Io into a cow, in this myth, Jove himself wears a
bull disguise to lure Europa onto his back and carry her off across the ocean to Greece or the
island of Crete (depending on different traditions).
The Greek historian, Herodotus, gives an historical background for both these myths: According
to the Persians, Io was a Greek princess whom the Phoenicians kidnapped and took to Egypt.
The Greeks retaliated sometime later by kidnapping the Tyrian king’s daughter, Europa, and
taking her to Greece. This cycle of kidnappings was continued when the Greeks stole Medea (as
you will learn in the myth of Jason) and the Persians retaliated with the Trojan prince, Paris,
stealing Helen from Sparta (in a myth you already know).
An historical interpretation of these myths would say that they all probably have in their
background a kernel of truth about the ongoing distrust and hostility between Greece and Asia
that flared into war at different periods throughout history. A structural approach to the myths of
Io and Europa would note the significance of a conflict between Greece and Asia, and not worry
which girl went from Greece to Asia and which went from Asia to Greece.
Cadmus
Cadmus is the son of King Agenor and brother of Europa. He is sent to find his sister and told
not to come home without her. Ovid says, he “roamed the world in vain—for who is good
enough detective to catch Jove cheating? [we know Juno is!]—and [he] became an exile.” He
asks Apollo’s oracle what to do and is told to follow a heifer (a cow) who has never worn the
yoke and found a city where she lies down. Here Ovid is giving the aetion for Boiotia, which
means literally “land of the cow.” Cadmus sends his men to get fresh water for sacrifices when
they reach Boiotia, but they meet up with a serpent sacred to Mars and are all killed. When they
don’t return, Cadmus goes to find them and himself meets the serpent. Ovid gives a vivid
description of the battle between the two and the important aftermath of the serpent’s death:
As [Cadmus] stood there gazing at his victim,
A voice was heard, coming from where, he knew not,
But he could hear it saying: “Why, O Cadmus,
Stare at this serpent slain? You also, some day,
Will be a serpent for mortal men to stare at.”
Minerva descends from the sky to help him after this. Read the details of this scene carefully; it
follows a pattern you have seen before and will see again, and provides the founding myth for
the city of Thebes itself.
Once Thebes has been founded, Cadmus marries Harmonia (“Harmony”), the daughter of Venus
and Mars, and they have many children and grandchildren. “But always, always,” Ovid warns,
“A man must wait the final day, and no man should ever be called happy before burial.” This is
a commonly expressed sentiment in Greek tragedy and other sources Ovid knew well. It also
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leads nicely into the next story about one of Cadmus’ grandsons who did not have such a happy
life.
Actaeon
Several traditions about Actaeon exist, and in some of these, he brings about his own ruin
through hubris. But Ovid follow a tradition in which he is innocent; in fact he makes a point of
saying at the outset, “You will find Actaeon guiltless; put the blame on luck, not crime: what
crime is there in error?” Why is he punished? You will see a catalogue in this story like those in
the Greek models you have seen before. Ovid lists 35 hunting dogs in one long passage (adding
three more several lines later), and each dog has a Greek name (none of which you need to
know!). This is a good example of Ovid both having fun with the epic tradition of using
catalogues and showing off his own knowledge of Greek.
Actaeon is the son of Autonoe, so in telling his story, Ovid also accounts for her.
Semele
Another of Cadmus’ daughters, Semele, the mother of Dionysos, is the focus of the next story.
How does Ovid tie her story to those that have preceded it? How does Juno work her revenge in
this story? How does the river Styx figure in this story? Ovid gives the details of Dionysos’ first
and second births here and underlines the etymology of his name as the “Zeus (Dios) of Nysa”.
Tiresias
Tiresias is not actually related to Cadmus, but his story is just too good to leave out, and he was
famous as a prophet at Thebes. Thematically, too, his story can be connected with the others
Ovid is telling. Jove and Juno are up on Olympus one day, and Jove was “feeling pretty good
(with wine),” as Ovid says, and kills time by debating with Juno whether men or women get
more pleasure out of sex. Read for yourselves how they decide to settle this (where else have
you seen a dispute among the gods decided by a human?) and how that affects Tiresias. Tiresias’
power as a prophet will provide the transitions to the next two stories.
Echo and Narcissus
In the story of Syrinx (embedded in the larger story of Io) you read how the god Pan pursued her
and ultimately made a musical instrument from her reeds. To learn more about this god, you can
look at the short Homeric Hymn to Pan (#19). In that Hymn he is the son of Hermes, although
another tradition says Apollo was his father. In any case, he seems to have had a habit of
pursuing nymphs in the woods, and one tradition said he pursued Echo as well. She fled from
him, and he inflicted nearby shepherds with such a madness that they tore her body to pieces,
leaving only her voice.
Ovid records a different version of Echo’s story and combines it cleverly with the story of
Narcissus. In his account, these two are at opposite ends of the spectrum of love: one is totally
self-involved and the other totally focused on someone else. Having fallen in love, Narcissus
must initiate all contact with the one he loves, while Echo can only reflect back what is said by
the one she loves.
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When the Narcissus is just a baby, his mother asks Tiresias if Narcissus will live to a ripe old
age, and Tiresias answers, “Yes, if he never knows himself.” When he is sixteen years old and
out hunting in the woods, Narcissus is seen by Echo, a girl with a funny way of talking. . . . Here
Ovid uses the technique of ring composition to give us his version of why Echo talks in this
funny way, then returns to the story of Narcissus before explaining how Echo comes to lose her
body. Finally he returns to Narcissus once more and recounts how the youth fulfilled Tiresias’
prophecy. What metamorphosis ends this story, and why is it appropriate?
Pentheus and Bacchus
You have already read Euripides’ version of this story, so as you read Ovid’s account, look at the
differences between the two. Among the many differences, notice how each story ends and
consider what that tells us about the intent of the two authors. Is Bacchus (son of Semele) or
Pentheus (son of Agave) the focus in Ovid’s account?
Why does Pentheus call the Thebans “sons of the serpent’s teeth”? What role does Mars play in
the city of Thebes? Was this an element in the Greek version? How does Ovid use the myth
from the Homeric Hymn to Dionysos in this story?
As this story ends, Ovid cleverly works in details that were part of the Dionysian ritual he knew.
He says, “All the others, rushing, tore Pentheus in pieces swifter than winds whirling off leaves
in the first cold of autumn.” The last act of the winter festival of Dionysos was, in fact, the
tearing and eating of raw flesh. Do you remember what Pentheus’ name means?
Daughters of Minyas
Ovid begins Book 4 with a focus on the newly established Theban ritual, a hymn to the young
god Dionysos (Bacchus) and a description of the women of Thebes worshipping the god. He
then contrasts this scene with that of the daughters of Minyas, who live in Boeotia but refuse to
worship Bacchus. Instead, they worship Pallas (Minerva) and spend their time weaving and
telling stories. This setting provides a nice ring composition for three stories, only one of which
(Pyramus and Thisbe) is assigned for this course. At the end of these stories Ovid returns to the
daughters and tells you what happens to them. Notice that Ovid gives us the aetion of the
Pyramus and Thisbe story before he actually tells it.
Pyramus and Thisbe
This story isn’t really a myth, but a straightforward love story. Notice too that there are no gods
here; it is the first example so far of love between two humans! Pyramus and Thisbe live in
Babylon (look at the map to locate this city if you’re not sure where it is) and rivers bearing their
names existed in Cilicia (the area near the northeastern coast of the Mediterranean), so it is
possible that this story comes from Eastern sources. In any case Ovid is our earliest surviving
account for what is, by his own words, a story “not known too well.” In later times, the story
became very well known, and Shakespeare used it both in his Midsummer Night’s Dream and in
Romeo and Juliet.
