Classics 45A: The Gods
Introduction to Classical Mythology
Terms and Periods
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Greece is surrounded by water, so the god Poseidon is important to Greece.
450 BC is very important time the golden era
Greece was composed of city states, not unified, were independent and waged
wars against each other
● Basic Terms
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Classic: from latin 1.) something that belongs to a certain category, group, or
class
2.) something that exemplifies the best qualities of a group, class, etc. and is thus
a class of its own
Classical: describe Greek and Roman antiquity only, first used by renaissance
scholars because they thought greece and rome represented the pinnacle of
success in the arts, political structures, and philosophy.
Classical myths are myth from ancient greece and rome
Myths are not lies
○ They’re imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest
particular ways of interpreting the world
○ Tells of deeds of supernatural beings such as gods, demigods, heroes, spirits, or
ghosts
● Types of Prose Narratives
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Myth and legend are facts but folktales are fiction
Myth is about the supernatural, nonhumans
Myth: fact, remote past, different world, sacred, nonhuman
Legend: fact, recent past, world of today, secular or sacred, human
Folktale: fiction, any time, any place, secular, human or nonhuman
● Myth:
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Form: myths are verbal or visual stories rich in metaphors and symbols
Content: myths convey religious, political, and cultural values hidden in
metaphors and symbols
Function: myths help people understand individual experiences, integrate
them into broader context, explains or makes contradictions and differences
● Archaic Greece: 750-490 BCE
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Sources:
■ Homer’s-Iliad, Odyssey, Homeric Hymns
● Homer wrote epic poetry
■ Hesiod’s-Theogony, Works and Days
Center: Olympia
■ zeus=olympia
Epic poetry, oral composition, meter
■ Hexameter: “6 feet,” every line has 6 stressed syllables, formulae
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Formulae=things are written a certain way that are easily
remembered
■ Oral composition=spread orally, not in written text
Gods worshipped in local temples and altars, differences due to the site of
worship
Ruins of temple of Zeus
Papyrus from Iliad
● Classical Greece: 490-323 BCE
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Commitment to reason: blossoming of sciences like math, philosophy,
psychology
Myths are subjected to critical inquiry:
■ logos=speech and logic, something rationally true VS mythos=lie or
fiction
Logos and mythos are opposite
Representative figures: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (playwrights),
Herodotus (historian), Plato (philosopher)
● Hellenistic Period 323-30 BCE
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Center: Alexandria in Egypt
Representative figures: Callimachus (hymns), Apollonius of Rhodes
(Argonautica)
■ Argonautica is an epic poem
Later times: Plutarch (46-120 CE) wrote treatises (papers) on Delphi, Greek,
Roman, and Egyptian philosophy, and biographies
Ancient Near East
○ Anatolia
○ Phrygia (Cybele)
○ Mesopotamia
○ Babylonia
○ Egypt
● Ancient Rome: 147-30 BCE (Late Republic)
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Rome conquered Greece in 146 BCE
Sources: Vergil’s (~homer) Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Horace, Pompeian
wall paintings, Roman sculpture
Scholars tend to believe that Roman myths borrowed from Greek myths and that
their myths play no part in rituals
Romulus and Remus: founders of Rome, offspring of Ares, god of war
■ Romulus and Remus suckling at the sea-wolf
● Theme of Rape
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From word “rapio”=act of seizing and snatching
Passion evoked by Aphrodite and Eros
Chastity symbolized by devotion to Artemis (goddess of chastity)
Sexual lust governs the act of rape and by Aphrodite
Eros and Aphrodite embodies sexual lust
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Artemis in charge of chastity, rape involved usually with women who are virgins
Usually: man~lust, woman~chastity. Pursuit by the lover of the beloved that ends
in acquiescence (acceptance without protest) or a metamorphosis
(transformation) of the pursued
Can be seen as an act of benevolence
Many seduction scenes are religious in nature:
■ Victimization?
■ Sexual love?
■ Spiritual salvation?
● If a god rapes a normal, mortal, human woman, she becomes the
mother of a hero/half-god offspring, so it may be seen as an act of
benevolence
Elision of the distinction between love, abduction or rape of a woman by a man,
and of a man by a woman (ex: rape of Helen)
■ Elision: deletion/omission
Apollo and Daphne, Bernini
■ Apollo “rapes” Daphne
● Benevolence or victimization?
■ The Rape of Persephone, Bernini
■ Eos and Cephalus, Nicolas Pussin, c. 1630
■ Rape of Helen, Francesco Primaticcio, 1530-1539
10/3/18
Creation
Part 1: Historical Setting, Alternative Stories
● Late bronze age 1600-1150 BCE
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Crete, land of the Minoans
Cycladic Islands (Aegean Sea)
Mainland Greece (Mycenaean<Mycenae/Mycene)
Linear B (c. 5000 clay tablets)(script found on clay tablets): deciphered by
Michael Ventris in 1952 as a form of Early Greek
■ Syllabic and ideographic Greek dating to c. 1450 BCE
Panhellenism (pan=all, hellenes=word greek used for themselves):
cultural unification of the Greeks in terms of their gods’
■ 1.) Spheres of influence
■ 2.) Activities
■ 3.) Associates on Olympus and on earth
■ 4.) Important sanctuaries or rituals
Even though there were 6 city states in Greece, they were unified in that
they all believed in the same aspects of the gods
But, there are big variations in the depictions of Greek gods in both art
and literature
● Iron Age 1150-750 BCE
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Center: Ascra on slopes of Mt. Helicon
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Sources: almost nothing survives from this era
Hesiod’s Works and Days was composed at the end of this Iron Age era
● Alternative Creation Stories
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Philosophers: Thales of Miletus (624-546 BCE) and Hercalitus of
Ephesus (535-475 BCE)
First principle: One primary substance (like water or air) is substituted
for or converted to all other substances
■ Heraclitus posited logos as the rational first principle of the
universe
Hesiod’s Theogony: generations of divine beings (750-650 BCE)
Orphics: a group of believers in the teachings of Orpheus (5th BCE- 2nd
BCE)
■ Chronus created an egg with male and female natures in it.
■ This egg plus an unnamed winged god engendered other gods
Orpheus, George de Forest Brush (1890)
Orpheus charming the animals, Roman mosaic
Orpheus and Eurydice
■ Orpheus drags Eurydice, then realizes at the very end that she
was dead
Discussion:
Know about IO in the play
Aeschylus, sophocles
Hesiod’s work and days and theogony
Dates
Hesiod writings at end of iron age and beginning for archaic greece
Alternative creation stories: orphics
Hellenistic: spread to europe so center was alexandria in egypt
146 bce rome conquers greece
Completely conquered in 30 BCE
Read play asap and download ppt
Test on oct 19
10/5/18
Creation
Part 2: Hesiod’s Theogony=the earliest systematic literary account of the birth of the
universe
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Theogony-birth of gods (Hesiod)
● Composition of the poem
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Hymns: praise poems to the gods Ex: To the Muses, To the goddess Hecate
Catalogues: lists of places or events Ex: various entities giving birth, places in
universe, Zeus’ marriages, unions of goddesses with mortal men
Dramatic tales: stories with divine protagonists who take action Ex: Uranus,
Cronus, Zeus (who defeats Cronus, Prometheus, and Typhoeus/Typhon)
● Hymns
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Primary purpose: prayer to and praise of the gods
Example: Hymn to the Muses (1-94): the Muses give Hesiod a laurel branch and
teach him how to sing about the gods
The Muses are supposed to ensure the veracity of the account yet they are also
said to generate lies
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Need to know order of chaos, earth, etc.
○ 1.) Chaos (Chasm): the void of space/”gaping void” (in Ovid, it is a crude mass
of elements in strife from which a god or higher nature formed the order of the
universe.
■ cosmos=”order” and “ornament”
○ 2.) Earth (Gea, Gaia, Ge; primacy of the feminine), Tartarus, Eros, Erebus (the
gloom of Tartarus) and Night
○ 3.) Erebus and Night > Aether (Air) and Day
○ 4.) Gea > Uranus, Mountains, Pontus (Sea)
○ 5.) Gea and Uranus (hieros gamos=”sacred marriage”) > 12 Titans (6 males, 6
females; last one is Cronus), Cyclopes, and Hecatonchires (100-Handers)
○ 6.) Cronus castrates Uranus: Aphrodite/Venus is born from the white foam
produced by the severed genitals of Uranus
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Know names on #5 (titans?)
Anadyomene: the one who rises up
○ Anadyomene Aphrodite
● The Reign of Cronus, Rise of Zeus
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Rhea and Cronus/Saturn (sister and brother) produces 6 Olympians
Cronus swallows his children
Rhea gives Cronus a rock to swallow instead of Zeus
Zeus is born on Crete, Cronus coughs up his children
Zeus frees the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires from Tartarus, where Uranus
imprisoned them, defeats his father (Titanomachy), and Typhon (youngest son of
Gea and Tartarus)
Prometheus and his mother side with Zeus
Cronus/Saturn swallows his children, Francisco Goya (1820-22)
Rhea offers the rock to Cronus
Titanomachy-clash of the titans 10 year series of battles of Titans against
Olympians (machy means war)
● Prometheus the trickster (~Hermes and Odysseus)
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Prometheus means foresight
He tricked Zeus by asking “Which do you prefer: the ox’s paunch (with the flesh
and fatty innards hidden inside it), or the white fat (with the ox’s bones wrapped
up in it)?”
“But Zeus whose wisdom is immortal knew and was not unaware of the trick.
And he foresaw evils for mortals...he took up the white fat, and his mind was
enraged and anger took hold of his heart as he saw the white bones of the ox
arranged with crafty art.” (Theogony 550-7)
● Zeus and Prometheus (cat and mouse)
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To punish Prometheus, Zeus withholds fire from mortals
Prometheus tricks zeus by stealing fire in a hollow fennel and giving it to mortals
Zeus retaliates and punishes Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having
an eagle eat at his liver (which would be restored at night), and by creating
Pandora, “an evil thing for men.”
■ Pandora is crafted by Hephaestus out of clay and makes her beautiful
■ Athena teachers her the skill of weaving, Aphrodite makes her desirable,
Hermes makes her a liar
● Pandora, a delightful evil (~Eve)
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“Son of Iapetus, who know how to scheme better than all others, you are pleased
that you stole fire and outwitted me-a great misery for you and men who are
about to be. As recompense for the fire, I shall give them an evil in which all
may take delight in their hearts as they embrace it.” (Works and Days, 54-8)
Epimetheus receives Pandora, opens the jar (~womb), and the evils are
scattered on earth. Only hope remains in the jar.
■ Is hope a good or an evil?
■ Why does it stay in the jar?
