Today’s post has been brought to you by Erika Meriaux, one of my favorite  artists, who has a really spectacular collection of paintings of Greek Myths (among other subjects). The first painting is of Nana*, the daughter of the River Sangarios, who became the mother of Attis. Here’s what Pausanias has to say about her:

“The gods, fearing Agdistis, cut off the male organ. There grew up from it an almond-tree with its fruit ripe, and a daughter of the river Sangarios, they say, took the fruit and laid it in her bosom, when it at once disappeared, but she was with child. A boy [Attis] was born, and exposed, but was tended by a he-goat.”

Obviously, there’s a lot going on there behind the scenes, but this is such an awesome story, and so full of awesome characters that I can’t help but share.

First of all, this is definitely a story about how sex - especially feminine sexuality - can be dangerous (to men). Keep that in mind as you learn who’s who.

So, the person whose “male organ” gets cut off? That’s Agdistis. I bet you’re now thinking that Agdistis was a man. In fact, Agdistis was a hermaphrodite, or to use a less loaded but more anachronistic term, intersex and also two-gendered. (Genderqueer people take note! There may be a little bit of room for reclamation here.) Anyway, Agdistis was conceived from the masturbation (or wet dreams) of Zeus, but once born, everybody started freaking out. They thought that having two genders meant that Agdistis was also doubly powerful, and so the penis severing was their violent attempt to neutralize what they perceived as a threat. What makes this even MORE awesome? Agdistis was Cybele, who is a totally rockin’ Phrygian goddess that often gets identified with Rhea, but also made it all the way to Greece (and Rome) to be worshiped in her own right.

Now you’d think that this would be the point at which I could talk about Nana, right? But no. After wandering by and accidentally getting knocked up with Agdistis’s almond-seed (heh), she disappears from view, and all attention gets put on Attis. Attis, by the way, is a gender neutral name in Greek, like Iphis, but this Attis was born a boy. However - and here’s where the stories are really different depending on who you’re reading - something screwed up happens. Either 1) Agdistis (Cybele) falls in love with him and shows up at the wedding whereupon Attis (and the father of the bride) castrate themselves and maybe die (there’s also a woman at the party who cuts off her breasts) OR 2) Attis grew up being totally devoted to Cybele which meant also staying a virgin, but then he eventually sleeps with a nymph named Sagaritis (which sounds suspiciously like Sangarios …), and the goddess kills the nymph and Attis castrates himself.

So there’s some incest in there, but MOSTLY this is seems to be a story about the dangers of a sexual fertility Goddess who is out of a more powerful male’s control. Which, given that she wasn’t considered monstrous, is pretty awesome. It’s worth mentioning too that even in later ancient Rome, there were priests to Cybele (called Galli) who castrated themselves when they entered her service, so this was obviously more than a powerful gender lesson.

Still interested? Read the whole story here. Also, I wrote a post about Transgender Myths to Know that you might also find interesting.

*The second painting is of Cybele, aptly set in the pine forest where Attis went insane and castrated himself, taking a break with her lions. Like much of Meriaux’s work, I think this so perfectly captures the danger and sex and violence hidden in the banality of every day life.

So last year Breakfast With Pandora cast the Aeneid with the help of commenters. This seemed like a good idea to me, especially now that Clash of the Titans came out, and the Percy Jackson movies cast the characters without even needing the myths to go along with them.

So I was thinking about it. Who are your favorite characters? What are your favorite stories? What actors do you think could do them justice?

Now I don’t think I could possibly say FAVORITES, but one mythical chick I’d love to see on screen is

Antigone

Based off of the Sophocles plays, she’s one tough cookie of a princess, daughter of an (unintentionally) incestuous and doomed marriage between her dad/brother Oedipus and her mom/grandma Iocasta, sister to thepathetic Ismene and two overly aggressive brothers, and fiance to her cousin Haemon whose daddy eventually (SPOILER ALERT) sticks her in a cave to starve to death (she decides not to wait for that and goes with suicide instead).
Favorite line?

Herald:I forbid you to act thus in violation of the city.
Antigone: I forbid you to make useless proclamations to me.

Yeah, The Seven Against Thebes was pretty rockin’. Anyway, so Antigone? I’m going with Gina Torres. I think she’s got the guts and the gravitas to make Antigone as awesome as she should be.

So let’s take a moment to consider the other players in her life.Who could play Ismene, for example?I mean, she starts out like a wet blanket, and you kinda love to hate the girl, but she’s not a total wash, and you need an actress who can bring out the nuances of wanting to be a good woman and being stuck with that meaning you’re kind of a wash as a human being. I’ve seen Cate Blanchett do that well, but this really calls for a younger woman, I think. Maybe Audrey Tatou?

That leaves us with a few people, depending on which part of the story we want to tell. Who would make a good Haemon? Who’d make the villain Creon (her uncle, Haemon’s daddy)?  What about Oedipus and Iocasta? How about her brothers (I think Dante Basco should be one of them, tho)?

What do y’all think?