Athamas and Ino
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After concluding the story of the daughters of Minyas, Ovid returns to the last daughter of
Cadmus, Ino. In other traditions, she is presented as an evil stepmother who kills Athamas’ two
children by a previous marriage, but here Ovid treats her as an innocent victim of Juno’s wrath.
In this story he consciously refers to the great Roman epic, the Aeneid, by Vergil, so if you have
read that poem you may be able to pick out some interesting details. (Think of Allecto and Dido
and the snakes, for example.)
Pay attention in this story to:
--Juno’s motivation and actions
--Ovid’s description of the Underworld (Notice the nice touch of the threshold groaning under
the weight of her body; it is used to the insubstantial human souls, not a heavenly body!)
--Athamas’ role
--Ino’s metamorphosis (which explains how she could help Odysseus in Book 5 of the Odyssey)
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Oedipus
In this course you are not reading about the myth of Oedipus, but you should be aware of some
details connected with it.
Labdacus, another grandson of Cadmus, took over the rule of Thebes after the death of Pentheus.
He had a son named Laius who was sent into exile after his father’s death and went to Elis (near
Olympia) where he received hospitality from King Pelops who ruled there. While there, he
abducted one of Pelops’ sons, and the king pronounced a curse on him and his descendants.
Laius returned to Thebes on the death of the rulers there, became king, and married Jocasta (who
was a granddaughter of his cousin, Pentheus).
Laius consulted the oracle at Delphi about the children he and Jocasta planned to have. The
oracle replied that he would have a son but that the son would kill him as a result of Pelops’
curse. When the baby was born, Laius ordered that stakes be put through his ankles and that he
be exposed on a nearby mountain. But the servant ordered to expose the baby took pity and gave
him to a shepherd who took him to the king of Corinth, who brought the infant up as his own
son. This baby was named Oedipus, “Swollen Foot,” because of his damaged ankles.
When Oedipus was a young man, a comrade who’d had too much to drink at a feast insulted him
by saying he was not the king’s real son. So Oedipus consulted the oracle, asking “Who is my
father?” In answer, he was told that he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. In
horror at this, Oedipus decided not to return to Corinth. What happens next is probably our first
recorded case of “road rage.” On the road from Delphi to Thebes, Oedipus met another chariot
at a crossroads and, when it would not get out of his way, he killed the chariot driver and the
older man who was riding as a passenger! (Guess what the passenger’s name was. . . ?)
Oedipus eventually proceeded on to Thebes, where he found the city in mourning because its
king had recently been killed. Even worse, Hera had sent the Sphinx (“Strangler”) to torment the
city. This was a monster with the body of a lion, the face of a woman, and wings, who posed a
riddle to all who tried to enter the city and ate whoever was unable to answer it. (This was,
obviously, very bad for tourism and any hope of a healthy economy for the city.) You may
already know the riddle, which has survived in various versions; here is one:
What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?
Oedipus was able to answer correctly, “Man*”, and the Sphinx promptly threw herself off a
height to her death. The people of Thebes welcomed Oedipus as their savior, made him king and
he married the widowed queen, Jocasta.
Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (see the biography of Sophocles), produced around 425 B.C., is
the most famous surviving account of the next part of the myth. The play opens many years after
the events just told, and Thebes is beset by a plague. The king, Oedipus, has sent a
representative to the oracle at Delphi to find out what they should do, and the startling answer
comes back that the city is polluted because the murderer of their former king, Laius, is living
there. Oedipus vows to find and punish this man.
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This is a play worth reading on your own if you do not already know it. It is a good illustration
of how the Greeks viewed Fate, not so much as something pre-ordained, but as the inevitable
working out of a person’s character. (Have you ever been troubled about what to do and, when
you finally make a decision, had your friends all say they knew you were going to decide that
way? They “know” this because they know how you think and act.) It is also a strong
affirmation of the power of the gods. As tragic as the outcome is for Oedipus and his family, the
thought that the gods can not foresee the future, that oracles can not be trusted, would be far
worse.
Two other plays of Sophocles on the myth of Thebes survive, the Oedipus at Colonus, which
tells about Oedipus’ death as an old man, and the Antigone, which deals with his children.
Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes tells the part of the myth that occurs between the action of
these last two Sophoclean plays.
*Because as an infant he crawls on all fours, as an adult he walks on two legs, and as an old man,
he uses a cane as a third foot.
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Part 3. Heroes: Perseus; Famous Women: Arachne, Niobe
Read Metamorphoses, Book 4, pp. 99–106; Book 6, pp. 129–143.
Names for Ovid, Books 4, 6.
Cadmus (final bit of his story)
Harmonia
Perseus
Danae
Atlas
Medusa
Andromeda
Acrisius
Graeae
Pegasus
Arachne
Niobe
Latona (= Leto)
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Cadmus, Part 2
Ovid moves from the story of Athamas and Ino back to the end of Cadmus’ story. Reflecting on
the sorrows that have afflicted his family, Cadmus reminisces with his wife about the serpent he
killed so long ago when he was founding Thebes. “If this is what the gods are angry over,” he
says, “may I become a serpent. . . .” Even as he speaks, the transformation begins, and Ovid
again shows clearly the reaction of the person being transformed. Harmonia cries in horror at
what she sees and asks the gods to transform her as well, which they promptly do. Ovid
reassures us, though, that:
Now as before, they never
Hurt men, nor fear them, for they both remember
What once they were; they are the most gentle serpents.
Watch for another older couple who are transformed together as you do the rest of the reading
assignments in Ovid.
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Perseus
You began this course by thinking about folktales as well as myths, and in the Odyssey you saw
how Homer used folktale elements especially in the adventures of books 9–12. The story of
Perseus is the first of a series of hero’s tales you will be reading in this last section of the course
(the others are Jason, Theseus, and Herakles). Look for folktale elements here and in the other
hero tales.
As often in the Metamorphoses, Ovid is not interested in giving a chronological account of the
next myth. He makes the transition to the story of Perseus by saying that another descendant of
Zeus and Io, King Acrisius, alone in Greece had still not accepted the worship of Bacchus at
Argos. (Look at the map of Greece if you’re not sure where Argos is.) But Acrisius is only his
entry point to the story of Perseus and Andromeda, so we learn very little about Acrisius, or
about the circumstances surrounding his daughter, Danae, giving birth to Perseus. To this Ovid
refers only obliquely, knowing that his audience was already familiar with the story:
Nor would he [Acrisius] grant that Perseus
Was also the son of Jove, the child begotten
On Danae in the golden rain.
Moreover, Ovid spends only fifteen lines on Perseus’ famous slaying of Medusa, which is told in
a ring composition framed by a feast before the wedding of Perseus and Andromeda.
Nonetheless, in the Perseus section of Ovid’s poem, he gives us explanations for:
--why Libya has so many snakes
--how Atlas became a mountain
--the origin of coral
--the birth of Pegasus
--how Medusa became ugly
(Remember, you should be paying attention to aetions throughout the Metamorphoses.)
A word of warning here. If you have ever seen Clash of the Titans, please don’t depend on it for
your knowledge of this myth! On the other hand, once you have learned the basic outlines of the
Classical myth, it might be fun to rent this movie and see how the filmmakers used that myth for
their own purposes.