10/8/18
Zeus/Jupiter or Jove “The father of gods and men”
● Need to know greek terms, what they all mean
● Zeus is in the sky
● Hades is underground
● Zeus is the boss spatially
● Names and Symbols
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Division of powers among the male Olympians:
■ Zeus, the sky
■ Poseidon, the sea
■ Hades, the Underworld
Zeus from dyeu, means “the bright sky of the day”
Zeus=the sky god
“The cloud-gatherer” (Homer)
Thunderbolt and lightning: both his weapons by which he asserts power and
sources of phenomena he controls
■ Ex: rain and storm
Aegis-”goat skin,” originally the cloak of a shepherd
■ for Zeus it is a shield
■ Shaking produces storm and tempest
Eagle-his bird
Bull-his animal
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Oak and olive tree-his trees
● A multifaceted god
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An amorous god (lustful)
Amoral or immoral- lacks moral code, he stands above conventional standards
Amoral means doesn’t have morals at all
BUT: he is the wrathful god of justice
Watches over the sanctity of the oath (horkios)
■ if someone breaks an oath, Zeus punishes them (horkios)
The law of hospitality (xenios) guests must act respectful
Protects suppliants (hikesios)
Greek gods are wrathful and have no pity
● Zeus’ wives
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Zeus and Metis > Athena
■ He ate Metis, Athena came out of Zeus’ head
Zeus and Themis> Hours and Fates
■ Hours regulates the day
■ Fates manages lives of when people are born and die
Zeus and Eurynome> Charites
Zeus and Demeter> Persephone
Zeus and Mnemosyne> Muses
Zeus and Leto> Apollo and Artemis
Zeus and Hera> Hebe, Ares, Eileithyia
Meilichius means sweet, kind (melissa means bee, so Meilichius has to do with honey
being sweet)
● Constraints (as evidenced in Homer’s Iliad)
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Zeus is constrained by his obligations to other gods and goddesses, despite his
supreme power
He doesn’t heed all human prayers
■ Ex: In the Iliad, Achilles asks Zeus that Patroclus win and return from
battle
■ Zeus doesn’t grant the request that he returns but he does win
To maintain equilibrium among the gods, Zeus sometimes goes against his own
wishes
He has to acknowledge other gods wishes too, which may conflict with other
gods wishes
Neither Iliad nor Works and Days is sacred scripture
■ Neither text expresses a coherent religious theology
10/10/18
● Zeus and Thetis, Ingres, 1811
○ Thetis touches Zeus on the waist and at the mouth, shows intimacy
○ She asks him for a favor that her son, Achilles, to punish the Achaeans. Zeus
owes her a favor as she helped him escape a revolt before.
● Zeus and Europa (“wide” + “eyes”/“face”), Rembrandt, 1632
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Zeus became a white bull and went to Europa by the water, she sat on him and
he ran into the water and swam to crete with her, where they had 3 children.
Zeus and Ganymede (a Trojan prince), Ashmolean, Oxford, UK
○ Zeus took Ganymede because of his beauty
○ But Tros, Ganymede’s father was very sad because he didn’t know where his
son went
○ Zeus took pity on Tros and gave him horses, the kind that carries gods because
Zeus is just
○ Gives Ganymede’s father horses for his son because of justice
Danae receiving Zeus as golden rain, Titian
○ rain as being cleansed
○ Zeus is purifying/impregnating Danae
○ Intercourse, rape
Leda and the swan, Marble relief, 5th-4th c. BCE, Athens, Greece
○ Gods have to transform before intercourse, either human, animal, etc.
○ Leda is leaning fetally so she looks smaller, the swan envelopes her and looks
bigger which portrays the power of the male
Leda and the Swan, Rubens, 16th c. AD
○ In a different artwork, leda is bigger than the swan
■ Doesn’t look like rape, not violent
Leda and the Swan, Cezanne, 1882
Hera/Juno
○ Characterized as a subordinate of zeus by “jealous wife of zeus”
○ Gods can divorce wife if wife cannot bear sons
○ Women role is wife and mother
○ Statue of hera
○ Marriage of zeus and hera
○ Hieros gamos means sacred marriage
○ Characteristics
■ hera=heros=hero or horae=seasons
■ Ox-eyed and white-armed (Homer)
■ Subservient to Zeus
■ Jealous of Zeus’ infidelities
■ Children by Zeus: Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia,
■ Children alone: Hephaestus, Typhaon (dragon-like monster)
■ Animals: lion or hawk
■ Bird: peacock and cuckoo
■ Heraion=temple of Hera vs Temple of Zeus at Olympia (Zeus’ temple is
huge as Hera’s isn’t as vast)
■ Hera and Hebe
● Hera on left because holding staff
■ Eileithyia not aphrodite because surrounded by kids
■ Goddess of political power and fertility
■ Holds scepter, crown, and cup/pomegranate
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Oversees protection of young women
Regulates birth and nurturance of human community (seasons/time)
● When people are born
panoptes=one who sees all
● Argus panoptes
Peacock is the bird that sees everything
Hera takes eyes of peacock and gives them to Argus
He looks over Io, which is someone Zeus has an affair with
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Discussion 10/10/18
● Memorize the dates and artists and title of the artwork
4.) Describe one visual representation of rape/abduction examined in class (mention artist,
century, what is being represented, and how). What does the artist intend to convey thereby?
The looks of faces can be ambiguous, where they may be shocked or uncomfortable, but also in
awe of being in presence of a god
Bernini 1598-1680 hades and persephone 1621
Cerberus (dog) is an intimidation factor
Persephone is right above the dog almost like the dogs can nip at her feet
Her hand is on hades’ face, pushing his face up
His hand is on her hip, looks much bigger than her shows more power
Her position is elevated, so portrays her status getting higher by getting raped
Bernini italian 1598-1680 apollo and daphne 1622-25
Not reciprocating gazes, arms flared away from him
They’re not different size, she is a little higher
Benevolent in a way he’s touching her lightly and looks more playful than hades and
persephone
Both bodies almost symmetrically curved, some sort of harmony kind of consent
Maybe doesn’t have to put enough force because she’s already turning into a tree
Oceanus and prometheus are friends. They’re both titans, loyalty to one another. Both have
each others backs, in a way that oceanus is looking out for prometheus, but prometheus rejects
his offer because he can see the future and doesn’t want oceanus to get involved. Both dealing
with theme of justice and fate and balance. Oceanus can be interpreted both bad and good,
because he ultimately didn’t go to zeus to help prometheus.
Io had dreams that suggested zeus saw her in an attractive way
10/12/18
Aeschylus (?): Prometheus bound
● Prometheus the trickster
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Tricks zeus asking if prefer ox’s paunch with fleshy and fatty innards hidden
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inside
Or white fat with bones hidden in it
Zeus chooses the white fat with bones
He punishes prometheus by withholding fire from mortals
Prom tricks zeus back by stealing fire and giving to mortals
Zeus retaliates by chaining Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle eat at his
liver (which becomes restored)
● The Prometheus Trilogy
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Date: unknown
Authorship: disputed, traditionally attributed to Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)
Order of the 3 plays: uncertain, Prometheus Bound could be first book or last
■ Prometheus Unbound (some fragments remain)
■ Prometheus the Firebearer (completely lost)
Very verbal and slow play
● Structure of Greek Tragedy
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Prologue (<pro+logos) introduction
Parodos (<para+odos) first song by chorus
Episodes (events)
Stasima: choral interludes explaining or commenting on the events of the play
Exodus (final scene)
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PB, Gregorio Martinez c. 1590, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
○ Prometheus is lying horizontally, showing a submissiveness
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PB Peter Paul Rubens, 1611-12, Southern Netherlands/ modern Belgium
○ Eagle is gauging out prom right eye and eating at his liver
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Prometheus, the Light Bringer, Paul Manship c. 1934, Rockefeller Center, NYC
○ He is horizontal again
○ But emerges vertically, like he is entering the world, about to change the world
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Atlas, Lee Oscar Lawrie c. 1937, Rockefeller Center, NYC
10/15/18
Aeschylus (?): Prometheus Bound (II)
Crime and punishment
○ Know characters of play and who they are
○ Zeus rules by might and violence
● Characters:
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Might
■ Has voice
Violence (muta persona-non-speaking role)
■ Is mute
Hephaestus
■ god of fire
■ Prometheus’ action beneficial or detrimental to heph.
Prometheus
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■ main character, god
Oceanus
■ god of ocean
■ father of oceanids (chorus)
Io
■ cow
Hermes
■ messenger of gods
■ winged sandals
■ associated with traveling and spread of info
Oceanids (chorus)
■ Females
■ daughters of oceanus
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Play about conflict, war of the minds
○ Hephaestus/Might (prologue 1-127)
○ Conflict, argument
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Play of justice, limit of punishment, does punishment meet crime, or disproportionate
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Were obsessed with measures, (excessive love)
Fate, necessity
His crime was that he gave too much power to humans
○ Zeus may say that the balance between humans and gods are broken
Parados (128-284)
10/17/18
● What does Prometheus fore-know?
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He knows the future that zeus doesn’t know
1.) of zeus being spoiled of his throne and power
2.) io’s descendant will free Prometheus
● Oceanus/Prometheus (311-394)
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What does Oceanus add to the mix
Pragmatist is someone who looks at reality and tries to take practical steps to
save your skin
Oceanus’ advice is try to protect and save yourself by submitting to zeus and
stop provoking zeus (practical advice)
Oceanus comes off as benevolent but weak friend
Prometheus is asking oceanus that he doesn’t want to be punished too with him,
and oceanus agrees and leaves
● Fate (512-8)
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About Zeus
Zeus has to abide by fate
Fate is something humans must endure, be reconciled with, it’s a necessity
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Furies are goddesses who punish people who shed kindred blood (murderers)
The three-formed Fates (Moirai-3 goddesses of fate)
■ Clotho (Spinner) spins the thread of life, represents the life of someone
■ Lachesis (Allotter) dispensed the thread of life, measured the length of life
of someone
■ Atropos (Unturnable) cuts the thread when the time is right
● Io (640-688)
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a cow
is also suffering, so she is the only one that isn’t an enemy to Prometheus
Anyone that isn’t suffering is essentially an enemy to Prometheus
Although she is a cow, she can empathize with Prometheus
Zeus sends Hermes to kill Argus
Argus was the one who spied on Io
Io is then driven by the gadfly by hera
● Hermes and Prometheus
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Exam:
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Play ends with the gods in need, whereas in the beginning they had power
Know 2 out 3 short answer questions
Make sure i know the answers to the questions given
Around 12 -13 MC questions
PB
Know paintings
Question that is broad where i choose a painting or sculpture
Know genealogy (family)
Know all terms
● PB Overview
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Narrative construction in terms of appearance of characters
■ Conflicts with the characters with prometheus
■ Then there’s Io who is sympathetic
Justice
■ Crime is followed by punishment; degree
■ Question is how much should prometheus be punished, not if he should
be punished, because he clearly deserves it
■ There is a limit to prometheus’s punishment governed by fate, not Zeus
■ His fate is that Io’s descendent will free prometheus (13th gen)
Empathy/sympathy
■ Io because she also suffers (empathy because she puts herself in his
shoes)
■ Oceanus, not effectively, but he sympathizes
■ Hephaestus (sympathy)
■ Chorus (sympathy)
■ Sympathy is that they are not really in the same suffering situation as
Prometheus
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Kinds of power
Fate
10/17/18
(1) Name the first 6 elements of the universe according to Hesiod’s Theogony.
If name any six gods. How they came to be, what they represent.
Ppt 3
Narrate the beginning of theogony, talk about 6 gods
(2) Describe two dramatic reasons for which Aeschylus uses Oceanus as a character in
Prometheus Bound (i.e. explain what the introduction of Oceanus achieves for the play).
Oceanus is Prometheus’ friend and tries to help him out. He offers to go to Zeus and tell
him to free Prometheus, but Prometheus tells him not to because he’d rather just serve the
punishment than allow anyone else suffer. Prometheus tells Oceanus that involving Oceanus
will get him in trouble too, so Oceanus decides to leave. This shows that Oceanus is not a true
friend, because if he was, he would have persisted till the end that he helps his friend out and
actually do something to help him out, but he doesn’t do anything. Aeschylus uses Oceanus to
show that even Prometheus’ friend cannot empathize with him and is essentially against
Prometheus because he is not suffering like Prometheus, he can try to sympathize, but
ultimately, Io is the only one who can empathize with Prometheus. Perhaps, this is to show that
Oceanus cannot empathize with Prometheus because he isn’t going through the same
suffering, by the same oppressor. Maybe it’s to show that Prometheus and Io are allies because
they possibly share a common suffering by the same oppressor, and to hint that Io is indeed
suffering because of Zeus, not Hera.
