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Copyright of Australia Copyright Act 1968 The female Olympians Chris Mackie The FeMale Olympians The older generation The younger generation • • • • • Athena • Artemis Aphrodite Hera Hestia Demeter (with her daughter Persephone) Chris Mackie The Olympian Family TRee IMAGE: http://www.buzzle.com/images/zeus-family-tree.jpg Chris Mackie Aphrodite (Venus) Birth of Aphrodite from the sea, Ludovisi Throne, Southern Italy?, c. 470-460 BCE. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/ thumb/8/83/ Ludovisi_throne_Altemps_Inv8570.jpg/320pxLudovisi_throne_Altemps_Inv8570.jpg • Older than Zeus and the others by 2 generations • Birth from the genitalia of the sky god conveys her power and her aged authority • Goddess of the sexual lives of women outside of marriage (including prostitutes) • The role of women in Greek society is fundamentally linked to their availability in a sexual sense Chris Mackie Aphrodite The Judgement of Paris: From left, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite (with Eros), Hermes, Paris. Attic Red Figure Kylix , ca 440 BCE. • Aphrodite has a fundamental opposition to Hera and Athena (goddesses of marriage and virginity, see the Judgement of Paris) • Sexual liaison with Ares, the brother of her husband Hephaestus (Odyssey 8). They are both humiliated in both Homeric poems (compare Iliad 5) http://www.theoi.com/image/K4.5Hera.jpg Chris Mackie Aphrodite • Greek society is very patriarchal, and so Aphrodite represents something that is confronting and dangerous. • On one reading the Trojan war is the consequence of Aphrodite’s role in destroying the marriage of Menelaus and Helen (Judgement of Paris) • Homer gives a different genealogy from Hesiod. In the Iliad Aphrodite is daughter of Zeus and Dione (the name Dione suggests a kind of female Zeus). Homer is very forceful in his adaptations of myth when he wants to do so Chris Mackie Aphrodite • There is a work called the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite in which Aphrodite seduces Anchises, a royal shepherd on Mount Ida, near Troy. • The result of this is that Aphrodite gets pregnant and ultimately gives birth to Aeneas, the Trojan hero (who features fairly prominently in the Iliad) • This is meant to be punishment for Aphrodite for her part in ‘infecting’ gods with love, including Zeus • Aeneas survives the Trojan war, and in the Roman tradition, he guides the Trojans to Italy where they ultimately found the city of Rome Chris Mackie Aphrodite • So by this extended myth, the Romans can claim to be linked to the Troy of Homer. Everybody in antiquity wants a bit of Homer and Troy. • Julius Caesar even claimed to have Venus (Aphrodite) as his original ancestor (which in turn links him to Zeus) • A half brother to Aeneas is Eros/Cupid Chris Mackie Hera (Juno) Hera, tricked into suckling the infant Herakles. Apulian Red Figure Lekythos Attributed to the Suckling Painter, ca 360 - 350 BCE. http://www.theoi.com/image/K4.11Hera.jpg • Wife and sister of Zeus • Swallowed by Cronos with her brothers and sisters (except Zeus) • Zeus’s ‘main wife’ • Goddess of marriage and the lives of women within it. • In the tradition of very powerful fertility goddesses like Gaia and Rhea • Often the ‘nagging wife’ (Iliad) Chris Mackie Hera • Zeus is a philanderer who chases most females whom he sees for sex. As the sky god, Zeus usually impregnates these women (or goddesses). At the psychological level this makes live very difficult for Hera • She often responds by persecuting the girl or even the child of the ‘marriage’ (such as Heracles, whose name means ‘glory of Hera’) • Io is one tragic case of a girl who is turned into a cow and persecuted for a very long time Chris Mackie Hera • In the Judgement of Paris she offers Paris kingly power, which he rejects in favour of Helen • She has a fierce hatred of Troy, and in the Iliad she can’t wait for it to be destroyed. • This hatred spills over into Roman myth, where, as Juno, she tries (and fails) to prevent the Trojans from establishing the new city. • She is actually associated with Carthage in some ways, the great enemy of Rome Chris Mackie Hestia (Vesta) • Sister of Hera and Demeter. Born ‘twice’ with her brothers and sisters. • There is virtually no mythology about her. • She is a virgin goddess (cf. Vestal Virgins at Rome) associated with the hearth of the house. • The house is a sacred space in ancient thought • Her virginity and the hearth are fundamentally connected because the hearth contains the phallic force of fire and is the place where the young girls spend their time (so says Walter Burkert in Greek Religion) Chris Mackie Demeter (Ceres) Persephone and Demeter, Attic Red Figure (White ground) Lekythos, ca 450 - 425 BCE. • Demeter is born like the others twice • Her name contains the word ‘meter’=‘mother’ • Very little mythology. • Almost entirely associated with her role as mother to Persephone, the daughter