Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess

I grew up reading D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths, like lots of kids, and credit it with my early inspiration to create my website, Women in Greek Myths. But, I should add, it was a negative inspiration. I had decided that they didn’t have all the facts (a horrible crime to a know-it-all 13 year old) and worse, they didn’t tell all the stories (I shudder now to imagine a book that WOULD), and so I set out to correct it. I imagined the website as a place where I could store my notes, notes that would eventually become a fantastic book that would replace the insufficient D’Aulaires.

Now, as an adult, and having a lot more of the “real” stories under my belt, and in the original Greek, no less [Ailia pats herself on back], I have changed my tune. I am hugely impressed by D’Aulaires giving it 5/5 stars over at Goodreads, and I realize that what they did by connecting all of the different, winding tales together was genius. Sure, it makes you think that it’s how Greek myths really are - like some Biblical narrative where everything is essentially working together and rarely out and out contradictory - but the alternative, especially for kids, seems virtually impossible. And, even though I don’t think that the illustrations are up there with, say, with The Forbidden Door, almost no one’s are, and it DOES have some of the absolute best scene depictions of Greek myths I have ever seen (for example, the one with Syrinx and Daphne being chased at once).

But, in its attempt to be univerally acceptable, it has not only toned down the violence against women (which I don’t think is so bad anymore),  it also pretty much erased any mention of myths that would now be considered queer. (And I use that word as a blanket term that includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, etc.) So, you don’t see any of the stories from my post on Transgender Myths To Know. And you don’t see any of the stories that turn up in Lovers’ Legends Unbound. And Hylas and Ganymede are turned from the beloveds of heroes (Heracles) and gods (Zeus), to mere victims of nymphs and cupbearers.

Some day, I have just decided, I’m going to write a book.* It will not be an attempt to replace D’Aulaires, but it will reject their silencing of those stories. The Greeks didn’t view Zeus or Heracles as “gay” or Caenis as “trans” but our current definitions made them invisible (at least partly). If I write a children’s book, something like The Other Greek Myths, I will attempt to do much of what the D’Aulaires did so successfully. I have no goal to shock, and my intent is not to preserve an ancient Greek way of life, but to use the myths as we have always done, to highlight stories we find relevant. There is, for the first time in a long time, room for such a book (thanks to books like And Tango Makes Three), and, with the help of an artist (maybe I could convince someone like Erika Meriaux to jump on board?) I think it could be something really special.

*The 13-year-old in my head makes me add that I’ll include a note for grown ups at the end contextualizing the thing.

I’m doing a bunch of projects on sexuality and adolescence in school and I happened to come across this gem: a girl insisting that if you “jump up and down a lot, the stuff will fall out of you and you won’t get pregnant.” Now, it so happens that I have heard plenty of similar things during my few years as a sex educator, so it doesn’t surprise me, but it is SO close to Galen’s idea that I mentioned in my post on ancient Greek sexual health that I couldn’t help but be a little excited.

And, just in case you, too, are tempted by this logic, allow me to correct you. Jumping does not prevent pregnancy, douching does not prevent pregnancy (and may actually increase your risks), having sex during your period does not prevent pregnancy, and withdrawal does not prevent pregnancy (although that last one does at least decrease your chances some).

You must know how I love putting pictures with my posts, but I have no image of a teen jumping around trying to eject semen and I would probably risk prosecution if I did. Oh well.

Gut reaction, without thinking about it too much: Which are better, multi-generational households or nuclear familes? Why?

A big controversy in scholarship on the Roman family (and history of the family in general) is whether multi-generational households or nuclear families were the norm. At stake, as so often, is not simply accurate reconstruction of historical reality, but coded policy prescriptions for the present. Scholars from the left and the right have been curiously united in arguing that a) in the pre-modern/pre-industrial period, multi-generational households were standard, and b) that was way better than the situation we have now. Those on the left see multi-gen. units as a healthier, more supportive way to live; Marxists in particular regard the nuclear family as an artifact of the rise of industrialism, which separated the locus of production (the workplace) from the locus of reproduction (the home), with all sorts of negative consequences. Meanwhile, right-wing historians envisage a golden age of multi-generational families headed by a strong patriarch, in which a strong division of gender roles was maintained, children respected and obeyed their elders, and everyone was generally less individualistic, materialistic, and selfish than they are now. Also, they had less (of the bad kind of) sex. (Apparently this image of the Roman family provided crucial support for the family policies of Mussolini’s Italy.)