(3) Discuss two different elements of Io’s story (verbal, factual, or narrative) in Prometheus
Bound that suggest that Zeus is the author of her transformation, and say why Aeschylus might
be presenting Io’s story in this way.
Point isn’t to prove if it is hera or zeus. Look for how do you know zeus is the villain in
this situation. (the passive voice in play) why is there passive voice.
Talks about the “storm” (642). “The greatest” is referring to zeus. Zeus is mentioned 3
times in the dream part.
Verbal are tenses, factual is part of the work,
670, most accusatory part
Keeps talking about a god, “god-sent scourge”
Tries to sympathize and wants sympathy because suffering from the same god.
She’s actually scared of zeus, so won’t name his name, but prometheus is not really,
because he can see the future about zeus’s fall. Io doesn’t know when her wandering will end,
but prometheus knows that his suffering will end sometime.
(4) Describe one visual representation of rape/abduction examined in class (mention artist,
century, what is being represented, and how). What does the artist intend to convey thereby?
Choose just one painting and focus on it
Know name of artwork (look up), artist, time
Is a certain painting consensual. Benevolence, elevated
Focus on specific details
Kind of choose a side. Bring up the other side, but counter-argue with my side
Ppt 4
Zeus and europa rembrandt 1632
Zeus and ganymede
Danae receiving zeus as golden rain
Leda and the swan
Multiple choice:
Know meaning of greek words
Glaukopis-owl eyed (athena)
Titanomachy- clash of the titans 10 years (machy means war)
Metis athena’s mother, zeus is athena’s father
Hieros gamos-sacred marriage
Know every start and end dates of era
Dates of ages
Know which era certain works are from like theogony, logos
10/22/18
Hades/Pluto/Dis/Orcus
The Lord of the Underworld
● Dis-rich
● Dis/orcus are roman
● Hades/Pluto are greek
● Chthonia-underworld
● Zeus and Chthonian zeus-god of underworld (Hades)
● The point of the 2 pictures is to show how similar they both look
● Hades is always with Cerberus
● The grim reaper is the modernly closest figure to Hades
● The black color associated with death
● General Information (need to know for multiple choice)
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Son of Cronus and Rhea
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Presided over funeral rights and defended the right of the dead to due burial
■ Unless doesn;t get buried, then cannot cross the “river” and enable soul
to be moved forward
Hades
■ (a+idein)= invisible
● A means “in”
● Inaccessible, doesn’t see unless dead
■ (hado or chado)= the all receiver
● He is rich and wealthy
■ polydegmon= the much-receiving one
● Knows a lot, poly means a lot
● Collector of souls
Often depicted sitting on a throne with a scepter in his hand and accompanied by
Persephone, his wife
■ No children
■ Maybe because he takes lives, not give life
Pluton= “of wealth” (symbol: cornucopia=horn of plenty)
■ Modern: sees cornucopia on thanksgiving
Sacred animal: screech-owl; plants: asphodel, white poplar
First literary account of the realm of Hades=Odyssey Bk. 11
● The Underworld
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In Homer: in the west, in the underworld, in the north
Most often: under the earth. No temples or sanctuaries, He is associated with
caves, often imagined as entrances to the Underworld
■ Caves like entrances to underworld, mouth-like, passage to beyond
● Mysterious, dark, alluring, unknown
5 Rivers: Styx, Lethe, Acheron, (Pyri)phlegethon, Cocytus
■ Styx-main river of underworld, takes you to underworld
■ Lethe-forgetfulness, if drink then forget who you used to be
● Acquire passage to Elysian fields, become a new person, new life
● Non-synonymous with Hades
● For blessed
■ Acheron-various associated with pain
■ Pyri-fire phlegethon, fire river
■ Cocytus-lamentation
■ Last two for the bad people
■ Space: left is for damned, right for blessed
Elysium or Elysian Plain: a place of eternal springtime
Tartarus-place of hell
■ Can be used to describe Hades
■ Synonymous with Hades
■ For damned
Hecate: goddess of crossroads, entrances, the Moon, magic, witchcraft
Furies or Erinyes: relentless persecutors of those who shed kindred blood
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Hermes psychopompus: escorts souls to Charon
■ Psycho-soul
■ Pompus-escort, sender,
Charon: ferryman, coin (customarily put in the mouth of the dead) or cake
■ Takes dead to underworld by water
■ Water shows fluidity and unknown
Cerberus (two- or three-headed dog [in Hesiod: 50 heads]): offspring of Echidna
and Typhon, guards the entrance, welcomes souls, and refuses to let them leave
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Heracles calms a two-headed cerberus
○ Only one who entered underworld twice
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The Dead
○ The dead retain their appearance but cannot be physically touched by the living
(shadows)
○ Souls gossip with one another, play board-games, and welcome newly arriving
family
■ Not a good, fun life
■ Pass time by doing activities that the living does
○ Disputes are resolved by judges (Kings Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus)
○ According to some authors, the life of the dead was tedious, devoid of meaning
■ Better to be alive because then life has no meaning afterwards
○ Others suggest that there were rewards and punishments, according to one’s life
on earth
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Sisyplus pushing a boulder up a hill, Titian, Musco del Prado, 1549
○ Push boulder up a hill, keeps having to do it as a punishment
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Tantalus
○ Reaches for fruit of tree
○ tantalized/tempted by food and a drink but can’t reach them
○ Killed his son pelops, cooked him, and gave to the gods, trying to trick them
○ Demeter was the only one who ended up eating the soup
Tityus
○ Eagle eating at his liver
○ Tried to rape leto, mother of artemis
Ixion in Tartarus, spinning on a fiery wheel
○ Tried to rape Hera
Funerary Ritual
○ Kêdeia= “funeral” (<kêdomai= “attend to,” or “take care of”
■ Act of care
■ kinship
○ Deposition of the corpse (prosthesis): kinswomen wash the body, close the
eyes and mouth, dress it in a special garment and lay it out for mourning
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■ Deposit-to lay down
○ Procession of the corpse (ekphora): transport to the cemetery amidst dirges
just before dawn
○ Interment of the body or cremated remains of the deceased. Post burial,
there was a feast; the soul was thought to hover near the body at the gravesite.
For about a month afterwards, offerings to the dead are made to ensure the
transport of the soul to the Underworld.
■ Interment-bury
■ They buried dead bodies
■ If body was mutilated, then could cremate
● But tried best to piece body parts together to give proper burial
■ Celebrated afterwards with a feast
■ Considered truly dead after a month
■ Stele-stone slab, gravestone
Demeter/Ceres
Goddess of Agriculture
United by Persephone
General Infrormation
○ Daughter of Cronus and Rhea
○ “Demeter” is for some associated with “mother” (mêtêr)= mother Earth; for
others, Demeter is connected with dais= “food” (and derivatively, “barley”)
■ “Mother”ly quality are nurturing and giving
■ Barley-earth stuff, giving
○ Demeter and Zeus> Persephone (or Proserpina)
○ Iconography: wheat stalk, torch
■ birth
○ Often depicted with Triptolemus (a mythical Eleusinian prince, messenger of
Demeter) to whom she gives the knowledge of agriculture to share with humanity
○ Her rituals (1) ensure agricultural success; (2) link the fertility of the earth with the
fertility of women
■ Weather, things that farmer have no control over, Demeter helps with, so
people do rituals for success
The Rape of Proserpina, Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-8
○ Proserpina leaning and looking towards the right, which the right shows the
future
○ Hades looks to the left which is the past
○ Goddess on left with helmet is Athena which signifies war
○ Aphrodite on very left which signifies love affair
○ DIana, Hades hunting down a defenseless woman
○ The goddesses lie in the past, for what hades did
○ The cherubs go towards the right, to the future, where love will be between them
Agricultural Rituals
○ Operative Concept: Agriculture is linked to human reproduction: earth is
female and its cultivator is male. “I give her to you for the plowing of legitimate
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children” (formula used for brides when betrothed): agricultural
labor~impregnation.
■ Demeter and Aphrodite somehow linked
■ Plowing is like impregnation
Proerosia (Before Plowing): ritualized plowing before the actual plowing and
sowing took place. Women may have gathered separately from men.
Haloa (Fields) festival: only for women, in late December when the seeds were
at risk from rainfall or cold weather. Meant to ensure the safety of the harvest.
■ Ritual to celebrate sex
■ Women play with pastries in the shapes of sexual organs, drink wine, and
tell obscenities.
Sympathetic magic
■ Enacting something on one’s self that would want something to happen in
real life
Discussion:
Read chapter 4 before friday
10/26/18
Fertility Ritual: Thesmophoria
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Thesmophorus= “Bringer of Law”
An all-female ritual before the sowing period (October to November)
Day 1 (Ascent): women leave homes and walk to the site of worship; Day 2 (Fast): no
public business, women fasted, insulted one another, and made obscene jokes; Day 3
(Beautiful Births): women break their fast, sacrifice, and feast. Men may have joined
them.
○ All female worship
○ Day 3 is opposite as day 2
On Day 2: women purified by a ritual enter pits and dig up a compost of items that were
deposited months earlier. E.g. pigs’ bones, cakes shaped like genitals, snakes, and
pinecones. These items, mixtures of male and female sexual organs, are offered to
Demeter on Day 3.
Decayed material dug up on Day 2 introduces death into a celebration of life (Demeter
and Hades)
Eleusinian Mysteries
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D. wanders in Eleusis, about 14 miles west of Athens, grieving Persephone’s absence
The king and queen of Eleusis offer her hospitality, and their slave, Baubo, makes her
laugh
D. demands that a temple be built in her honor in Eleusis, and she destroys the earth’s
harvests
Zeus allows P. to leave the Underworld for part of each year
Mother and daughter reunite
Festival of the mysteries takes place in September and/or October
Any Greek speaking-person who had not committed murder could participate
READ HYMN TO DEMETER FOR NEXT CLASS (pgs. 163-74)
Lesser mysteries
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Precise details about this first stage celebrated in Athens each year in the early spring
are virtually unknown.
Ceremonies probably focused upon initial purification.
Greater Mysteries
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These were held annually during the months of September and/or October. A holy truce
was declared to issue invitations to individuals and states. The ceremonies included:
Splendid processions between Eleusis and Athens in which the holy objects were carried
in sacred chests by priests and priestesses.
Sacrifices, prayers, and cleansing in the sea
The singing of hymns, the exchange of jests, and the carrying of torches
○ Torches used to find the daughters
Fasting, a vigil, and the drinking of the sacred drink, the kykeon
○ Barley, water, and mint leaves (kykeon) drink that internally tranforms you
What happens?
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Gathered initiates in Athens bathe themselves and their sacrificial pigs in Piraeus.
Officials and initiates walk the 14 miles to Eleusis.
Before crossing a river, masked individuals tease and mock the initiates.
They break their fast in Eleusis, sacrifice the pigs, and drink the kykeon.
They view sacred places in Demeter’s sanctuary.
They enter the Telesterion and receive secret knowledge.
The ceremony was thought to ensure a better afterlife for initiates.