Here is a chronological outline for the Myth of Perseus, filling in the elements Ovid does not
develop:
(Look also at the Perseus Genealogy.)
-- Acrisius asks the oracle how he might get male children, and is told that his daughter (Danaë)
will bear a son who is fated to kill him.
-- Acrisius imprisons Danaë in either a tower or an underground chamber (different traditions
exist on this) which Jove enters as a shower of gold [click on Danaë in the list of required
names for two images of this] and Danaë becomes pregnant with Perseus.
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-- When Acrisius learns of Perseus’ birth*, he does not believe that Jove is the father, and puts
Danaë and Perseus out to sea in a chest. [Click on Perseus’ name for an image of this.]
-- *some accounts say he doesn’t discovers Perseus until the child is 4 years old and making
noise!
-- Danaë and Perseus are rescued by a fisherman named Dictys (“Net”) who raises Perseus.
-- The King (Polydectes—brother of Dictys) falls in love with Danaë, but she rejects him. To
get rid of Perseus, he invites all the men of the island to a banquet and requests a gift of
horses from each. When Perseus, who is poor and has no horses, replies that the king might
as well ask him to give the Gorgon’s head, the king orders him to do just that. The Gorgons
were three monstrous sisters who looked so awful that anyone who looked at them would
turn to stone.
-- Helped by Hermes and Athena, Perseus goes to the Graeae, old women whom Ovid only
calls the daughters of Phorcys. (Ovid says they are twins, other versions name three sisters.)
These women, who are also sisters of the Gorgons, share one eye between them. Perseus
steals the eye and returns it only when he has learned where to find some nymphs who will
provide him with things he needs to defeat Medusa.
-- The Nymphs give Perseus
1) a cap of darkness, which made the wearer invisible
2) winged sandals, with which he could fly
3) a purse large enough to hold the head of the Medusa;
the word preserved for this
“purse” may be Cypriot, and suggests a non-Greek connection
Hermes gives Perseus an adamantine sickle (remember the story of Kronos and Ouranos?)
-- Perseus flies to where the Gorgons live (traditions differ about where this is, but in Ovid
probably to the far south of the world), and finds them asleep (as Ovid describes). Medusa
alone among them is mortal so, with Athena guiding his sword, Perseus kills Medusa and
cuts off her head, escaping the other Gorgons by wearing the cap of darkness.
-- From the blood of Medusa are born the winged horse, Pegasus, and his brother (whom Ovid
does not name), and Chrysaor (“He of the Golden Sword”), who will become the father of
another monster, Geryon.
-- On his way home, as he flew over the kingdom of the Ethiopians, Perseus sees Andromeda.
She is bound to rocks, Ovid says, “to pay the penalty for her mother’s talking,” but he gives
no other details. The common tradition is that her mother boasted she was more beautiful
than the Nereids (sea nymphs), and Poseidon punished her by flooding the land and sending a
sea monster to torment the people. King Cepheus consulted the oracle of Zeus Ammon,
which said he must sacrifice his daughter, Andromeda, to the sea monster to get rid of it.
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-- Read for yourselves what Ovid says about Perseus’ deal with Cepheus and his description of
the battle with the sea monster.
-- Perseus and Andromeda wed and return to King Polydectes, whom Perseus turns to stone
with the head of Medusa. (Ovid tells about all this in the beginning Book 5, which is not
assigned for this course.) He names Dictys king, returns the cap of darkness and other
borrowed items, and gives the Medusa head to Athena, who places it on her breastplate.
Collecting Danaë, they head back to Argos. But Perseus accidentally kills his grandfather,
Acrisius, with a discus throw (you will see another accidental death by this method later in
Ovid), thus fulfilling the prophecy.
-- To avoid bringing pollution to Argos (as Oedipus had done to Thebes), Perseus trades cities
with the king of Tiryns and later founds the city of Mycenae nearby.
In addition to Ovid, other ancient accounts of this myth can be found in:
Apollodorus 2.4.1–4
Pindar, Pythian Odes 10 and 12
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Arachne
You have now read enough of Ovid’s stories to know what to look for in the myths of Arachne
and Niobe. Look for aetions and for common elements and themes you have seen in other
myths.
Review the myths of Tantalos, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes below before you read this section.
Tantalus
Tantalos was a son of Zeus, who fed his own son, Pelops, to the gods to test their ability to
recognize human flesh. Only one bite was taken (some say by Demeter, too distracted over her
daughter’s disappearance to notice what she was eating), and swallowed before the gods realized
what had happened. Pelops was restored to life (to cause more trouble later on) and the portion of
his shoulder that had been eaten was replaced with a piece of ivory crafted by Hephaistos.
According to Homer, Tantalus was punished in the Underworld by having food and drink forever
just beyond his reach. This is where we get our word “tantalize.”
Pelops
-- To win his bride (Hippodamia), Pelops had to race against her father.
-- He bribed her father’s charioteer (Myrtilus) to sabotage the chariot so he would win.
-- He went back on the deal afterwards (he had promised that Myrtilus could sleep with
Hippodamia before he did. . . .)
-- When Myrtilus tried to take Hippodamia, Pelops threw him off a cliff. On the way down,
Myrtilus had enough time to call out a curse on Pelops and his descendants.
** Pelops gave his name to the area of Greece in which he ruled. “Peloponnese” means “Island
of Pelops.”
Atreus and Thyestes
-- These sons of Pelops quarreled over who would be king at Mycenae. (An oracle had said the
kingship should go to “a son of Pelops.”)
-- The decision was made to give it to the brother who got a golden-fleeced ram.
-- Pan gave the ram to Atreus, but Thyestes seduced Atreus’ wife, who gave him the ram, and
he won the kingship.
-- Atreus was banished for some years, but returned and threw Thyestes out.
-- Atreus then invited Thyestes to a “reconciliation banquet.”
-- Thyestes cursed Atreus and went into exile again.
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-- While in exile, Thyestes slept with his own daughter and produced another son, Aegisthus.
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Part 4. Jason; Medea
Read Metamorphoses, Book 7, pp. 153–166; Euripides, Medea.
Names for Ovid, Book 7 and Euripides, Medea.
Phrixus
Helle
Nephele
Jason
Medea
Hecate
Aeson
Pelias
Creon—Note the image shows Creon's daughter as Glauke, not Creusa.
Creusa
Aegeus
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Important Background Ovid Assumes You Know
(Look too at the Family Tree for Jason)
The Golden Fleece
Once upon a time, a man named Athamas (the brother of Sisyphus, whom you saw in the
Underworld in the Odyssey) married a goddess named Nephele (her name means “Cloud”) and
they had two children, Phrixus and Helle. Then Nephele returned to the sky and Athamas
married Ino (whom you have seen twice before).
Ino is jealous of her stepchildren and persuades the Boeotian women to parch the seed so the
crops will not grow and a famine begins to spread. Athamas sends to Delphi for advice from the
oracle, but Ino bribes the messenger, who returns with the answer that Athamas must sacrifice
his son, Phrixus, in order to appease the gods.
But just as Athamas is about to sacrifice Phrixus, Nephele comes down from the sky and sweeps
him up along with his sister, Helle. She sets them on a golden ram that had been a gift of
Hermes, and it flies eastward. Little Helle, being young and impulsive, keeps leaning way over
the side of the ram to see what’s below them; and, sure enough, just as they are flying over a
body of water which separates Europe from Asia, she falls off. That body of water is forever
after called the Hellespont, “Helle’s Sea,” in her memory—look for it on the map.