It was Mark Alford who first made me really bother looking a second time at Rick Riordan’s uber-popular Greek myth inspired Percy Jackson series. After I read it and started getting inundated with emails from kids hoping they were really demigods, I realized that it appeared to a lot of people that Riordan was doing something unusual. But honestly, there are lots of people who take Greek myths as their jump off for YA novels. Here’s a few:

• Nobody’s Princess by Esther M. Friesner (about Helen of Troy)
• Quiver by Stephanie Spinner (about Atalanta)
• Medusa Jones by Ross Collins (about, duh, Medusa)
• The Courtesan’s Daughter by Priscilla Galloway (about the infamous ancient Greek courtesan Neaira, more historical than mythic, but close enough)
• The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner starting with The Thief (the world is based off of Ancient Greece and the myths are loosely inspired by Ancient Greek myths)
• The Young Heroes series (they are stand-alone books) by Jane Yolen:
  • Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons (about Hippolyta)
  • Odysseus in the Serpent Maze (about Odysseus)
  • Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast (about Atalanta)
  • Jason and the Gorgon’s Blood (about Jason)

Then there’s the one’s that are aimed at grown-ups, like:

• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (which I reviewed here)
• Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin
• Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis (a retelling of the Psyche myth and one of my very favorite books ever)

My secret confession is that despite my love of YA books and my adoration of Greek mythology, I am rarely a fan of the novel adaptations. Mostly I think I’m just a grinch, which is why I hope that interested people will check out some of the ones I’ve listed above (I’m especially a fan of The Courtesan’s Daughter and The Thief), but there’s another reason too.

I really hate it when I get kids emailing me CONVINCED that Rick Riordan’s version of one god or another, or the structure of ancient Greek mythology generally is How It Worked. I don’t mind them getting the myths wrong or misunderstanding the various deities (much), because, honestly, who’s to say? But what I really hate is the idea that gets stuck in their little brains that there is One Correct Version. And the immediate follow up question is always, “is it real?” To which I am loathe to respond “no.” But when I DON’T respond “no” I get asked what the appropriate steps to BECOME a deity are. Or, alternatively, how they can get in contact with other children of Greek gods. Which kind of makes me cringe.

Grinch, I told you. But also because what is really out there is SO much richer! It is a real live other world that no one really sees or knows about anymore that they can actually access by reading the original poems. And they can!!! They TOTALLY can. The Homeric Hymns and certain translations of the Metamorphoses are fantastic for kids! I taught them to middle schoolers with no problems at all. People don’t give kids enough credit.

What do y’all think?

I loved Greek myths when I was little. I loved that Athena trounced Ares on the regular and that she cared about the same kind of book-learning wisdom that I, and my privileged family, loved. I loved that Hera, for all that she was kind of annoying, did not just lay down and take it when Zeus cheated. I loved the wild youth of Artemis, and that she wasn’t sweet or kind but was truly fierce in a way Tyra Banks will NEVER understand. And I found ways to work their worship into my life, even as a self-identified Christian, when I spoke to the moon, or did my maidenhood ceremony with my mother.

But, just as the ancient Greeks worshipped their heroes, so did I. Antigone just about blew my mind (and even if I didn’t want to end up the way she did, you better believe I looked at the way she stood up to her uncle and cheered and wished my uncle were half so awful so that I be that cool). And the monsters? The Harpies can hardly fail to inspire your imagination, and in them it is easy to see the hunger, the snatching, selfish NEED that we all must carry somewhere inside us …

When I learned about them, really learned about them, I realized that they didn’t “really” mean to the ancient Greeks what they meant to me. That my use of them, my appropriation of them, wasn’t “authentic.” And as I started to learn more about ancient Greece - and, for example, the meaning of a motherless virgin like Athena who wants nothing to do with power for women - I began to have a great respect for what the world might have looked like for them.

The myths stopped being about me. And when they did, I stopped having a personal relationship with them. And when that happened, when the mystery about their place in the world was gone, I could not worship them any more. Not even in the little syncretic way I was attempting.

Maybe I should post a disclaimer on my site so that unsuspecting worshippers won’t stumble into relativism and out of their sacred cosmoses.

So, for a while there, I was thinking about seeing if I was inspired to do something like Women in Greek Myths about Celtic junk. So I started the same I way I did when I was 13, compiling names and writing short descriptions. Slowly expanding my repertoire and leaving it open for anyone else interested to come along. I haven’t linked to it anywhere on my main site for two major reasons:

1) It doesn’t even come CLOSE to other sites on similar topics with regard to completeness, prettiness, citedness, or funniness

2) It was an experiment I wasn’t sure I would ever follow up on. Turns out, I pretty much abandoned it.

That said, if you are still reading this blog, I feel like the least I can do is throw this out there in case anyone is really curious. So here it is:

Women in Celtic Myth

and the beginnings of a Gallery of Celtic Women.

And if you go there and then wish there was some way to get back those wasted minutes? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I’ve mentioned Byblis before, I think. The poor girl fell in love with her brother which eventually led to being turned into a spring. But how she got from point A to point B is the awesomeness of the myth. And, because he is possibly the coolest guy on the planet, J. Harker over at Tales of a Wayward Classicist did a fantastic translation/adaptation of her myth from the Metamorphoses.