Hymn to Demeter: Deceit (8-15)
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Begin with crime, rape/abduction of Persephone
Narcissus smells good, persephone gets attracted to smell, gets swallowed up
HTD: Violence (15-30)
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Zeus colludes to persephone’s pleas
Zeus is persephone’s father, hades’ brother
HTD: Despair (41-7)
HTD: Illumination (76-80)
● Zeus married off his daughter against her will and persephone’s mother’s will
HTD: Grief (91-6)
HTD: Deceit
● Doso-I will give
10/29/18
Aphrodite/Venus
Goddess of Beauty and Lust
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Aphrodite-arising from (dite) + foam (aphro)
General Information
○ Aphrodite< aphros (“foam”) collected around the genitals of Uranus either on
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Cythera (Cytherea) or on Cyprus (Cypris)
○ Mesopotamian Ishtar, Egyptian Hathor
■ These goddesses overlap with Aphrodite
■ Aphrodite wasn’t the only goddess of lust
○ Two birth accounts, one in Homer’s Iliad (<Zeus and Dione), the other in Hesiod’s
Theogony (<foam collecting around Uranus’ genitals on the sea)—Aphrodite
Pandemos and Aphrodite Ourania, profane and sacred love
■ Aphrodite is a celestial being (heavenly) more Iliad Homer’s version
■ Aphrodite being lustful and whorish is Hesiod’s version with Uranus’
genitals
○ Offspring (main): Eros (Cupid, with or without Ares); Erotes (Eros, Pothos,
Himeros); Peitho (with no male); Aeneas (with Anchises)
■ Peitho-persuasion
■ Aeneas-founder of Rome
○ Aphrodite Philommedes (in Hesiod)
■ Philo-friend, mmedes-laughter, good mood
○ Cult places: Cyprus and Cythera
■ Where she is worshipped
○ Iconography: associated with birds: doves, swans, swallows, sparrows;
Attendants: Graces and Hours/Seasons
A Panel of the Ludovisi Throne 460-450 BCE
○ Sculpted block of white marble, 3 relief panel, so 3 sides to block connected
○ Central panel
○ The female in the middle is persephone, emerging from the earth, being assisted
by two women
■ Aphrodite and persephone are correlated
Capitoline Venus
○ Genital is covered with left hand
○ Breasts are attempted to be covered
○ Her belly is flat to show she does not have sex to procreate
The Birth of Venus
○ Guy on left blows wind to expose the body and femininity
○ Woman on right tries to clothe her
○ Left is liberating force, unrestrain her
○ Right is trying to tame her and cover her
Venus, mars, and cupid
○ Aggression with lust
Aphrodite and Marriage
○ Desire and marriage are not necessarily aligned in ancient Greece (Paris and
Helen=dangerous liaison)
■ Union caused disaster and union didn’t even last
○ Marriages are arranged: fathers select suitable husbands, and the daughters’
consent is neither required nor considered
■ Marriage is a social institution
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■ The two people are agreeing to do things together and for each other
■ Desire is uncontrollable, marriage is controllable
○ Marriages are strategic alliances between families aiming to consolidate power,
property, and social ties
○ Hope that the union will prove agreeable to both parties (Peitho= “Persuasion” or
“Agreeable Compulsion”)
■ Marriage to procreate, if can’t have kids, then divorce
Venus and adonis
○ Not rape, gazes and reciprocated
○ Adonis is a hunter
○ Adonis dies, gazes are all not reciprocated
The Adonia: mourning and laughter
○ Adonis< Myrrha (as tree)+ Cinyras (her father) (Story in Ovid)
○ Aphrodite and Persephone vie for Adonis, and Zeus arbitrates: half and half
■ Between goddess of love/lust and goddess of underworld
■ Portion of life above and under the world
○ Adonis is killed by a wild boar; Aphrodite sprinkles his blood with nectar from
which springs the short-lived flower anemone
○ Only women (both prostitutes and respectable women) celebrate the Adonia, a 2day ritual
○ Day 1: Gardens of Adonis on rooftops; statues of Adonis are laid on the streets
and women lament his death (funeral ritual, mourning)
■ Lamenting alludes to persephone, one of adonis’ lovers
○ Day 2: merriment and feasting because Adonis is allowed to return to life
(laughter)
■ Alludes to him having sex with aphrodite, his other lover
The Gardens of Adonis: a sexual joke (John J. Winkler)
○ Women would place small containers of plants that would sprout quickly and die
on rooftops. Mock funeral for Adonis
○ “He whom a goddess loves ceases to be a phallic man, enters instead a state of
permanent detumescence.”
■ Price to pay for sleeping with aphrodite is being unable to have sex
because of detumescence (deflate)
○ The sprout-and-fizzle of Adonis’ gardens -> “the marginal or subordinate role that
men play in both agriculture (vis-à-vis the earth) and human generation (vis-à-vis
wives and mothers)”
HtA: Aphrodite’s power and some limitations (1-43)
○ Speak to me, Muse, of golden Aphrodite’s works, the Cyprian’s—she who sends
sweet desire on the gods, and subdues the tribes of mortal men, the birds that fly
through the air, and all the many wild beasts that are nurtured by land and sea.
○ Exceptions: Athena, Artemis, Hestia (3 virgin goddesses, not subject to lust)
○ Hymn is trying to intend to promote patriarchy, zeus does what he wishes and
there’s a divine order, but women get something out of it
■ E.g. Demeter’s victory was she would go up to her mother, then down to
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her husband
○ Aphrodite has a lot of power of the world because she causes people to mate,
which produces people, who can worship gods
HtA: some more limitations …(44-106; 167-8)
○ But Zeus put the sweet desire even in Aphrodite’s heart that she be joined
together in love with a mortal man, to ensure with the utmost speed that she
herself might be to a mortal bed’s no stranger, nor ever be making the boast
amidst the gods’ assembly … that she, Aphrodite the lover of smiles, had joined
together the gods with mortal women …
○ So Zeus put sweet desire for Anchises within her heart.
○ Aphrodite ... was filled with yearning; desire completely conquered her mind.
○ By the gods’ will then and fate he [Anchises] lay, a mortal man, beside an
immortal goddess, and knew not what he did.
■ Don’t know who we fall in love with
■ First stage require ignorance in both parts
HtA: seduction requires deceit (108-150)
○ “I am no god. Why think that I’m like the immortals? No, I’m just a mortal, a
woman the mother that gave me birth.”
○ “If a mortal is what you are, and a woman gave you birth … There’s none who
will stop me from joining in love with you right now.”
HtA: divine illumination and human terror (180-90)
○ As soon as he saw Aphrodite’s neck and beautiful eyes, he felt his heart stricken
with dread […] “From that very moment, goddess, when I first set eyes on you, I
knew that you were divine, but you didn’t tell me the truth. ... I beg you, don’t let
me dwell amongst humans in strengthless existence but show me your mercy—
the man who sleeps with deathless goddesses has no flourishing life.”
■ Says he didn’t know she was a goddess, but then says he knew
● He has to come off as someone who wasn’t deceived, pride
HtA: Aineias (<ainos) (196-9)
○ “You will have a son of your own, who amongst the Trojans will rule, and children
descended from him will never lack children themselves. His name will be
Aineias, since a dreadful pain has seized me, because I fell into the bed of a
mortal man.”
■ Aineias means terrible, dreadful
● He will be a leader of rome, but the name will remind him and
everyone of the terrible thing aphrodite did with a mortal me
HtA: cutting Aphrodite down to size (245-255)
○ “But a great disgrace will be mine amongst the immortal gods for ever … Before
today they feared the murmurs and cunning plans that I used to join together at
some stage every god in love with mortal women: my thought subdued them all.
But now I’ll have no longer this boast on my lips to tell amongst the immortals,
since into an act of pure folly, perverse, that I can’t bear to name, I’ve been
tricked, been led astray from my wits, and under my girdle conceived a child in a
mortal’s bed.”
■ Despite all this deceiving, something good has to occur
■ Aphrodite has been defeated by zeus
○ slept with aphrodite, but don’t want him to boast, if he does he will be punished
by aphrodite
■ Don’t advertise aphrodite’s weakness, to keep her power and good name
■ Aphrodite’s weakness, but something good happened, rome
Discussion 10/31/18
● Hymn to demeter
● Point of 3 levels:
○ One is in the mortal realm (2), one is in the divine realm (1)
○ Divinity vs mortality (division between them)
● M & W (man and woman)
○ Defines patriarchy and its system, but doesn’t mean it is a feminist victory
○ Accommodation and compromise, partial victory
○ May justify or give rational basis for patriarchy, necessary for cosmos to stay
intact
○ Creates bond between life and death
■ Eg: how they celebrate death
○ Level 3, violence, demeter stopping people from getting food from earth, stopping
seeds from getting in produce, humans need demeter
○ Zeus tricks with pomegranate ..
○ Illumination, rhea telling her it’s going to be ok
○ Women justify marriage to each other, she will get to see her daughter some of
the time (partial victory)
○ Memorize the words like deceit, violence, despair, illumination, remember the
four, but not exactly the order for each level
■ Goes from grief, amends, to victory, situation gets better for women as
levels go on
○ Demeter is like a mother (meter=mother) mother of earth
○ The story shows how she becomes more of a mother and motherly god
○ Demeter throws kid in fire, queen takes on motherly role,
○ in demeter’s grief, becomes cruel to children in level 2, becomes like hades
○ Then in level 3 becomes a mother again, restored in joy with her daughter
○ Describe the Ludovisi Throne (what material is it made of, date, and what it
represents). Give the two interpretations of the main figure on it and explain each
of them.
Persephone or Aphrodite both share adonys as lover, both come from
ground, both come from ground, Persephone from underworld to visit her mom
11/2/18
● Hephaestus
○ God of fire, metallurgy, stone—the divine blacksmith (shield of Achilles)
○ Hephaestus is linked with Athena and Prometheus.
○ Both have temples in Athens
○ Cyllopodium, Polytechnes
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Cyllopodium—Means “of dragging feet” (referring to his defect)
Poly—"these are”, technes—"art/craft”; polytechnes—"of many crafts”
In Homer, the son of Zeus and Hera; in Hesiod, born of Hera alone
(parthenogenesis-“of woman birth”)
o
>Lameness, a birth-defect: Hera tosses him out of heaven; H. gifts
her a throne that binds whoever sits in it; Zeus promises Aphrodite in
marriage to whomever frees Hera; Dionysus persuades Hephaestus to
return to Olympus and free Hera (“the return of Hephaestus”).
•
According to this, he came out defected.
•
**For short answer, you need to know the whole account (where it
falls in history?)
o
>Lameness acquired: Zeus tosses him from Olympus because he
helped Hera in one of her feuds with Zeus.