Phrixus continues to Colchis (at the east end of the Black Sea) where he is received hospitably
by the king. He sacrifices the ram to Zeus in gratitude for his escape and gives the fleece to the
king, who hangs it on an oak tree in a grove sacred to Ares. This tree is guarded by a serpent that
never sleeps. Phrixus marries the king’s daughter, settles in Colchis, and lives happily ever after.
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Jason
This myth, like that of Perseus, is full of folktale elements (e.g. a land at the edge of the known
world, the hero raised apart from his father, magical elements, etc.) and illustrates the typical
outline:
1. The hero must complete a quest involving “impossible” tasks.”
2. He succeeds with the help of the local princess.
3. He marries the princess.
It also reflects some historical truth. In the 8th c. B.C. the Greeks did travel to the Black Sea.
Outline of the Myth—but read Ovid for the details where he gives them:
At the death of Cretheus (a brother of Athamas and Sisyphus), the throne is stolen from Jason’s
father, Aeson, by his cousin, Pelias. Pelias has heard an oracle which says he is destined to be
killed by a descendant of Aeolus (his grandfather, and no relation to the wind god in the
Odyssey). So, to keep Jason safe, his mother sends him away to be raised by Chiron, a wise and
kindly centaur. The same oracle told Pelias to beware the man with one sandal, but for years this
remains a puzzle to him.
Then, when Jason comes of age (at about 20 years old), he returns to his home to claim the
throne. On the journey home, he comes to a river at full flood and sees an old woman unable to
cross. He carries her on his shoulders across the swollen river, but loses one of his sandals along
the way. This old woman turns out to be none other than Hera, who protects and favors Jason
from this time on. (Remember, one mark of being a true hero is winning the favor of a patron
deity.)
When Jason reaches the palace, Pelias sees he is wearing only one sandal and determines to get
rid of him. Pretending he will yield the throne to his nephew, Pelias says that first Jason must
bring back the Golden Fleece.
Jason builds a fast ship, the Argo (“Swift”), with the help of Athena; and she puts in the prow a
piece of sacred wood from Zeus’ oracle at Dodona. This wood has the power of speech and can
warn the sailors of trouble ahead and offer sage advice on other matters, too. Jason collects a
crew from all over Greece with help from Hera, who inspires these men to join the quest; the
group become known as the Argonauts (“sailors on the Argo”). They have many adventures on
their way to Colchis, but you will have to read those on your own since we don’t have time to
cover them in this course.
When Jason reaches Colchis, the king does not welcome him happily, but promises to give up
the Golden Fleece if Jason performs three impossible tasks:
1. Yoke a pair of bronze footed, fire-breathing bulls.
2. With these bulls, plough a field and sow it with dragon’s teeth.
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3. Kill the armed men that spring up from the ground where these teeth are sown.
The daughter of the king, Medea, helps Jason in these tasks. Ovid will describe these events, but
spends only a few lines on their aftermath:
Jason won the spoil
Of gold and in his pride took with him also
Another spoil, the woman who helped him win it,
and so at last came home. . . a victor with a bride.
What Ovid doesn’t mention here at all is how Medea helped Jason escape Colchis. She had
betrayed her father by helping him perform the three impossible tasks, and now she does the
unimaginable. As Jason and Medea flea in the Argo, her father pursues them. Medea has taken
her younger brother along. To delay her father, she kills the brother, chops him up, and throws
pieces of him overboard on either side of the ship. You know how important burial was to the
Greeks, so you understand that the king had to stop and gather up all these pieces while the Argo
sped on its way.
When Jason and Medea arrive home, Aeson is old and dying; and Jason begs his new bride to
help his father. Read Ovid for this part of the story, and click on Pelias for a vase painting of one
scene. Notice too how Ovid portrays Medea—does she remind you of anyone?
Our view of Medea changes quickly from that of a beautiful princess helping the handsome
Greek hero succeed against all odds to that of an Asian (that is, non-Greek and therefore
suspicious) witch-like woman who kills her own brother to get what she wants, and who wreaks
vengeance on those she doesn’t like—just ask Pelias’ daughters!
For an interesting image that shows quite a different version of Jason’s quest for the Golden
Fleece, look at this image.
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Medea
Before Ovid wrote his account of the Jason and Medea myth, the Greek poet Euripides produced
a play that had lasting effects on the myth. What follows is one interpretation of his play; the
notes in the book will give you other views too. Don’t worry too much about all the specific
details of interpretation, but do try to get a sense of what it might have been like to watch this
play thinking you already knew the story....
Euripides’ Medea
I
Medea myth before Euripides
1. Corinth is given to Medea’s father by Helios. The Corinthians summon Medea to be
their queen, and Jason later becomes king through his marriage to her.
2. Zeus falls in love with Medea, but she refuses him to avoid the anger of Hera, who
promises to make her children immortal. Medea hides her children in Hera’s temple as
soon as they’re born, but they die anyway.* Jason refuses to pardon Medea, and returns
to Iolkos. Medea also leaves Corinth.
*Medea unintentionally brings about her children’s death. There are three different
traditions explaining their deaths:
a. Medea is tricked by Hera into killing her children (by boiling them alive) while trying
to make them immortal.
b. The Corinthian women don’t like obeying a foreign queen, so they kill Medea’s
children in Hera’s temple.
c. Medea kills Creon and, fearing his kinsmen’s anger, flees. She leaves her children
(who are too young to travel) in Hera’s temple, but the Corinthians kill them to
punish her and spread a rumor that Medea intentionally killed them herself.
II.
Historical Situation
1. Produced in Athens in the spring of 431 B.C., six weeks before Attica (area around
Athens) is invaded by Sparta and its allies.
2. Corinth, an ally of Sparta, was the prime mover of the war and Athens’ greatest enemy.
III.
Play
1. The Prologue increases our sympathy for Medea by letting us know first of her
abandonment and then, before she hears about it herself, her pending exile.
2) Creon is a typical Corinthian enemy (from the Athenian viewpoint); the audience sees
Medea wronged by an ancestor of their present-day enemy. We (as pseudo-Athenians)
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are pleased when she talks him into staying one more day and then plots revenge against
him!
3. Jason, now 40ish, is not the hero we remember; he is self-interested (look at lines 561–
567) and mistreats Medea with whom we, and the chorus, sympathize.
n.b. Creusa, Jason’s new bride, is Euripides’ addition to the story.
4. Salvation for Medea comes from Aegeus, king of Athens (i.e. the audience’s ancestor).
n.b. Aegeus was not originally in this story - Euripides has added him too.
5. The Chorus reflects the view of the audience, sympathetic to Medea for the first half of
the play and, in effect, agreeing to her plans.
Euripides sets all this up and we (the Athenian audience) are happy sympathizing with
Medea, hating Creon, cheering for Aegeus, and knowing that Medea’s children are bound to
die, probably at the hands of the Corinthians (whom we hate anyway), because Medea will
end up causing death in the palace (version II 2c. above) BUT NOW WHAT HAPPENS?
6. Medea pulls the same act on Aegeus that she pulled earlier on Creon—we squirm a bit
when it’s our ancestor she is controlling.
7. Euripides suddenly changes the myth: Medea now kills her children intentionally in
order to spite Jason! (Notice that at 375–376 she never mentioned harming the children.)
8. We (like the chorus) started out on Medea’s side, and now we realize that we too have
been duped. We are angry about being manipulated like this, and we vote Euripides gets
Third (= Last) prize in the competition.