that she has by Zeus http://www.theoi.com/image/K3.2Demeter.jpg Chris Mackie Demeter and Persephone The Return of Persephone, by Frederic Leighton (1891). http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/thumb/f/f5/FredericLeightonTheReturnofPerspephone%281891%29.jpg/ 435px-FredericLeightonTheReturnofPerspephone%281891%29.jpg • In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter Zeus accedes to a request from Hades to take Persephone as his wife • As she is plucking a flower the earth opens and Hades emerges on his chariot, grabs the girl and takes her to the Underworld to be his wife • Demeter’s menis (wrath, anger) includes a famine above the earth • The gods need mortals Chris Mackie Demeter • Zeus is brought to heel and has to negotiate a solution. He sends Hermes down to Hades to bring the girl back. • But she has eaten a pomegranite seed which means that she has to stay part of the year under the earth with Hades • The whole story reveals the power of Demeter and the other goddesses in Zeus’s violent and arrogant treatment of his daughter, whom he effectively abandons Chris Mackie What is the Demeter hymn saying? • It is connected with the cycles of nature and the growing of grain, the spring and the autumn (‘fall’). There is death in life and life in death. They are not mutually exclusive or unconnected • Establishes the Eleusinian mysteries (a historical religion based at Eleusis) which seems to have made death less frightening • Persephone’s presence makes the Underworld less ‘masculine’ and less forbidding. There is a new element of the feminine, a new of compassion. • It is also a mythological rite of passage (ie the bride experiences a violent rupture from the world of women to the world of men). The rites of passage are usually associated (mythologically) with death to the previous phase of life. Persephone (literally) ‘marries death’ Chris Mackie Athena (minerva) Athena is born from the head of Zeus. Hephaistos (right) acts as midwife. Black Figure kylix, 550-520 BCE. ARTSTOR Slide Library. • Zeus decides to eat the pregnant goddess Metis after learning that she will bear a child greater than the father • Eating Metis signifies the taking of wisdom into himself. This distinguishes his act from (say) the eating by Cronos of his children. • When the time comes Athena is born from Zeus’s head. What does this signify? Chris Mackie Athena Jason Being Disgorged by the Dragon Guarding the Golden Fleece, and Athena. Attic red figure kylix by Douris, c.480-470 BCE. ARTSTOR Digital Library. • Virgin goddess, who can, therefore, move in the male sphere of warfare as an equal (or a superior) of Ares. Victory (Nike) • War, strategy, heroism. The ‘noble’ side of war. The spear in the Iliad and Odyssey • Connected to heroic triumph (cf. Achilles in Iliad 22) • Cunning intelligence, wisdom (esp. Odysseus). Hates Ajax. Chris Mackie Athena Also the goddess of: • Craft and weaving (an idealised female virtue, as with Penelope and Andromache). Cf Arachne • Ships and shipbuilding • The controlling force that harnesses the energy of nature (eg. the bit in the horse’s mouth) • Cities (like Athens). Athena is a ‘culture god’. • She is actually a god worshipped at Troy, but she helps in the destruction of the place (Judgement of Paris, where she offers victory in war as a bribe) Chris Mackie Athena and Ares (Mars) Athena Goddess of the ‘noble’ side of war, the strategy, the heroism and courage, the victory. A revered goddess in Homer Ares God of the nasty, brutal side of war, the blood and the guts. Reviled and humiliated in both Homeric poems. Chris Mackie Artemis (Diana) Artemis draws her bow as Actaeon is torn apart by his hounds. Attic Red Figure bell krater, the Pan Painter, ca 470 BCE. http://www.theoi.com/image/K6.1BArtemis.jpg • Daughter of Leto and Zeus. The twin of Apollo. She is born first and then helps with her brother’s birth as midwife • Virgin goddess • Associated with girls at the age of puberty and the transition rites into womnhood • Archer and huntress (Actaeon) • Supporter of Troy, but not much use in battle (Iliad) Chris Mackie ARtemis • Artemis doesn’t have a particularly extensive mythology • She often works in tandem with her brother, including the killing of the children of Niobe who boasted that was a better mother than Leto Apollo and Artemis slay the children of Niobe. Cw. Homer, Iliad 24.602-617. Attic Red Figure calyx Krater, Niobid Painter, c. 475 - 425 BCE. http://www.theoi.com/image/K5.4Apollon.jpg Chris Mackie Conclusions • Aphrodite is two generations older than Hera, Demeter and Hestia, who are in turn older than Athena and Artemis • Aphrodite has her ‘wings clipped’ in the Greek sources because of the threat that she represents to patriarchal order. • Notice the part that the sexual lives of divinities play (virginity, married sexual life, promiscuity) • This is linked to their spatial roles (the bedroom, the weaving room, the woods, the fields etc.) Chris Mackie