•
Do not mix what is found in homer and Hesiod
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Ares
o
God of OFFENSIVE war, aggression, rage, and destruction
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Athena was defensive
o
Son of Zeus and Hera or Hera alone; Eris=his sister
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Eris-means “battle or fight”
o
Ares + Aphrodite (main) >Deimus, Phobus, Harmonia
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Fear, fear, and harmony (male, male, and female (harmonia is the
only one really related to the mother in this way))
o
Iconography: helmet, spear, shield, greaves
o
No social institutions are associated with him
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Cannot, as everything is the opposite of peaceful
o
Ares is said to be the ancestor of the Amazons
o
Areopagus is a low hill northwest of the Acropolis known for the
trial of homicides and where Theseus defeats the invading Amazons
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Hill of Ares, known for trial of homicides
•
Remember this**
11/5/18
● Aphrodite and Eros in Greek Philosophy
○ Empedocles (c. 490-c. 430 BCE): love + strife create the world by acting on the 4
elements. Aphrodite brought together previously unattached or incorrectly
attached creatures and parts (A= evolutionary process of attraction and a
goddess)
○ Plato (428-348 BCE): Symposium : a dialogue about eros
○ Myth of Aristophanes in Symposium: humans are spherical beings, each
composed of two people: two men, two women, or a man and a woman
■ Aristophanes-one of the speakers in symposium
○ Romantic notion that we are each looking for our “other half” so as to attain our
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original wholeness/oneness
Diotima on the progeny of Eros
○ At the gods’ celebration of the birth of Aphrodite, Plenty [Poros], the son of
Cunning, gets drunk on nectar and falls asleep
■ poros-resourceful
○ Poverty [Penía] lies with Plenty and becomes pregnant with Eros
■ Eros son of poverty and plenty, full and emptiness
● Shows eros neediness, when we fall in love, what something
○ State of lack, incomplete because of his mother, but
resourceful because of his father
○ Lacks wisdom, wants to gain it with his resources
○ Eros is needy (because of his mother) and resourceful and a lover of Beauty
(because of his father)
Athena/Minerva
Goddess of wisdom, war, and the crafts
Sphere, breastplate with head of medusa, clothed
The head of medusa fends people off whether kill
● General Information
○ Athena< Zeus and Metis (“the wisest among the gods and mortal men,” Hesiod,
Theogony)
■ Metis-practical intelligence/wisdom, not academic intelligence
○ WAR: Born equipped with helmet, shield, and spear
○ WISDOM: Hephaestus is the god of the forge, Athena devises ways of putting
the forge to use. Helps woodworkers apply their skill (plough and shipbuilding)
○ CRAFTS: Weaving: Arachne
○ Epithets: Glaucopis; Pallas; Polias; Parthenos; Promachus
○ Bird: owl; tree: olive
○ Birth of athena: zeus swallowed metis, birthed from zeus’ head in full armor,
hephaestus takes her out
● Pallas and Arachne
○ Arachne is a mortal woman, skilled at weaving, boasts she is better at weaving
that athena, athena disguised as a woman, goes to arachne to stop boasting but
insists and asks for a competition to prove that she is indeed better than Athena.
Athena makes many seams, one depicted that she was victorious against
poseidon. Arachne made seams one that showed that gods were vicious where a
mortal is punished. The seams alludes to the fact that athena will be the winner
and that arachne will be punished. Athena decides that arachne was indeed
better than athena, so athena beats her and because she cannot handle it,
arachne commits suicide, but athena pities arachne and turns her into a spider
instead.
○ The scene on the right is a seam that arachne wove
○ Scene on foreground of athena about to hit arachne, position of body shows one
dominates and their eyes meet, like her looking at the judge and realizing what
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she has done
○ The scene on left is of them weaving
○ Timeline
○ Arachne in the back is concentrated on her work, unaware of what is going to
happen, athena is looking to the future, looking at the scene on the foreground
and looking at what awaits arachne, so can tell in the scene in the back, athena
is on the right
Owl-bird of athena, read book get wise
War
○ Oversees martial arts: “thoughtful” aggression
○ Pyrrhic dance: invented by Athena
○ Salpinx: military trumpet
Athena and Odysseus
○ Polymetis-much wise, renowned
○ Odysseus’ nostos
■ Means homecoming, like nostalgia, an aching longing for return
○ Trojan Horse
■ Given to trojans by greeks, where greeks hid inside horse
Parthenon
○ Temple of athena, the virgin goddess
○ Temple built on the south side of the Acropolis between 447-438 BCE. Greek
victory over the Persians.
■ Polis means city, acro means atop, height, outskirts
○ Gold and ivory statue of Athena built by Phidias (lost but reconstructed)
○ Nike, helmet decorated with sphinxes, aegis, shield (battle of the Amazons,
Gigantomachy), spear beside her which portrays a serpent
■ Nike means victory, victory has wings, it flies
Athena promachus
○ Prom means front, achus means fighter
Athena: a summary
○ Athena’s virginity means that she is “herself,” she has no agenda other than the
exercise of her practical intelligence and martial skills. She is also both mother
and virgin (Statue of Liberty)
■ One of very few goddesses that is a virgin
■ No mother
■ By being a virgin, she has autonomy from male
○ Athena as allegory (<allos +agoreuein). She inspired Marianne and Liberté,
symbols of the 3 ideals of the French Revolution (1789-1799): liberty, equality,
fraternity (tricolor French flag)
■ Political allegories of athena
■ Allos means other
■ Agoreuein means to speak
■ Allegory production or meaning of...
● Something more than just surface meaning
● 3 allegories separate from each other
○ Marianne on 5 cents, France
○ Marianne (red Phrygian cap, fasces) and the 1st Seal of the French Republic
■ Fasces is a bundle of sticks, symbol of unity and fraternity
● Fascism is loyal to same cause, bundles like sticks to form a unity
■ All 3 ideals of french revolution is represented by marianne
○ Liberté in Liberty Leading the People, Delacroix commemorating the July
Revolution of 1830. Louvre. Paris, France
■ Background on right see tower of notre dame, cathedral dedicated to
monarchy, french was celebrating from conservative monarchy to
enlightened liberal monarchy
■ Liberty signal transition from one stage to another
■ In the back is the french flag, double reference to french flag, same flag
liberte is holding
■ Liberte is guiding the progression of the painting
■ Little boy next to her holding 2 pistols, 2 men on left one is from low class
by how he is dressed, holding a pistol, another man is a higher social
status holding a hunting rifle
● People from different social status, liberte is uniting people for the
cause of liberty
■ Liberte’s chest is exposed, contrasts to man on ground with genitals
showing
● Chest is shown because full of vigour and excitement
● Moment of victory and defeat
■ Notre dame is left in the background for something new
○ Frédéric Bartholdi, Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1886. Liberty Island. New York,
NY
■ Made by french person as a gift by french to the US
■ Incarnation of liberte and marianne
■ Welcomes exiles, immigrants, foreigners to new world
■ Because it is a gift, it doesn’t really belong here, can function differently
from US even though it is in the US makes it appropriate for foreigners
because not US product
● Poseidon/Neptune
● Lord of the sea
● General Info
○ Poseidon<Cronus and Rhea
○ Hippius (Pegasus<Poseidon and Medusa)
○ Ennosigaeus (Earth-Shaker)
○ Poseidon and Athena vie for Athens (men for P, women for A; A wins, women are
denied citizenship to appease P)
■ Game is set up for men to win, but now women now has to pay for
supporting the woman, so they are denied citizenship, denied freedom
11/7/18 discussion
(1) Describe two political allegories of Athena (content, media, artists’ names [if pertinent],
dates). Make sure to say what allegory means, to discuss the connection with Athena, and to
embed the allegories in their historical and political contexts.
(2) Describe the amphora representation entitled “The Return of Hephaestus.” Write in detail
what we see (identification of the figures and their placement on the image, how we recognize
Hephaestus [pay attention to his body posture], and the destination of the return [temporal
dimension of the image]). Also state briefly the story behind Hephaestus’ return.
(3) Describe the Ludovisi Throne (what material is it made of, date, and what it represents).
Give the two interpretations of the main figure on it and explain each of them.
Persephone or Aphrodite both share adonys as lover, both come from ground, both
come from ground, Persephone from underworld to visit her mom
(4) Describe the myth of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium and say what vision of love it
supports.
(5) What is the progeny of Eros according to Diotima and what does it purport to explain? (Make
sure to say who Diotima is.)
Study jeopardy
Poseidon doesn’t matter much
Athena matters much from today
Political allegories
Story that means something else, not on the surface
Delacroix conservative to liberal and flag in background
11/14/18
Aeschylus’ Oresteia
Eumenides: a court drama
● Eumenides-the benevolent ones the kindly ones
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The furies become the euminides
● General Information
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Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides): the only surviving
example of a complete Greek trilogy (lost satyr play: Proteus)
■ Archaic, poetic, similar to Homer
■ Agamemnon is the return
■ Libation is liquid offerings to dead, a bunch of women going to tomb of
Agamemnon to offer libation
■ Eumenides is the trial of Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, for killing his mother
Originally performed in 458 BCE
■ 5th century BCE athens
○
Some general themes:
■ >Hereditary guilt
● We pay for sins of fathers
● The both carry guilt from ancestors
● As a whole is about redemption, through suffering
■ >Justice
● Doesn’t get killed for killing his mother, but gets set free, and is
tried by people of Athens that are not associated with him
■ >Deceit, knowledge
■ >Progression from savagery to civilization
● Family tree
○
● Agamemnon
○
Nostos of a warrior to his city, Argos
■ Cassandra cursed by Apollo (?)
○ Revenge
○ Gender roles
■ Women could not rule, only when the husband is away
■ Furies
■ Zeus, apollo
■ Women vs men
○ Fate vs. free will
■ Is agamemnon fated to kill his daughter, could he have said no, he
doesn’t have freedom because one god tell him to kill her, another god
tells him not to, so he doesn’t have his own free will
■ Clytemnestra thinks she is the hand of the furies
○ “Wisdom comes through suffering”
○ Chorus: Argive elders
■ men
● The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, Jan Steen. Dutch, baroque. 1671
○ Iphigeneia is Agamemnon’s daughter in white
● Clytemnestra Kills Cassandra. Red Figure vase, c. 600 BCE
○ Agamemnon comes home, Clytemnestra asks him to step on red tapestry
■
His last crime, kills daughter, brings cassandra stepping tapestry, etc, he
goes inside in a bath, gets killed by clytemnestra and she kills cassandra
too
● Libation Bearers (Gr: Choephor(o)i)
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○
Memory/commemoration
Revenge (vendetta, quid pro quo): matricide
■ Tick for tack (?)
○ Inheritance
○ Gender Roles
○ Chorus: Slave women (captives of old wars)
■ Led by electra to tomb, makes a plan to kill the mother
● Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon, 4th c. BCE
● Orestea, Luca De Fusco, Teatro Stabile di Napoli, 2015/6
○ Play with mother showing her breast to son to prevent him from killer her but he
does
Discussion
Violence:
633 “chopped him down”
460
644-651 death is in one direction, can’t go back
698 fear makes men righteous
Justice:
690-695 muddying
Law of retribution if do violence to someone, then boomerangs to you back, dictates how furies
behave
Divine law would be to kill orestes because killed mother
No anarchy (furies) and no single masters (maybe zeus)
681
615 apollo and zeus connection
780 old vs new (apollo, represents male) institution
Gender:
735 athena talks about how she had no mother and is always on man's side. Also she is a
virgin. She doesn’t value a woman’s death more than if she killed her husband.
Free will/ fate
713
11/19/18
Hermes/Mercury and Hestia/Vesta
Boundaries and the hearth
Hermes of Olympia, marble, 4th c. BCE. Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Greece
● Right hand missing
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Beardless indicates youthfulness, young god
Hermes and dionysus related
Baby is dionysus pointing to hermes’ missing arm, most likely was holding grapes
Hermes is god of wine
General Information
○ Zeus and Maia > Hermes (“he from the stone heaps”)
○ Hermes’ hills: road or grave markers
■ Hermes are also little rocks
■ Relates to how hermes is a traveler
○ Patron of travelers through the countryside and after death (psychopompos)
■ Psycho means soul, pompos means escorter
○ Patron of messengers (Priam in the Iliad; Calypso in the Odyssey)
○ Archetypal trickster/charming rogue
■ Not manipulative, but playful
○ Iconography: travel cap (petasus), winged sandals, wand (caduceus)
■ Even mortals can have the caduceus, symbol for messengers
A herm
○ Used to keep away anyone that violates what the herm was supposed to protect
The caduceus
○ 2 snakes
○ God of fertility
○ Symbol for medical corps
Hermes and the Underworld
○ Invoked on curse tablets to facilitate communication between the living and the
dead
○ The Anthesteria (<anthos = “flower,” possibly the bloom of the grape vine). The
festival involves drinking contests, games, a sacred wedding, and parades of
masked people who are thought to represent the dead.