If you spend a while reading this stuff, you can start to wonder what anyone ever saw in the nuclear family. I put the same question to my students, and got an interesting range of responses, from the woman who had grown up in a multi-generational household and loved it (more support for everybody), to the one who came from a large nuclear family and so didn’t feel the need for any more people in the house (this is a Catholic school, after all), to those who thought that adding grandparents to their homes would create intolerable authority conflicts. We all thought it could be nice to have the extended family close enough to rally around in times of crisis, but we had different estimates of how close was too close — much like y’all.

P.S. Current consensus, again in case you were wondering, is that nuclear families have been the norm in most times and places, in large part due to simple demographic reality. In ancient Rome, roughly 2/3 of adults would have lost their fathers by age 25; it was difficult enough to keep two generations alive at once, much less three. Of course, there’s more to it than that — isn’t there always? — but this post is probably long and boring enough already.

*To give proper credit where it’s due, I should note that most of this is drawn from Suzanne Dixon’s The Roman Family. Full treatment of the demographic data is in Richard Saller’s Patriarchy, Property, and Death in the Roman Family.

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This is a guest post by my undergrad Roman Religions professor, Adfamiliares, and she is - as you have obviously noticed by now - the bomb diggity. She has her own blog type thing at adfamiliares.livejournal.com, too!

I just got an email that brings up what I think is a very important point, and one that I give a great deal of thought to. Rather than attempt to summarize, I will include the email and my response in their entirety here.

From: JC
Subject: Goddess Aphrodite
To: ailiathena@yahoo.com
Date: Monday, August 18, 2008, 5:19 PM

I was very disappointed in your wording describing the most elegant and beautiful Goddess ( in my opinion), Aphrodite.  Although, the summary of her “life” is well thought out and the pictures are beautiful as well.

I began reading the  Marriage portion first and I was surprised, to say the least, that you used “low class” words such as;  “getting it on”, “pissed off”, “laughing their butts off”.  Needless to say I stopped at that point and had to write hoping you will replace the words to be suitable for the lovely and fair, Aphrodite.

I hope that when I return the Goddess Aphrodite can and will be proud.

Dear JC,

I think I appreciate where you’re coming from. It sounds - please correct me if I’ve misunderstood - that my descriptions seem to you to be disrespectful to Aphrodite and perhaps also to Her worshipers.

It is a difficult thing for me to respond to. On the one hand, the last thing I would ever want to do is insult anyone LEAST  of all a goddess. Furthermore, I certainly agree with you that Aphrodite is undeniably beautiful and classy. On the other hand, my choice of words is not unintentional, nor are my irreverent - or “low class” if you prefer - colloquialisms. I have a few different goals with this website, but one of the biggest is to engage younger and less informed readers. Secondarily, I seek to bring some of that ancient mythical world into the realm of possibility for contemporary readers, well-read or otherwise. And finally, obviously all of the myths that we have recorded come to us from aristocratic ancient Greek writers, but the deities, Aphrodite in particular, were by no means worshiped only by aristocrats. Remember that she is also the patron Goddess of prostitutes and not just upper class courtesans or priestess prostitutes, either. Remembering her as ONLY elegant is, I think, to lessen the profound impact that she had on her celebrants. Beyond that, if you read the myths in the original sources (check out the References page for more about where), I think it is clear that all was not cucumber sandwiches and croquet in many of the myths of Aphrodite (or, indeed, ANY of the Olympian gods).

I hope that you understand why I will not be changing my descriptions and accept my sincerest apologies if they have offended.