By presenting Jason as he does, Euripides invites us to consider his character. Why isn’t he a
great hero any more? By making him more human, Euripides increases our sympathy for Medea
and her situation. But we should have known all along that she is a murderer. Ovid has the
benefit of knowing about this treatment of the myth before writing his own version in the
Metamorphoses.
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Part 5. Heroes: Theseus (Crete and Other Tales)
Read Metamorphoses, Book 7, pp. 166–167; Book 8, pp. 181–204.
Names for Ovid, Books 7, 8.
Aegeus—same as in Medea
Theseus
Cerberus
Sciron
Sinis
Nisus
Scylla
Minos
Pasiphae
Daedalus
Icarus
Perdix
Minotaur
Ariadne
Achelous
Baucis
Philemon
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Theseus
You have already met Theseus as the middle-aged father of Hippolytus in Euripides’ play of the
same name, but like Jason, he has a heroic past of great importance. Ovid comes to his story
through the story of Medea. When she escaped from Corinth, she went to Athens and was taken
in by King Aegeus who, Ovid says, made her his wife. Before you read the rest of this section,
here is some background on Theseus.
King Aegeus, being childless, went to Delphi to ask how he might have children. The oracle told
him not to “unloose the foot of the wineskin” (i.e. sleep with a woman) before he returned to
Athens. On the way home, however, he stayed with King Pittheus of Troezen, who understood
the oracle’s meaning and offered Aegeus his daughter, Aethra (presumably in the hope of having
her bear a future king of Athens)—an offer Aegeus did not refuse! The next morning, Aegeus
told Aethra to raise the child, if it were a boy, without identifying his father. He also left tokens:
(1) a pair of sandals and (2) a sword, under a large rock and told Aethra that when the boy was
old and strong enough to lift the rock, he should go to Athens. Sure enough, a boy was born and
named Theseus; Plutarch connects his name to the Greek verb meaning “to place” because the
tokens were placed under the rock; others say it was because he “settled” (i.e. civilized) Attica.
Theseus grew up amid rumors that his real father was Poseidon (the major god of Troezen;
remember his role in the Hippolytus?). When he reached manhood, his mother told him the
truth, and he easily lifted the rock and recovered the tokens. Although sailing would have been
much safer, Theseus determined to go to Athens over land and hazard the robbers and murderers
who preyed on travelers during those days. As a consequence, he had six adventures that
increased his status as a hero. Among these are the following in which he dispatched the
criminals by using their own methods.
1. At Corinth, he killed the murderer, Sinis, who used to tie his victims to pine trees which he
bent over and then released.
2. At Megara, he killed the robber Sciron who would make passers-by stop to wash his feet.
When they bent over to do this, he would kick them off the mountain into the sea where,
some say, they would be eaten by a giant turtle!
3. Near Athens itself, he killed Procrustes who used to cut or stretch his victims to fit the bed he
had.
On his journey, in other words, Theseus rid the land of the criminals and wild beast who made it
so hard dangerous to travel. In this he is very much like Herakles, whose adventures you will
read next. In fact, the Athenian “propaganda machine” of the second half of the sixth century
B.C. (550–500 B.C.) consciously promoted their national hero by paralleling his adventures with
those of Herakles.
Ovid explains what happened when Theseus arrived in Athens, so this summary will pass over
those details. After that episode, Theseus completed two more adventures which are important:
1. He caught the Bull which was ravaging the countryside around Marathon (a town about 26
miles northeast of Athens) and sacrificed it to Apollo This is a continuation of the kind of
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exploit he had on his way to Athens, but makes the connection with Herakles explicit by
identifying this as the bull Herakles captured alive on the island of Crete. This is why Ovid
refers to it as the bull from Crete.
2. The Minotaur. Ovid introduces this story as a frame for the stories of Nisus and Scylla, and
Daedalus and Icarus. As so often, he omits details his audience would have known:
The king of Crete is Minos, a son of Zeus and Europa. (Look at the House of Thebes family tree
for his lineage.) His wife is Pasiphae, a daughter of Helios. Minos prays to Poseidon for a bull
from the sea to sacrifice to that god, but when he sees how beautiful it is, he sacrifices a less
handsome one instead. Poseidon gets his revenge by making Pasiphae fall in love with the bull
from the sea. The queen has the master craftsman on Crete, Daedalus, make her a “cow
costume” and she mates with this bull. Their offspring is the Minotaur (literally “Minos’ bull”)
who is part man and part bull. When this creature grows up, Minos orders Daedalus to make a
large maze, the labyrinth, to hide him. Look at the plan of the Palace at Knossos and think how
the historical approach would explain the existence of the labyrinth.
Minos also has a son, Androgeos, who won all the athletic contests at the Panathenaic games in
Athens one year and was killed by a jealous competitor.
Minos mounts a war against Athens, Megara, and the other cities of Attica. Nisus is king of
Megara at the time and has a daughter named Scylla, who offers to help Minos defeat her father.
Read Ovid’s account and think what other hero and foreign princess this reminds you of. . . .
How does Minos differ from that other hero? This is the same Minos who, after his death,
becomes a judge in the underworld.
After Minos defeats the people of Attica, a treaty is drawn up that seven youths and seven
maidens from the noble families of Attica will be sent to Crete as tribute. Traditions vary as to
how often this tribute must be sent, but Ovid says it was once every nine years. Most traditions
also say these young people are fed to the Minotaur.
The third tribute is due just at the time when Theseus returns to Athens from Marathon, and he
volunteers to go with the other thirteen. His father reluctantly allows this (it is, after all, the kind
of “impossible task” a young hero likes to undertake), but they set up a signal so Aegeus will
know if his son has survived the adventure. When the ship with the youths and maidens leaves
Athens, it sails under a black flag of mourning for the lives soon to be lost. If Theseus is
successful and wins the release of these young people, he promises to sail the ship back under a
white sail.
Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, falls in love with Theseus and gives him a golden thread so he can
enter the labyrinth and find his way out again. (In some versions she gives him a wreath which
lights his way.) He kills the Minotaur and escapes from Crete with the other Athenians.
Ovid records the tradition that Theseus takes Ariadne with him, but abandons her on the island of
Naxos (also called Dia), where Dionysos (Bacchus) marries her.
Swept up in the joy at his victory, Theseus forgets to put up the white sail on the ship when he
returns to Athens. King Aegeus, watching for the ship from high on a rock, sees the black sail,
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assumes his son is dead and, in despair, hurls himself to his death in the ocean. The waters of
this ocean are called the Aegean Sea in his honor from then on. (This should remind you of two
other geographical locations which are named for people; watch for a third as you read the next
story.)
Theseus returns to Athens where he becomes king and unifies the people of Attica. He has many
other adventures, which we cannot cover in this part of the course. But you can read Plutarch’s
Life of Theseus at http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/theseus.html if you’re interested in learning
more.
The rest of the readings for this section are straightforward. Look for the aetions and
transformations in each of the stories, and concentrate on the names listed to for this section.
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Part 6. Heroes: Herackles/Hercules
Read Metamorphoses, Book 9, pp. 209–219.
Names for Ovid, Book 9.
Background
Herakles/Hercules
Labors of Herakles (numbered):
Map for 1st Six Labors
0. Nemean Lion
0. Lernaean Hydra
0. Cerynaean Stag
0. Erymanthian Boar
0. Augean Stables
0. Stymphalian Birds
0. Cretan Bull
0. Mares of Diomedes
0. Belt of Hippolyta
0. Cattle of Geryon
0. Apples of Hesperides
0. Cerberus
Deianira
Some additional names to be familiar with:
Amphitryon
Alcmena
Cornucopia
Iole
Nessus
Chiron
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Overview: Hercules/Herakles
As so often, Ovid tells pieces of this myth, but not in chronological order. Here is an outline to
put things straight.