■ Ritual in honor for dionysus
○ 3 Days: “The Jar-Opening,” “The Pouring,” and “The Pots.” Day 3 is dedicated to
the dead. A thick stew (pottage) was offered to chthonian Hermes
■ Day 3 is for hermes
■ Dead are let out, to go out and represent the dead
■ Chthonian hermes means of underworld
Other areas of influence
○ God of fertility (goats, sheep, swine)
○ God of good luck (hermaion= “lucky catch”)
○ Hermes, the protector god (phallus=apotropaic symbol)—herms placed at doors
and gates of temples, houses, and cities
○ Hermes (?) and Penelopeia > Pan (part man and part goat)
■ Pan means all
○ Hermes and a nymph > Daphnis (a shepherd and inventor of pastoral poetry)
Hermaphroditus
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In Greece: god of fertility and sexual abundance
In Rome: “Neither and both” (Ovid, Metamorphoses): the story of
Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (effeminized man)
○ Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (founded in 1848 in England): a reform movement
in the arts whose interest in hermaphrodites attempts to break mannerist
convention
Sleeping Hermaphroditus, marble, Roman copy of a Greek original, 2nd c. BCE. Louvre
Museum, Paris, France
Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Francesco Albani, 1630-1640. Musée du Louvre. Paris,
France
○ Blue on her and red on him
○ On opposite sides of painting and a pond separating them
○ He’s about to dive in
○ An attempt to come together because red is more characteristic of women and
blue for men, but she has the blue and he has the red
Hestia
○ Hestia, athena, artemis are 3 virgin goddesses
○ Center of house
General Information
○ Cronus and Rhea > Hestia
○ Almost no temples, rituals, or cult shrines
■ Like hades
○ A virgin goddess often shown veiled
○ Goddess of the hearth of houses or cities
■ Cooking requires fire which would be in center of house
■ Hestia related to cooking which is a female activity
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Partakes in sacrifices requiring cooking
Stable center of family and city through time
She cannot be bothered by others which is shown with her virginity
because being a virgin means to be the same
Amphidromia
○ The only festival associated with her
○ Amphi means around
○ Dromia means run
○ Run around the park
○ Family festival: introduction of the newly-born into the family
○ Performed roughly two weeks post birth
○ Father runs around the hearth 3 times before placing the child on the ground
near the hearth; child is placed on the fixed center of the house
■ First 6 months the baby is nameless, so called “It” until father gives it a
name
■ Way of passing on the torch
HtH: Birth
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Zeus joined in love with the beautiful nymph Maia in a luxurious cave, and she
bore the god Hermes. This precocious baby was born at dawn.
○ By midday he was playing the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of
Apollo.
■ Third hymn, hymn to demeter, to aphrodite, and now to hermes
■ This one is not as heavy as other 2 because hermes is a light god
■ Hermes was not born in olympus, he was born in a cave, his mother is
not hera
■ He plays around by playing the lyre and stealing the cattle of apollo
■ He is an outsider to olympus, what he does is already not acceptable
■ How will he be accepted
HtH: Hermes Invents the Lyre
○ As soon as Hermes left the cave where he was born, he encountered a tortoise
and quickly devised a plan. He seized and cut up the tortoise and used the
hollow shell, along with reeds, an ox’s hide, and strings of sheep gut, to make
the first seven-stringed lyre. In no time at all, he tuned the lyre and was singing
beautiful songs in honor of his father and his mother.
■ He’s an inventor
■ He makes a lyre, sings, and honors his mother and father
■ Apollo also plays the lyre
HtH: Hermes Steals Apollo’s Cattle
○ Very soon Hermes craved meat and devised a scheme for stealing the cattle of
Apollo. In the night, he cut off from the herd fifty head and cleverly made them
walk backwards, their heads facing him, while he himself walked straight ahead,
wearing sandals of wicker that he had woven to disguise his tracks. When an old
man working in a luxuriant vineyard noticed Hermes driving the cattle, the infant
god told him not to tell, promising him a good harvest of grapes and much
wine.
■ The crime is stealing the cattle of apollo
■ Almost as if the crime needs to be committed and the criminal needs to
be acquitted for him to enter a paradise
■ Connection to dionysus with the grapes and wine
■ So connection to 2 gods; apollo and dionysus
HtH: Hermes Makes Sacrifice
○ At daybreak Hermes gathered some wood and was the very first to use dry sticks
and by friction kindle a fire. He skinned and butchered two of the cattle (baby
though he was) and divided rich parts of the meat into twelve portions, which he
roasted as offerings to the gods. Following the ritual of sacrifice, he, as one of
the gods, could not eat any of the meat but only savor the aroma. After
destroying all evidence of what he had done, he returned home to his mother.
■ He is no ordinary baby
■ Don’t know if supposed to love or hate this baby
■ He is a god that acts like a mortal
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HtH: Hermes Reassures Maia
○ Hermes got into his cradle and acted like a helpless baby; but his mother Maia
was not fooled by his display of helplessness and berated him, for she knew that
he had been up to no good. Hermes answered her with clever words,
assuring her that he was to be the prince of thieves and that he would win
honor and riches for them both among the Olympian gods.
HtH: Apollo Tracks Down Hermes
○ Apollo, anxious about the loss of his cattle, made inquires of the old man tending
the vineyard, and the old man told him that he had seen a child driving a herd
backwards. An eagle with extended wings told Apollo that the thief was a son
of Zeus, and then he saw the tracks of the cattle turned backwards and the
tracks of the robber cleverly obscured. The ingenuity of the theft led him to the
cave of Maia and Hermes.
■ Apollo is opposite of hermes as he is wise insider and hermes is a
mischievous outsider
■ The good brother is accepted, the bad brother is exiled
■ Apollo emphasizes the cave of maia and hermes to show that they are
not olympians, they’re exiles
HtH: Apollo Confronts Hermes
○ In a rage, Apollo faced Hermes, who sank down into his blankets with a look of
baby-innocence that failed to deceive Apollo. […] He urgently questioned the
child about his stolen cattle. Hermes claimed that he did not know a thing;
since he was born only yesterday, it was impossible that he could have
committed such a crime. Apollo, however, was not fooled but knew Hermes for
the sly-hearted cheat that he was. Their argument ended only when Apollo
brought Hermes to the top of Mt. Olympus, where he sought justice from Zeus
himself.
■ Zeus is the judge
HtH: Zeus Decides the Case
○ Apollo spoke first and truthfully stated the facts about the theft of his cattle.
Hermes’ reply was full of lies, and he even swore a mighty oath that he was
absolutely innocent. Zeus gave a great laugh when he heard the protests and
denials of the devious child and ordered Hermes, in his role of guide, to lead
Apollo to the place where he had hidden the cattle.
HtH: The Reconciliation between Hermes and Apollo
○ Hermes did as Zeus commanded, and when Apollo found his cattle, the two
reconciled. Hermes took up the lyre that he had invented and played and sang
so beautifully that Apollo was enthralled and exclaimed that this enchanting
skill was worth fifty cows! He promised that Hermes would become the
messenger of the gods and that he and his mother would have renown
among the immortals. At this, Hermes gave the lyre to Apollo ordaining that
he should become a master of the musical art, and Apollo in turn gave
Hermes a shining whip and put him in charge of cattle herds. And so the two
returned to Olympus, where Zeus united them in friendship.
■ Exchange of gifts, it is what seals a friendship in the greeks
■ Zeus is responsible for their friendship because he told hermes to lead
apollo to the cattle
● The Five Traits of a Trickster
○ Mockery of social, religious, political or moral laws, institutions or authorities
(heroes of the marginalized and the powerless).
○ Overturning of situations
○ Change of bodily form
○ Invention of objects or stories to serve personal ends
○ Culture heroes because they give inventions to humans who previously did not
have them
Artemis/Diana and Apollo
The twins
● Roman Marble Bust of Artemis. Musei Capitolini, Rome
○ Virgin goddess, nothing exposed, like hestia, not like aphrodite
● Diana, marble, Roman copy. Louvre, Paris
○ Breaking the gourdle, means having sex with a virgin
○ Her animal is a deer
● General Information
○ Zeus and Leto > Artemis
■ Leto is a nymph
○ Virgin goddess (oversees the life cycle of young women + the
wild/undomesticated sphere)
■ She is kind of of cruel with her virginity, not like hestia who wants to
protect her body etc
■ Not interested in tamed animals and tamed women
■ Overlooks something going from wild to civilized
■ Spends time in places where married women would not
○ Iconography: bow (tool of the hunt), quiver, hunting spears, lyre, torches
(Hecate), wild animals (esp. deer): both protector and hunter of animals
○ Protector of virginity: story of Actaeon and of Callisto
○ Artemis Lochia (“Protector of Women in Labor”), Delos
■ Labor in bed, and married
● Actaeon, Sculpture, John Manship, 20th c. American, North Carolina Museum of Art
○ Turns actaeon into a stag because of fear he would tell people of what he saw.
Various parts of the head is starting to change. In motion, trying to escape, a stag
is a deer like animal. The animal is ahead of him and looking up and seeing the
change. The animal on the bottom’s hand is reaching out, like actaeon’s is too.
● Diana and Actaeon, Titian, 1556-9. The National Gallery of London
○ Diana is the one next to the black woman on the right. She has a crescent moon
on her head. She’s sitting on a velvet cloth. Actaeon pushes the curtain/vail
beside to see the goddess naked. Dog next to her. Only one trying to cover
herself up. Her position exposes the most and she is trying to cover herself up in
the worst moment where she is being dried by one of her nymphs.
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The Death of Actaeon, Titian, 1559-1575. The National Gallery of London
○ Artemis on left looks vey large compared to actaeon, shows that shes in control.
Her breast is exposed, which is an allusion to the crime of what happened and
what the cause of the punishment is, that he saw her naked. Actaeon’s head is
already transformed, but after he is fully turned into a stag, the dogs will tear him
apart.
Artemision, Delos, Greece
○ Delos is the birthplace of artemis and apollo
Artemis and Hippolytus
○ Hippolytus is a virgin male, so has no opinion as a virgin male because does not
have children
○ Wedding ritual: in his honor, young women will cut their hair and sing laments
before they marry (a paradoxical combination of celebration and mourning)
○ Recognition and lamentation of the loss of virginity upon marriage (joy and
sorrow combine, Artemis as both benevolent and cruel)
■ Artemis and hippolytus encounter each other and she promises him a
wedding ritual
■ Marriage is a change from childishness to responsibility
Artemis Braurónia
○ Ritual in Brauron (eastern coast of Athens) celebrating a girl’s transition from
puberty into womanhood
■ Marriage makes a woman an adult
■ A myth supports the reasoning for the ritual
○ Girls: 5-16 years of age (marriage ideally between 14 and 16)
○ Foundation myth: a tame she-bear scratches a young girl with whom she is
playing and then is killed by the girls’ brothers. A plague befalls the Athenians
because Artemis is angry.
○ Arkteia (“Playing the bear”): ritual to appease Artemis for the death of the shebear. Girls (called Arktoi, “The Bears”) dance and play together until the she-bear
draws blood from one of the girls, at which point the she-bear is killed and also
made to bleed.