Yours,
Ailia

df at Breakfast With Pandora just wrote a fantastic post. I am jealous. I wish I’d written it. Starting off discussing Nausicaa, he soon moves into the power of stories (remembered myths) in shaping our lives and particularly the question of our cultures’ approaches to children’s independance. One line I particularly wish I’d written:

I believe in the power of retelling this type of experience. I believe that we build ourselves up by building up our own history, our worthwhile narratives, the myths, the traditional “good stories” of our lives. I believe that when we suppress the events of our lives and do not recount them, parts of us are destroyed, never to return.

You can always tell a healthy family, for example, by the amount of stories it tells on itself.

I could not agree more.

This post is what I like best about when people write about myth. I’d do more of it myself if it weren’t so hard to do it well. It is a big part of why I studied Classics in the first place. A good academic example of such writing is, for example Somewhere I Have Never Traveled: A Hero’s Journey, by Classics prof. Thomas Van Nortwick.  It’s not so much about current events or culture as how “The ancient hero’s quest for glory offers metaphors for our own struggles to reach personal integrity and wholeness.”

Carla over at The English Teacher’s Blog posted an entry about some dude’s presentation that I thought might be pretty interesting to the people who are interested in how Greek myths stay relevant to public education. The three main points of his presentation, she reports, are:

1. The future is unpredictable.
2. Students are networked.
3. The new information landscape is flat, less authority (teacher)-driven.

She goes on to discuss how some students are more networked than others, but in the sub/urban schools I’ve worked in, they managed to stay networked even without a computer at home.

I’m perverse, so let’s cover these points backwards, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

It was defining “virgin” and “rape” that got me thinking about this. If I recall, and I can’t check because I’m still in the boonies of Latin America, even D’Aulaire’s couldn’t avoid using that language, because there’s no pussyfooting around the fact that sex - mostly varying degrees of non-consensual sex - is at the root of a LOT of those stories. No Classical education is complete without the story of Persephone, for example, and there’s a ton more.

When I - briefly - taught comparative (strong on the Greek angle) mythology to middle schoolers, I wasn’t allowed to bring in paintings by Peter Paul Rubens to show my class, but I didn’t even think about bringing up the subject of rape and virginity, of castration or infidelity. These things ARE Greek myths. And I assumed - though perhaps I shouldn’t have - that all of my students had a basic working understanding of these concepts.

My 9-year-old niece got D’Aulaire’s for Christmas last year, and so it surprised me that when I started retelling her some of the stories here she had to stop me to ask me “what’s a virgin?” and then later, “what’s rape?” I’m so friggin’ sex-ed-positive that it didn’t occur to me that the underlying question - “what’s sex?” - had not been answered yet.

I am secretly horrified that her introduction to these concepts came through such violent and patriarchal storytelling and I am (again) struck by the ever-presence of sex and violence in the world kids live in. It seems like an incredibly persuasive reason to start educating your kids about sex - and whatever positive values you can offer - from an early age. But given that I think Greek myths should ALSO be introduced at an early age, how can I address the sexual values contained therein? With my own children, I imagine that conversations about cultural conceptions of sex will be taking place as soon as they can understand them (I got that from my own feminist mother in an “age-appropriate” way from an early age, and that’s a good part of the reason that I started Women in Greek Myths), but what the heck do I do with kids that aren’t mine?

Any thoughts are very welcome.

I am in Ecuador for the next two months with the four small children of my sister-in-law. I wish I knew more Incan myths to tell them – I’m gonna spend some time on Encyclopedia Mythica soon – but since I don’t, I’ll work with what I know. My niece (the oldest, at 9 years old) got a copy of D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths for Christmas last year, so we can talk about some of the gods and goddesses now and she already knows their background stories. But when she asked me to tell her about Greek Religion this afternoon, I found myself at a bit of a loss.

My niece is Catholic, although I’m not, and I am trying to be respectful of the religious education she is currently receiving. Her parents are smart, and very open to her learning about different traditions, but obviously they want her to understand why they have put their faith in their God and no others.