0.
Background
Electryon, king of Mycenae, marries his daughter, Alcmena, to Amphitryon on the
condition that she remain a virgin until some stolen cattle are recovered.
Amphitryon recovers the stolen cattle, but accidentally kills Electryon.
Amphitryon and Alcmena leave Mycenae (why?), but she refuses to sleep with him until
he avenges the deaths of her brothers, who had been killed in the same war that resulted
in the cattle theft.
Amphitryon succeeds in avenging these deaths. (He is helped by Comaetho, who betrays
her father by pulling out his golden hair which guaranteed him immortality...)
0.
Conception
The night before Amphitryon returns, Zeus, pretending to be her husband, sleeps with
Alcmena and she becomes pregnant with Herakles.
Amphitryon returns to sleep with Alcmena the next morning, and she becomes pregnant
with Iphicles.
Hera is not pleased.
0.
Birth
On the day when Herakles is to be born, Zeus boasts to the other gods that “today will
bring to light a man who will rule over all that live around him, and he shall be from a
race descended from my blood.”
Hera is REALLY not pleased.
Hera hastens the birth of Eurystheus and sends Eileithyia (Ilithyia), the goddess of
childbirth, to delay the birth of Herakles, who is, however, eventually born (Ovid p. 218),
as is his twin Iphicles.
Hera is not pleased.
Hera sends a pair of snakes to kill Herakles in his cradle—to no avail.
0.
Early Adventures
Herakles accidently kills Linus, his music teacher, and is sent to the pastures near Thebes
to perform penance. There he:
--kills a lion that has been eating the cattle.
--is entertained by Thespius for fifty days and sleeps with all fifty of his daughters. (Some
versions say he does this in ONE night!)
--frees the Thebans from paying tribute to a local enemy
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--is rewarded by Creon, king of Thebes, with his daughter, Megara, whom Herakles
marries and has 3 children with
0.
Madness
After some time, Hera strikes Herakles with a fit of madness during which he kills
Megara and their children.
He leaves Thebes (why?), gets purified, and goes to Delphi (why?).
At Delphi he is called “Herakles” for the first time by the priestess.
He is told to go to Tiryns and serve Eurystheus for twelve years, performing whatever
labors he sets.
He is also promised immortality if he is able to complete all the labors.
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Twelves Labors of Herakles
Herakles (Hercules to the Romans) was the greatest of all heroes. What follows here is a bit
about each labor since, once again, Ovid assumes you already know the story. There are “side
labors” in the myth of Herakles as well, but for the most part I will not speak of these here.
Remember to read Ovid’s account too, since he will tell you about Herakles’ death and what
happens after it, as well as the story of his birth.
The first six labors of Herakles are all located in the Peloponnese (see the map for these),
showing that initially Herakles was very much a local hero, much like Theseus. But his last six
labors move him beyond the mainland of Greece and mark his transition to something far
greater. Notice that his last three labors all involve travel beyond the edges of the known world
and are, therefore, representative of overcoming death (in one case literally). The Greek word
we translate as “labor” is “athlos,” a contest for a prize. Herakles had to perform his labors at the
command of Eurystheus (see the background information), but think about what prize he
ultimately wins; and remember the Greek maxim not to judge a man’s life until after he is dead.
1.
Nemean Lion. In order to kill the great lion roaming around Nemea, Herakles cut a huge
club from a tree to use as a weapon. (Some versions also say he had to wrestle the lion and
strangle it.) Then he skinned the lion and took the skin to Eurystheus as proof of his
conquest. As you will see when you look at the images, vase paintings of Herakles
typically show him carrying the club and wearing the lion skin. His other common
attribute is the bow given him by Apollo.
2.
Lernaean Hydra. A “hydra” is just a “water” snake, and this one lived in the swampy
area around Lerna. It wasn’t an ordinary serpent, though, for it had nine heads (one said to
be immortal), and when one was cut off, two more grew from the stump. With the help of
his nephew, who cauterized the stumps as he lopped off each head, Herakles killed this
menace. He also dipped his arrows into the poisonous blood of the Hydra—a detail that
will be important later.
3.
Cerynaean Stag. This was a deer with golden horns which was sacred to Artemis and
therefore could not be killed, making this labor more difficult in many ways than the first
two. Herakles chased it for a year before catching it and carrying it back to Eurystheus.
Along the way, he was confronted by Artemis, who allowed him to continue when he
explained that Eurystheus had ordered this labor and that he would not harm the deer.
4.
Erymanthean Boar. In another labor which required him to capture a live animal and take
it back to Eurystheus, Herakles this time had to confront a much more dangerous creature.
He succeeded by driving it into a snow bank (!) and trapping it with nets. When he showed
the boar to Eurystheus, the king was so frightened that he jumped into the nearest storage
pot. Needless to say, this became a favorite scene for vase painters to show!
5.
Augean Stables. In this labor, Herakles had to clean out the stable of King Augeas in Elis.
Trouble is, these stables had NEVER been cleaned before. . . . Herakles diverted two rivers
to run through the stables and cleaned them in one day. After this labor, Herakles visited
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the site of Olympia and founded the Olympic Games, to be held every four years in honor
of Zeus.
6.
Stymphalian Birds. These birds lived by a lake in Arcadia, and Herakles had to shoot
them. Athena gave him castanets to flush them out of the woods. Remember that the help
of a god is one of the things that marks a hero. This labor is the last of the “local” ones.
7.
Cretan Bull. Remember the bull from the sea that Minos wouldn’t sacrifice to Poseidon?
Herakles had to go to Crete, capture this bull, and take it back alive to Eursytheus. There
are vase paintings that again show Eurystheus hiding in a pot after Herakles brings the bull
to him. This bull was released and is the same one Theseus captured at Marathon.
8.
Mares of Diomedes. Diomedes was a son of the god Ares and lived in Thrace. What
makes this labor difficult is that the mares ate humans! Herakles tamed them by feeding
Diomedes to them, and then took them back to Eurystheus, who(for once NOT hiding in a
storage pot) dedicated them to the goddess Hera. If you have read Euripides’ play the
Alcestis, you may remember that Herakles was on his way to complete this labor when he
stopped at the house of Admetus and rescued Admetus’ wife by defeating Death in a
wrestling match.
9.
Belt of Hippolyta. The belt (sometimes called a girdle) of the Amazon queen, Hippolyta,
was magical; and Herakles had to kill Hippolyta to get it. This labor occurs in the far
north. On his way home, Herakles stopped at Troy and saved a girl from a sea-monster
(what other hero does this remind you of?).
10. Cattle of Geryon. Geryon was a three-bodied monster who lived on an island at the far
western edge of the world. (The name of the island, Erythia, reflects this as it refers to the
color of the reddening sky as the sun sets in the west.) Herakles had to get to this island,
defeat Geryon, along with his shepherd (Eurytion) and guard dog (Orthos), and take his
herd of cattle back to Eurystheus. To reach the island, he borrowed the golden cup of
Helios and sailed around the great river Ocean. Once there he killed Geryon and the
others, and sailed with the cattle to Spain where he returned the cup and drove the cattle
overland back to Greece where they were dedicated to Hera. At the straits of Gibraltar,
where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean (look at the overview map), Herakles
set up the “Pillars of Herakles” which marked the limit of the Greek world.