■ Arkos means bear
■ The ritual appeases something by the conduction of the ritual
■ Ritual appeases artemis for the death of the she-bear
■ Appeased because the ritual is a reenacting of her own myth
■ The bear is like an adult woman. Once she has introduced the young
woman to the loss of innocence, don’t need the older female which is like
the bear being killed off
■ The blood shows the girls’ menstruation and introduction to sex or rape
Artemis Orthía (“Upright”)
○ Initiation whipping-ritual in Sparta for adolescent boys (ritual flagellation)
○ Boys: 16-19 years of age
○ Young men were whipped in front of Artemis’ altar so as to cover it with blood (in
some accounts, boys have to steal from the altar and if caught they are whipped
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for failing to steal successfully; in other accounts, they had to laugh at their being
whipped)
■ Bleeding is a sin of weakness, something leaves from the body
■ Whipped because failed to do something, which shows shame and
humiliation to be whipped publicly
○ Tension: the punished hero~the merry sufferer
■ Merry- is happy when punished which shows that they get why they are
being punished and don’t whine
■ The idea of laughing will raise the males symbolically from the whips
○ Spartan citizens vs. helots (=residents of towns near Sparta who were enslaved
by the Spartans): privileged vs. underprivileged classes
■ Helots are slaves
■ Spartan citizens are free
■ Whipping is correlated to slaves
○ Spartan initiates act like a helot in a symbolic repudiation of a lesser social
status
■ Repudiation means rejection
Apollo Belvedere, Vatican Museum. Italy (contrapposto)
○ Holding a bow and arrow in his hands
General Information
○ God of prophecy
○ Zeus and Leto > Apollo
○ Prophecy, oracles (“Know thyself,” “Nothing in excess”)
■ Prophesize means to say before something happens
○ Music, song, poetry (Musagetes)
■ God of music and culture
■ Musagetes=leader of the muses
■ All muses representative of arts follows apollo
○ Archery, plague, healing (Asclepius)
■ Artemis is the goddess of the wild, apollo is the god of taming and
civilization
■ Shooting arrows and sending a plaque to athens
■ God of healing
■ Asclepius is apollos son and founder of medicine
■ Contradicting roles of plague and healing like artemis who protects and
kills animals
○ Protection of young men (leads young men from childhood into public life)
■ Men is apollos responsibility and women is artemis responsibility
○ Iconography: handsome and beardless youth, bow, quiver, lyre, laurel branch
■ Handsome is related to youth, with no beard
○ Offspring (main): Asclepius (with Coronis); Linus and Orpheus (with Calliope)
Aegeus consults the Pythia, Attic kylix (drinking cup). Kodrus Painter, 440 BCE. National
Museum, Berlin
○ Pythia is a mediator between divine wisdom and human ignorance
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Pythia connected to apollo
Pythia speaks in a language that mortals do not understand, scribes write them
down and then is translated and can see what apollo says through the scribe
○ Lost in translation
Hyacinthus turned into a flower, Nicolas-Rene Jollain, French 1769.
○ Lyre on the right
○ White cloth on dead hyacinthus
○ Apollos lover died from a disk hitting him, apollo is distraught
○ The faces look very similar, to show that that apollo really wanted to die with his
lover
○ Discus is under hyacinthus to show what happened, so the timeline is the disk at
the very bottom, then the death of hyacinthus, then the flowers, so bottom up
The Death of Hyacinthus. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Rococo (1752-3). Madrid, Spain
○ This is in public, with spectators, not as intimate
○ Looks like this event just happened, no discus, and the flowers are just starting to
sprout, apollo looks surprised whereas the other one he looked like he was
mourning
○ Devil in back looks like he is laughing at the way hyacinthus died, how mortals
die or how the love between immortal and immortals end
Hyacinthia
○ 3 day festival of ritualized loss in honor of Hyacinthus
○ Major Spartan holiday
○ Day 1/Separation: mourning of H’s death, sacrifices at his tomb
○ Day 2/Transition: celebration for his rebirth. Procession from Sparta to Amyclae,
athletic contests, games with the discus, sacrifice in Apollo’s honor, meal where
slaves and foreigners could partake
○ Day 3/Incorporation: not much is known
HtA: “To Delian Apollo” (Part 1)
○ Leto roamed far and wide in her search for a refuge where she might give birth,
but the many places she approached were afraid to receive her. Finally the
island of Delos accepted her, but only after she assured the island (which is
personified here) with a great oath that a temple of Apollo would be built there
and that it would become a place of prosperity, wealth, and prestige.
HtA: “To Delian Apollo” (Part 1 cont’ed)
○ When Leto had endured nine days and nights of labor, Eileithyia, the goddess
of childbirth, was summoned to help in the delivery. Goddesses present at the
birth attended to the newborn child, and as soon as Apollo had been nursed on
nectar and ambrosia, he miraculously became a mighty god who declared
that the curved bow and the lyre were his and that he would prophesy to
mortals the unerring will of Zeus. Leto was delighted with her son, and all of
Delos blossomed with joy.
HtA: “To Pythian Apollo” (Part 2)
○ Apollo travelled in Greece until he found the proper place for the foundation of his
oracle, Crisa, under Mt. Parnassus. Then he slew a dragon named Pytho.
Apollo was given the epithet Pythian, and a prophetess of Apollo received the
name of Pythia.
○ The omphalos (“navel,” an archaic stone shaped like an egg) was thought to
designate the location of the sanctuary at the center of the world. According to
legend, Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the earth and they met
exactly at the spot of Apollo's sanctuary, which came to be known universally by
the name of Delphi.
● HtA: “To Pythian Apollo” (Part 2 cont’ed)
○ After Apollo had established his sanctuary, he needed to recruit attendants. He
spotted a ship sailing from Crete and he sprang aboard in the form of a dolphin.
The crew was awed into submission and followed a course that led the ship to
Crisa. Here Apollo revealed himself as a god and initiated them to his service,
with directions to pray to him as Apollo Delphinius, a word meaning “dolphin,”
from which Crisa or Pytho received its new name of Delphi.
Dionysus/Bacchus
The borderline god
● Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
○ Apollonian vs. Dionysian in Birth of Tragedy (1872), a work of dramatic theory
○ Apollonian: all types of form or structure that individuate (sculpture in the arts,
rational thought)
○ Dionysian: drunkenness and madness, enthusiasm and ecstasy break down
individuality. Union with the greater undifferentiated whole (music in the arts)
■ Men are rational or apollonian, women are irrational or dionysian to the
greeks
○ Greek tragedy is produced by the tension between the Apollonian and the
Dionysian.
■ major theme of the play between rationality or irrationality
● Bacchus, Vatican Museum. Italy
○ Looks very opposite of apollo
● General Information
○ Zeus and Semele > Dionysus (according to a version of the myth, the Titans
dismember the baby D but Zeus reconstitutes him)-sparagmos
■ Semele is a mortal woman so already, dionysus is a problem, he isn’t
really a god
■ Sparagmos means dismemberment
○ Iconography: wreath, fawn skin, leopard (or lion or bull), wine cup, thyrsus (plant
stalk topped with ivy or grape leaves), grapes, vines
○ (1) Viticulture, wine, and fertility (Augustine: “liquid seeds”: fertility of lands and
men)~Demeter (fertility of lands/grain and women). Anthesteria
○ (2) Theater and masks. The City Dionysia: a weeklong celebration of D in Athens:
theatrical performances in the Theater of D. (D. Eleutherius)
○ (3) Mystery cults: no civic affiliations, open to all or some restrictive groups;
initiation required; not exclusive of other religious practices; offered good health,
better afterlife, and an intimacy with the god
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Theater of Epidaurus, Greece
Masks
○ Masks were made out of lightweight materials such as wood, linen, cork, and
sometimes real hair. They lacked durability, and none has survived.
○ Advantages:
○ (1) Exaggerated expressions helped define the characters the actors were
playing
(2) Actors can play more than one role (or gender)
(3) Audience in the distant seats see and, by projecting sound somewhat like a
small megaphone, hear the characters better
○ Because epidaurus is so big, people who sit far up wouldn’t be able to see the
actor’s faces, so they wore masks that are over exaggerated
○ Over exaggerated mouths to project sound
Anthesteria
○ 3-day ritualistic celebration of D’s gift of wine
○ Day 1/Jar-Opening: opening of the stored jars of wine (also urns used in
funerary rites); the dead are thought to wander the city (somber mood)
○ Day 2/Wine Jugs: a jug holds roughly two liters of wine; everyone drinks in
silence from his own wine jug and tries to finish before anyone else; at sunset,
participants march to D’s temple and dedicate their wine jugs and garlands
(somber mood)
○ Day 3/Pots: marriage at D’s temple between D and the wife of the the highest
official of Athens; offering pots (mixture of boiled honey and grains) to the spirits
of the dead to appease them (joyful mood)
○ Marriage and death are connected
Orgia (D’s religious practices)
○ Take place at night in wild and nature with only women
○ Varied and even contradictory evidence
○ Female worshippers called Maenads, Bacchants, or Bacchae
○ They carry thyrsi, dance, pray and shout in honor of D
○ They take place outside at night and include women only
■ Women are supposed to stay inside so women going outside is bad news
to men
○ Sparagmos. Omophagia
■ Sparagmos-tearing apart, limbs apart, animals
■ Omophagia-eating raw flesh after dismembering
■ Both activities violate civility, so this group is uncivilized
Maenads (Bacchants or Bacchae)
Euripides’ Bacchae (406 BCE)
Borderlines on stage
● Euripides’ last play
● Dionysus and the Dissolution of Boundaries
○ Psychologically, D. signifies free emotional life unimpeded by the restrictions of
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family, society, religion, and morality
■ Women are followers of dionysus because they are emotional
Culturally, he confuses distinctions between city and wild, mortal and immortal,
man and beast, male and female
Performatively: in the Dionysiac performance/theater, the actor fuses with the
character whom he represents. The spectator identifies with the masked figure
before him/her (symbolic identification of the self with the other)
Dionysus/Face 1
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Dionysus/Face 2
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At the center of the civic
religion
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Worshipped on the mountains
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Male god
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Soft and sensual, like a woman
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Greek
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Arrives from Asia
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Neither child nor man
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An eternal adolescent
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Brings wine to men
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Drives women to madness
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Thyrsus: opens channels of
fluids from the earth
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A dangerous weapon, a “shaft”
or “missile”
○ Left is acceptable and good, right is unacceptable and bad
○ He is the left but at the same time right, he is never absolutely one thing
Dionysus and Doubling in the Bacchae
○ Two gods pentheus and dionysus
■ They are very different where one is rationally very greek, other is very
irrational
○ Two worlds/worldviews: the supposedly rational, civic world of Pentheus and
the irrational, ecstatic worldview of Dionysus
○ Two sets of maenads: the Asian maenads who follow the god freely, and the
constrained maenads of Thebes
○ Two Dionysuses: the god disguised as the “Stranger” (D’s name in some
translations of the play), and the god who asserts his power over Thebes in his
own person in the prologue and exodus (deus ex machina)
○ Two scenes of the constrained maenads: one in which the women behave in
peaceful ways, and one in which they turn murderous
The Theban Women’s “Sin”
○ Why did Semele die by Zeus’ thunderbolt?
○ “For I have come to refute that slander spoken by my mother’s sisters--those
who least had right to slander her.
○ They said that Dionysus was no son of Zeus, but Semele had slept beside a
man in love and foisted off her shame on Zeus—a fraud, they sneered,
contrived by Cadmus to protect his daughter’s name.
○ They said she lied, and Zeus in anger at that lie blasted her with lightning.” (25-
33)
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Important for exam, this is the slander: Greeks don’t accept him as a god,
specifically thebes
■ He goes to punish the thebans
■ By them denying dionysus as the son of zeus, they don’t think of him as a
god
■ “she lied” whens he said she slept with zeus, so zeus punished her by
blasting her with lightning
■ Cadmus invented the idea to lie
Theban Women and Dionysus
○ I bound the fawn-skin to the women’s flesh and armed their hands with shafts of
ivy (24-25)
○ I have stung them with frenzy, hounded them from home up to the mountains
where they wander, crazed of mind, and compelled to wear my orgies’ livery.