So she asked me, and when I hesitated she answered her own question, throwing her hands wide and saying almost scornfully, there’s Gods and Gods and Gods. Her grandfather, a very well read man himself, agreed with her saying, “they seemed to make up a god for everything.”

Well. I am not a neo-Hellenist, but I was indignant. “Perhaps,” I said, attempting to keep the frustration out of my voice, “they saw God in the world around them.” It was a gross oversimplification that almost made me cringe, but it had an effect. Suddenly it didn’t seem to her like these were simple uneducated people without the benefit of her theological background, but people just like her with a different perspective. In short, people she could learn from. And the myths – though still not the same (nor should they be taken as such) as the biblical cannon she is learning – began to earn her respect as meaningful to those people who told them.

Dear student,

I am flattered that after looking at my site for maybe 45 seconds, you have decided that your paper would be improved by my help. Therefore, I try not to ignore you when you email me asking for help. However, I would like to offer you a few guidelines for your future petitions for assistance:

1) “Tell me all you know about Amazons” (or “Greek Goddesses” or a major goddess like, say, Athena) should not be the main thrust of your request. All I know about [your ridiculously broad project topic here] could fill a number of books. In fact, it DOES fill a number of books and they are sitting on my shelf. If this is as it appears, and you know absolutely nothing about the subject you are covering whatsoever, do me the favor of reading what I have already taken the time to publish on it before emailing me.

2) Please DO tell me what you already know, and give me at least a general sense of what direction you want to go in. Will you be more or less giving a general summary to your teacher? Are you planning on writing a myth of your own with Amazons/Greek Goddesses/Athena as the main character? Are you planning a research paper on a more specific topic and ifso, what is the general thrust of your thesis? In other words, the more specific, the better.

3) If you have actually got more specific questions (which is great!) please do not make it glaringly obvious that you have actually just transposed the worksheet that was your homework. I will not be responding to emails asking me, “Please list the following: give a brief description of each of the Olympian gods and include their symbols, what their powers are, and what year they were born.”*

4) Although it is sort of hilarious, please refrain from cussing at me in your request.

I’m sure there are other points to remember, but these jump immediately to mind. Of course, there are similar guidelines for people who email me asking me stuff like “what’s your name and how do I cite you” - but that’s already laid out for you in the FAQ, and if your not looking there the chances of you looking here seem slim to none. I feel I should also tell you, dear student, that while many of you actually do write me great questions that I could easily answer, I am not ALWAYS available to write back that very hour. Thus, if your report is due at 9:00 AM Monday and you are writing me a 10:00 PM Sunday, you are very likely to be SOL.

Yours truly,

Ailia Athena

*P.S. What year the gods were born is generally a very silly question anyway. Think about it for a second.

Greek mythology is taught in public primary and secondary schools across the country. Although, personally, I quite enjoyed teaching my peers what I had memorized out of D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths (our 6th grade text book for the subject), and loved the excuse to dress up and act out the role of Artemis, I have to admit that the purpose of the topic’s inclusion in our curriculum as determined by the powers that be has long escaped me.

Yale’s helpful publication on teaching Greek and Roman mythology lists the objectives as primarily and secondarily about standard school junk like vocabulary and reading skills, but the third objective involves the idea that, “In our rapidly changing world, the realization of some kind of continuity in the human race is very comforting and perhaps essential.”

Really? Is that why ancient Greek myths are so appealing?

More importantly, is reproducing the concept of an unbroken eternal symbolism that we can all comfortably and uniformly recognize really something we want to be teaching our youth? Isn’t it way more interesting that, like, these stories DON’T mean the same things to us now that they meant 2,000 years ago and yet we still think they’re cool? Isn’t it awesome how, even though only something like .4% of United Statesians self-identify as Greek, we still perceive ourselves as collectively descended from Greek greatness? And by awesome I mean, totally bizarre and fascinating.

I like to keep my entries short so I’ll stop here for now. But tell me, what do YOU think about the State perpetuating this mythical ancestry? Or do you think something completely different altogether?