11. Apples of the Hesperides. The Hesperides were daughters of night and lived at the
western edge of the world; their father’s name, “Hesperus,” means both “Evening” and
“West,” and the suffix “-ides” indicates “children of ____”. These three women (along
with a requisite serpent) guarded the tree that bore the Apples of Immortality, which Gaia
once gave to Hera when she married Zeus. Different versions of this labor exist, but one of
the most common explains that, among other “side labors” on his way to the garden of the
Hesperides, Herakles freed Prometheus (remember the prophecy in the Prometheus
Bound?) who advised him to ask Atlas for help.
Atlas was holding the world on his shoulders, so Herakles agreed to shoulder this burden
while Atlas went for the apples. (Look at the image to see how Athena helps the hero—
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notice she needs only one hand! and notice too the nice detail of the pillow to cushion the
load.) When Atlas returned, he did not want to be stuck holding the world any more, but
Herakles tricked him by asking him to take the burden just for a moment so he could
stretch his muscles before shouldering the world for good. Naturally, once Atlas took the
world back, Herakles grabbed the apples and took off! (After he showed them to
Eurystheus, Athena is said to have returned them to the garden again.)
Look at this link <http://www.uncg.edu/cla/slides/herakage.htm> to see an example of how
Herakles aged during the course of his labors.
12. Cerberus. The final labor involves an actual, not just a metaphorical, overcoming of
death. His task here was to bring Cerberus, the three-headed watch dog of Hades, back
alive; remember in the Odyssey he said this was his most difficult labor. With the help of
Athena (and Hermes), Herakles feeds Cerberus meat with a drug in it and is able to put a
leash and collar on him. This image <http://www.uncg.edu/cla/slides/herakcerbvase.jpg>
shows Eursytheus’ reaction!
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Part 7. Myth, Religion and Philosophy: Orpheus; Pythagoras
Read Metamorphoses, Book 10, pp. 234–243; Book 11, pp. 259–265, Book 15, pp. 367–379.
Names for Ovid, Books 10, 11, 15.
Orpheus
Persephone
Eurydice
Ixion
Charon
Hyacinthus
Pygmalion
Lesbos (an island)
Midas
Pythagoras
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Orpheus
Ovid tells the myth of Orpheus as a love story and weaves in other myths with this theme
(among them, the stories of Hyacinthus and Pygmalion.) These stories are straightforward,
and don’t require additional notes, nor does the famous myth of Midas. Notice that when
Orpheus travels to the Underworld, Ovid reminds us of the sinners punished there: Ixion, Tityos,
Tantalos and Sisyphos. For the background (and some images) of Ixion, click on his name.
What is the effect of mentioning these figures here?
Here is some additional information about Orpheus. As always, there are various traditions for
this myth, but these notes will not try to cover them all.
Orpheus in myth
In myth Orpheus was the son of Apollo and Kalliope (one of the Muses). He lived in Thrace and
was said to have gone with Jason on the voyage for the Golden Fleece, using his musical power
to charm the Sirens themselves when the Argonauts passed them. He also won the love of
Eurydice with his music. (Look at all the ways Ovid highlights the importance and power of
music in his account.) Three quite different versions of his death have led to speculation about
whether there was a historical figure behind the myth and each represents elements you have
seen in other myths from this course:
1. Zeus kills Orpheus for teaching mysteries to mankind.
2. Thracians kill Orpheus whose religious teachings they do not want to accept.
3. Thracian women kill him for one of the following reasons:
a. He rejects women.
b. He will only allow men in his mysteries.
c. Dionysos sends the women to kill him for following Apollo. (Remember that
Dionysos was trying to introduce his own worship in Thrace too.)
After his death (as Ovid recounts), Orpheus’ head was said to have floated to the island of
Lesbos where a shrine and oracle were built for him. Apollo silenced the oracle (why?) and a
temple of Dionysos was built in that spot. In this myth we have a good example of a hero cult, in
which a human was worshipped after his death.
It appears that in the 6th c. B.C., a new “Orphic” religion was founded in Greece and, by the 5th
c. B.C. Orpheus was accepted as a teacher of its secrets, which were written on tablets. What
isn’t clear is which god, Apollo or Dionysos, he may have been a priest or prophet of. Think
which elements in the myth might connect him with each deity.
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Orphic Religion
This religion provides a different view of creation from the one you learned in Hesiod’s
Theogony. You won’t be asked to compare and contrast the two, but you should be aware of the
Orphic account. Notice, for instance, that it explains the creation of man, which the Hesiodic
account never does.
Here is a simplified account of the first and second creations: The first principle is Chronos
(“Time”—do not confuse this with Kronos!), out of which came Chaos (the Chasm), Aether (the
Air), and Erebos (the Darkness of the Underworld). Aether produced an Egg, which produced
Eros, from which came Ouranos, Gaia and the other generations of gods you have learned. Zeus
subsequently swallowed all the earlier creations and himself became the second creator.
In time, Zeus and Persephone (Kore) have a son, Dionysos:
1. Dionysos is killed and eaten by the Titans.
2. Zeus kills the Titans with a thunderbolt.
3. Mankind is born from the ashes of the Titans—this explains the dual nature of humans
(good and bad) and the immortality of the soul.
4. Dionysos’ heart was not eaten, so he too is reborn.
As with the myths of heroes, so with the various mystery religions you have seen in this course;
there are common elements that are easy to explain once you have noticed the similarities and
differences among them.
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Philosophy of Pythagoras
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Required Readings
This section has readings under Required Readings and Literary Tie-ins. Be sure to complete
these before advancing to the next section.
A few audio introductions and some notes are provided for each section of the Required
Readings, which include readings from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, divided into chunks, and an
outside play, Euripides’ Medea. Click on each reading below to access the section.
Part 1. Romans and their Gods
Part 2. Founding of Thebes and the Story of Oedipus
Part 3. Heroes: Perseus; Famous Women: Arachne, Niobe
Part 4. Heroes: Jason; Medea
Part 5. Heroes: Theseus (Crete and Other Tales)
Part 6. Heroes: Herakles/Hercules
Part 7. Myth, Religion and Philosophy: Orpheus; Pythagoras
Be sure to check the calendar for when each section is due.
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Literary Tie-ins
Each unit has readings under Required Readings and Literary Tie-ins. Be sure to complete these
before advancing to the next unit.
Review the literary tie-ins below.
Ovid’s Biography
Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) was born in the village of Sulmo, 90 miles east of Rome, in 43 B.C.
and shared his birthday, March 20, with a brother one year older. His father was of equestrian
rank and could well afford to educate his sons, both of whom he hoped would follow a life of
public service. But Ovid always loved poetry best; and although he trained in rhetoric, he gave
up a public career after holding only a few minor judicial posts. From that point on, he devoted
his time to writing and joined an active circle of poets in Rome. He married twice unhappily and
produced a daughter (probably by his second wife), but finally found love in his third marriage.
By 8 A.D. Ovid was the leading poet in Rome, but did something which so angered the emperor,
Augustus, that he was banished far from the city to Tomis on the Black Sea. Exactly what he did
remains a mystery, although in his poems written from exile he speaks of two charges (one
public, the other personal): the emperor’s distaste for the immorality of his poems, and some
mistake which Ovid declines to name but tells us was not a crime. Despite repeated pleas both to
Augustus and his successor, Tiberius, Ovid died in exile, probably in 17 or 18 A.D.