Every woman in Thebes—but the women only—I drove from home, mad. (3236)
○ There they sit … beneath the silver firs on the roofless rocks (38)
○ They wait and engage in whirling dances (63)
■ Only the asian women follow him willingly, the theban follow him
unwillingly because of their punishment
■ He punished all the theban women because they slandered their sister
Theban Men and Dionysus
○ He revolts against divinity, in me; thrusts me from his offerings; forgets my
name in his prayers (45-47)
○ Therefore, I shall prove to him and every man in Thebes that I am god indeed
(47-48)
○ But if the men in Thebes attempt to force my Bacchae from the mountainside by
threat of arms, I shall marshal my Maenads and take the field (51-53)
■ Double standard, can’t explain to women because of their emotions
Dionysus’ birth: the official version (88-99): D<Zeus squared
○ So his mother bore him once in labor bitter.
○ Lightning-struck, forced by fire that flared from
○ Zeus, consumed, she died, untimely torn, in
○ Childbed dead by blow of light! Of light the son was born!
○ Zeus it was who saved his son; with speed
○ Outrunning mortal eye, bore him to a private place,
○ Bound the boy with clasps of gold; in his thigh as in a
○ Womb, concealed his son from Hera’s eyes.
■ Zeus rescued the fetus and put it in his thigh, which functions as a womb
■ Zeus is the father and replacement of the mother, because the mother
died
Tiresias on Dionysus’ birth (288-98): The power of punning
○ When Zeus rescued from the thunderbolt his infant son,
○ he brought him to Olympus. Hera, however, plotted at
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heart to hurl the child from heaven. Like the god he is,
Zeus countered her. Breaking off a tiny fragment of that
Ether which surrounds the world, he molded from it a
dummy Dionysus. This he showed (homeron) to Hera, but with
Time men garbled the word and said that Dionysus had been
Sewed into the thigh (en meroi) of Zeus. This was their story,
Whereas, in fact, Zeus showed the dummy to Hera and
Gave it as hostage for his son.
■ This account, we should expect to be rational whereas the other account
was more irrational
■ Hera doesn’t like his affairs
■ Ether is something like air, zeus molded a fake dionysus from air
■ Men over time confused “showed” with “Sewed”
■ What is the problem and why was the account changed to dionysus?
■ Maybe essay question
Cadmus on Dionysus (330-7)
○ My boy, Teiresias advises well. Your home is here with us,
○ with our customs and traditions, not
○ outside, alone. Your mind is distracted now,
○ and what you think is sheer delirium. [P’s madness=Apollonian rationality]
○ Even if this Dionysus is no god,
○ As you assert, persuade yourself that he is. [Make-believe=theater]
○ The fiction is a noble one, for Semele will seem
○ To be the mother of a god, and this confers
○ No small distinction on our family. [Belief in D=political expediency]
■ The bacchi is contrasting irrationality to rationality
■ Too much rationality = madness
■ Cadmus doesn’t believe in either accounts
Who is Dionysus in Pentheus’ view?
○ A foreigner from Lydia
○ A charlatan magician with long yellow curls smelling of perfumes, with flushed
cheeks and the spells of Aphrodite in his eyes
○ He spends his days and nights with women and girls.
○ An impostor, who claims falsely that he is the son of Zeus and who must be
brought underneath the palace’s roof and have his head cut off
○ An effeminate stranger who infects our women with this strange disease and
pollutes our beds (354-355)
■ Something about dionysus is sexualized
■ Women are supposed to be irrational
■ Pentheus is too rational
What does Dionysiac religion involve in Pentheus’ view? (221-225)
○ Women dance in mock ecstasies. They are like animals.
○ In their midst stand bowls brimming with wine.
○ And then, one by one, the women wander off to serve the lusts of men.
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Priestesses of Bacchus they claim they are, but it’s really Aphrodite they
adore.
■ We already have aphrodite who is the goddess of lust, so don’t need
dionysus as another god of lust
Civic authority on display (347-349)
○ Pentheus has captured and imprisoned some of the women/Soon all of them
will be trapped in iron nets (prison~oikos).
○ The rest of them will be hunted down (women are animals).
○ Go, someone, this instant, to the place where this prophet prophesies. Pry it
open with crowbars, heave it over, upside down; demolish everything you
see. Throw his fillets out to the wind and weather. (Political power as raw
force, violence)
■ He is a god and god of wine to be specific, so he will find a way to leak
out
Pentheus under the spell: Pentheus as a Maenad
○ Punish this man. But first distract his wits [DIVINE MADNESS];
○ for sane of mind [WITH APOLLO GOVERNING HIS LIFE] this man would
never wear a woman’s dress;
○ but obsess his soul and he will not refuse [WINE=DIVINE ASSAULT FROM
WITHIN].
○ After those threats with which he was so fierce, I want him made the
laughingstock of Thebes, paraded through the streets, a woman.” (850-54)
■ Line 811 he wants to see, sight is the sense of reason, he needs to see to
get proof
■ To see is an apollonian verb
■ Lures pentheus to see the maenad
■ To see the maenad, pentheus has to dress like a maenad and look like
someone else after drinking wine
Seeing, Not Seeing, Being Seen, and Hearing
○ There in a grassy glen we halted, unmoving, silent, without a word, so we might
see but not be seen. (1046-7)
○ But Pentheus, unhappy man, could not quite see the companies of women.
“Stranger,” he said, “from where I stand, I cannot see these counterfeited
Maenads.” (1057-60)
○ And now the Maenads saw him more clearly than he saw them. But barely
had they seen, when the stranger vanished and there came a great voice
out of heaven … crying: “Women, I bring you the man who has mocked at you
and me and at our holy mysteries. Take vengeance upon him.” (1074-7)
■ Pentheus means man of suffering, he will be dismembered by his own
mother
■ If he sees them but they don’t see him back, no gaze is reciprocated, he
has power over them
■ He was lifted on the tree very high so they were able to see him very well
■ And dionysus speaks from the heavens
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He sees his mother and she is about to kill him but he tells her not to kill
her son, but she was possessed by bacchus
“No, no Mother!”
○ His own mother, like a priestess with her victim, fell upon him first. But snatching
off his wig and snood so she would recognize his face, he touched her cheeks,
screaming, “No, no, Mother! I am Pentheus, your own son, the child you bore to
Echion! Pity me, spare me, Mother! I have done a wrong, but do not kill your own
son for my offence.” (1113-21)
Sparagmos
○ But she was foaming at the mouth, and her crazed eyes rolling with frenzy. She
was mad, stark mad, possessed by Bacchus. Ignoring his cries of pity, she
seized his left arm at the wrist; then, planting her foot upon his chest, she pulled,
wrenching away the arm at the shoulder. […] Ino, meanwhile, on the other side
was scratching off his flesh. […] One tore off an arm, another a foot still warm in
its shoe. His ribs were clawed clean of flesh and every hand was smeared with
blood as they played ball with scraps of Pentheus’ body. (1123-37)
Distributing Punishments
○ Upon you, Agave, and on your sisters I pronounce this doom: you shall leave
this city in expiation of the murder you have done. You are unclean, and it
would be a sacrilege that murderers should remain at peace beside the graves
[of those whom they have killed]. (1124-8)
○ You, Cadmus, shall be changed to a serpent, and your wife, Harmonia, shall
undergo your doom, a serpent too. With her it is your fate to go on a
journey […] Yet in the end the god Ares shall save Harmonia and you and bring
you both to live among the blest.’ (1330-9)
■ She comes to her senses by cadmus and realizes what she has done to
her son
■ Crime and punishment, no forgiveness
■ All murders have to leave so exiled
■ Both turned into snakes as a punishment then into immortal
(1) How does the end of Aeschylus’ Eumenides illustrate and transcend the concept of quid pro
quo, which prevails in the Agamemnon and the Libation Bearers? (Your answer should include:
the meaning of quid pro quo; one example of the concept in either the Agamemnon or the
Libation Bearers; how the end of the Eumenides illustrates the concept; and how the end of the
Eumenides transcends the concept.)
Everyone in the family wants to kill each other. Atreus kills thyestes’ sons and made
Thyestes eat his sons without him knowing. He asks an oracle how to get revenge, have a son
and the son will kill Atreus. Aegusthus plots to kill Agamemnon. Agamemnon is killed and
orestus wants justice for his dad. Cycle of violence they can’t get out of. Sins of father can’t
leave their children.
No one gets killed in eumenides so can’t use that. Can use furies, they represent order
of things. Qualitities of furies, old and… represent order of world where people don’t have
freedom of thought and decision (?) family doesn’t have much of a future because always
threatened. Furies are illogical. Are resistant to argumentation. Apollo represents logic that leads
to judicial system, so they contrast. They represent barbaric system of justice.
Transcends. Athenas charater asa woman. She doesn’t take chlymestras side. She represents
transcend, she thinks like zeus. Furies cannot see eye to eye with Apollo, Apollo is kind of
misogynistic, like how he talks about how women are not really the parent. Furies change roles
where they don’t do things for violence anymore, but to be recognized. Athena persuades the
furies to follow zeus and apollo’s way of patriarchy.
Athena is a woman that acts and dresses like a man. Transcends from woman to male way of
judicial system, and acts like zeus. Transitional figure.
What quid pro quo means based on first part of question.
Talk about furies in eumenides for quid pro quo
Apollo is different from furies because he is male and shows male perspective, which they
thought was more rational, more civilized version of patriarchy, says mothers are not really
parents. Newer god, so furies are ancient, so he shows newer rational view. Men=rationality.
New judicial system means violence.
(2) In the Bacchae we have two versions of Dionysus’ birth. What are they and what do they tell
us about the god? (Your answer should include: the two versions of D’s birth with a clear
explanation of how they differ from each other; the characters who put forward these versions;
and what the difference between these versions tells us about D.)
dionysus and chorus version versus
Dionysus is still a fetus when simile is killed by zeus, put into zeus’s thigh until he is born.
Verifies that Dionysus is a god. Second part of myth, not clear who dionysus’s father is.
Tyreseus. Zeus kills semele and saves the baby out of pity, doesn’t put him in his thigh.
Dionysus represents irrationality. So Dionysus part is miraculous, and irrational. Tyreseus part is
rational and it is not irrational that zeus slept with a mortal so that is why that part is rational.
One blends human and divine world and other one preserves the distinction between humans
and divine. Two origin stories show about Dionysus: Dionysus is a god of liminal = means on the
borderline. Not clear if he is a god. Dionysus is related to a mask, two things, so makes sense
there is 2 stories. Invokes theme of duplicity.
(3) What happens at the end of the Bacchae to Cadmus and Agave? Why and how are their
punishments justified?
Agave is pentheus mother. She ends up killing pentheus and hypnotized. Dionysus was
pissed off because she lied that zeus is not the father. She is hypnotized, kills son, then exiled
because she kills. So 3 punishments. Cadmus is the grandfather of the family. Punished by
turned into a snake because because he doesn’t believe in Dionysus, he is like agnostic,
doesn’t care what is true, he may not believe 100% but he should so he is punished.
(4) Why does Athena insist on the value of fear in the Areopagus/Hill of Ares? (To prepare your
answer, read carefully Eumenides 681-710 and think about the play as the last installment of the
Oresteia.)
furies may be tamed not wild anymore but the fear that the instill in people still needs to exist.
“Fear and do no wrong is kindred” needs fear to not break law. What man that does not fear is
ever righteous 694.
You can’t make anyone righteous unless there’s fear, to get order. More rational, has court
system, but not completely bloodless. Can’t just reward, need to punish.