Among the many poems Ovid wrote were four collections that dealt explicitly with love: the
Amores (three books of love poems), the Heroides (love letters from famous women, real and
mythic, to their lovers), the Ars Amatoria (a poem on the art of seduction, two books for men,
and a third, added by request, for women), and the Remedia Amoris (a clever offering of
remedies for the seduction ploys in the Ars Amatoria). He also wrote the Fasti, a poetic calendar
of the Roman year planned to cover one month in each of 12 books. Ovid apparently only
completed the first six books (January-June), but they are full of information on Roman religion.
His other books include the Tristia, five books of poems addressed to his wife, the emperor, and
others in Rome, written during his exile; and, in 7 A.D., just before his banishment, the
Metamorphoses, an epic poem of 15 books that attempts to tell the history of the world up to his
own day, through a series of myths about people transformed from one shape into another.
Euripides’ Biography
The date of Euripides’ birth is uncertain, but it was probably 485 or 480 B.C. Although most of
the stories about his life are unreliable, we know his family came from Phyla in Attica and was
apparently well-to-do. Unlike Sophocles, Euripides seems not to have been actively involved in
politics, although he went on an embassy to Syracuse. In 408 or 407 B.C., he traveled to the
court of Archelaus in Macedon to produce plays and died there in 406 B.C. shortly before
February/March.
Euripides wrote 92 plays, 88 performed at the Dionysia festival where he produced his first plays
in 455 B.C. and won his first victory in 441 B.C. Although Euripides is the most popular of the
surviving tragedians for modern audiences, with 19 extant plays (one of debated authorship), he
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did not enjoy popular success in his own day, winning only four victories during his lifetime, and
another, for the Bacchae and the Iphigenia at Aulis, posthumously. The version of the Hippolytus
that survives won first prize in 428 B.C., but an earlier version scandalized audiences: and the
Medea, produced in 431 B.C., came in third (last) in the competition.
Like Sophocles, Euripides preferred self-contained plays to the connected trilogy/ tetralogy, but
otherwise their tragedies are quite different. It has been said that while Sophocles made men as
they should be, Euripides made them as they really were. His tragedies dealt with abstract
themes and universal forces (love, hatred, jealousy), often personified as deities, and were
concerned with middle-class problems and everyday troubles. He used old myths for his own
purposes, manipulating them to add a new significance to their stories. His characters are more
extreme than real, and his interest in rhetoric is especially clear in the set-piece debates between
characters and the messenger speeches which appear in most of his plays. Aristotle called him
“the most tragic of the poets”; and in his comedy, the Frogs, Aristophanes sets up a contest
between Aeschylus and Euripides in which he brilliantly parodies the style of each.
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Roman God Card Information
Venus
Greek name:
Aphrodite
Responsibilities:
Love, fertility in nature
Venus was
• originally a minor Italian fertility goddess connected with gardens (rather than with
fertility in animals and humans)
• probably also originally connected with luck and favor
• mother of the great Roman hero, Aeneas
English derivative:
Venereal
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Apollo
Greek name: Apollo
Responsibilities:
Medicine, sun, archery
Apollo was
• the only Roman god who was essentially identical to his Greek counterpart
• not a prominent god for the Romans, but the emperor, Augustus, dedicated a major
temple to him in 28 B.C.
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Mars
Greek name:
Ares
Responsibilities:
Agriculture, war
Animal:
Wolf, woodpecker
Mars was
• originally an important god of agriculture, associated with spring and regeneration
• later associated with war for the Romans
• much more important to the Romans than Ares was to the Greeks
English derivative:
Martial (arts, law), March
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Diana
Greek name:
Artemis
Responsibilities:
Childbirth, moon
Diana was
• worshipped in a very ancient cult and commonly worshipped in wooded areas
• sometimes associated with the underworld (as Hecate)
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Minerva
Greek name:
Athena
Responsibilities:
Activities involving mental skill and handicrafts
Minerva was
• worshipped by the Etruscans and later by the Romans
• her cult appears first in Rome as part of the Capitoline Triad with Jupiter and Juno
• probably originally a war goddess and, perhaps, also associated with fertility
• associated with craftsmen, authors, painters, school children
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Ceres
Greek name:
Demeter
Responsibilities:
Grain
Ceres was
• an Etruscan goddess of obscure origins worshipped from the earliest times in Rome
• worshipped with Liber (see Bacchus) and Libera in a group called the Eleusinian
Triad
English derivative:
Cereal
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Liber
Greek name:
Dionysos
Other name:
Bacchus
Responsibilities:
Wine, fertility
Liber was
• the Italian god associated with fertility, especially of the vine
• worshipped with Ceres and his partner, Libera, in a group called the Eleusinian Triad
• not associated with the ecstatic aspects of Dionysos’ worship
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Pluto
Greek name:
Hades
Responsibilities:
Death and the underworld
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Vulcan
Greek name:
Hephaistos
Responsibilities:
Fire
Vulcan was
• more important to the Romans than Hephaistos was to the Greeks
• associated initially with destructive fire, and later (through his association with
Hephaistos) also with fire for creative purposes
English derivative:
Volcano, vulcanize
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Juno
Greek name:
Hera
Responsibilities:
Marriage and childbirth
Juno was
• not originally associated with Jupiter
• an independent Italian deity associated with all aspects of female life
English derivative:
June
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Mercury
Greek name:
Hermes
Responsibilities:
Trade and profit
Mercury was
• a protector of businessmen
• associated with messengers and music through his connection with Hermes
English derivative:
Mercurial
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Vesta
Greek name:
Hestia
Responsibilities:
Hearth, family life
Vesta was
• much more important to the Romans than Hestia was to the Greeks
• worshipped at Rome in a round temple (symbolic of the hearth) with no cult image
• served in temple by the Vestal Virgins
The Vestal Virgins were six girls, usually from noble families, chosen between the ages
of 6 and 10 years old, who served for thirty years. They took a vow of chastity for the
duration of their service, and the penalty for breaking it was death by being buried alive.
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Neptune
Greek name:
Poseidon
Responsibilities:
Sea
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Jupiter
Greek name:
Zeus
Other name:
Jove
Responsibilities:
Sky
Jupiter was
• worshipped along with Juno and Minerva in a group called the Capitoline Triad
English derivative:
Jovial
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Additional Gods for the Romans:
Janus
Greek name:
There is no such god for the Greeks
Image:
Often pictured with two heads facing in opposite directions
Responsibilities:
Perhaps a god of beginnings; probably associated with water
Janus was
• an ancient god who was so important he was named first in prayers
• especially connected with bridges and, later, with doorways
• worshipped in Rome at five different shrines, all at river crossings
• Temple to Janus in the Roman Forum—gates open during wartime and closed in
peacetime
This, perhaps, reflects the breaking of bridges (opening of rivers) to protect the city when
it was threatened?
• his name became a common noun (a janus) which meant “a crossingplace with a
roadway”
English derivative:
January
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Saturn
Greek name:
Kronos/Ouranos
Responsibilities:
Ruled in the generation before Zeus
Saturn was
• an Etruscan god of obscure origins worshipped from the earliest times in Rome
• the ruling god during the Golden Age (remember the Ovid creation story?)
• worshipped in a winter festival called the Saturnalia
This festival was probably originally a celebration of winter sowing. During the festival,
slaves were given the right of free speech and were served at a feast by their masters—a
remembrance of the Golden Age when all men were equal.
English derivative:
Saturnine
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Penates
Responsibilities:
Household gods symbolic of the continuing life of the family and, later, of the Roman
state; their name comes from the Latin word for “cupboard, food.”
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[The Lares have now been omitted.]
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