Here’s a selection:

It steadily got worse. She’d dream about him.
Really dream about him, you know?
The kind of dreams she’d ache to go back to sleep for.
She hated when he called her sister.
Something wasn’t right. She knew it, but couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t.

…

We have to tell him. Can you? Can you talk to him?
I’m afraid. I don’t know what’ll happen if I open my mouth.
We’ll write him a letter.

Oh the awesomeness … Go read the whole thing.

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.

My favorite holiday of the year is coming up very very soon!

In my first year of college I was Arachne. It was awesome. And if there weren’t quite so many awesome amazing women to dress up like left, I would be her again. I walked around campus with an enormous spider hugging my torso and a noose hanging from my neck. I’ll grant that my peasant-skirt and bright red vest with cleavage only a freshman girl feels no shame at had little to do with an historically accurate representation, but that costume - and the make-up - was amazing. Awesome. Off the chain, even.

So this year? I’m not absolutely sure yet. At first I thought of Medea, but then I was like, hmmm, maybe carrying around two bloody baby dolls is a bit much outside of a Haunted House. The next thought was of a monster, and trying to get away from the overly dark Medea costume, I considered the sexy Sirens. But the thing is, being half birds, that’s more of a costume than I can throw together from my quite limited wardrobe. (Particularly now that my partner has been making me throw away the more eccentric parts of it and insidiously replacing them with very classy pants, skirts, and shirts that would be appropriate at any dinner party or office meeting.)

So now I’m thinking about Delphyne with cut off hands in a basket and dragon-y make-up to make the point, or Demeter with some sheafs of wheat and a crown or something, or Selene and make my partner dress up like Endymion. What do you think I should be? (Keep in mind, I’m not going to a party, this is just for handing out candy.) What are YOU planning on dressing up like this year?

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope (Part 1), Hera-Like Penelope,  Artemis-Like Penelope,  Aphrodite-Like Penelope, and Athena-Like Penelope below.

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The end of the Odyssey is no surprise. The tale is not, contrary to what Felson-Rubin suggests, open-ended, leaving the audience on their edges of their seats to guess what will happen. Rather, as in the Iliad, we are pulled into the lives of the characters. We empathize. We feel Penelope’s confusion in that laugh she forces through her teeth. But we do not fear what the end of the story will bring.

Felson-Rubin says, “the references to her possible inconstancy form a virtual leitmotif,” and I do not disagree. (Felson-Rubin, 164) But rather than argue that this inconstancy (ie, the possibility that she will abandon Odysseus and go off with one of the Suitors) pulls the audience into doubt, it seems clear to me that it serves the same end as the scene between Hector and Andromache in Book Six of the Iliad. Hector’s confident reassurance pulls at our hearts as does Andromache’s; we know the end will not bring them joy and we suffer through their hope. Similarly, our hearts go out to the humanity of Penelope. Unlike “god-like Odysseus,” who is so god-like, in fact, he not only gets to see what’s happening in the plot, but have a degree of control over it, Penelope can only think about what is going on. We feel distress at her distress. We sympathize with her brave attempt to continue down the correct path without evening knowing which god is steering her fate. Her uncertainty is the reality of all humankind, and it is only acknowledging her confusion and her perseverance that the Odyssey reaches its true depth.

Did you hear me people? Penelope isn’t just a side show, she is what makes it deep.

Her uncertainty draws us deeply into the story, but it does not cause us to question the outcome. I clearly remember my feelings when I read Penelope’s entreaty to Artemis to slay her and take her away from the unbearable pain of living without Odysseus. I was not afraid, any more than any ancient Greek would have been, that she would die at the hand of that “arrow-pouring” goddess. In fact, the cry reinforced the realization that it is not Artemis who has her hand in the mix, but Athena. She will not die, she cannot die, and there is no doubt of that to any with the least familiarity with the story (as most ancient Greeks certainly would have). There is, however, a contest, and a marriage is clearly in the works, so perhaps it would be harder to deny the certainty of how the story will end. To this point, I must argue the same line as those who suggest suspense: Penelope does not know what’s going on. She has constructed the contest in such a way that she continues to have options, and as far as she’s concerned both Aphrodite’s Life and Artemis’ Death are alternatives. It cannot be stressed enough, though, that her uncertainty is not ours. Even if we don’t know Penelope’s inner thoughts, we are positive that Athena and Odysseus are prepared for the contest of the bow. So you see? The contest is another example of Penelope’s cunning, and another example of how it is Athena’s option - that of Survival - that is in store for Penelope.

In the end, Penelope is a mixture of all the goddesses and none of them, like all humans. She is exceptional in form and prudence, of lofty stature, accomplished in skill, and a participant in a most wonderful of marriages. Despite her exceptional nature, we do not see Penelope as a goddess, but as irrevocably and amazingly human. The presence of each goddess reminds us of who this wife of Odysseus truly, complexly, is and reiterates how, inevitably, the story will end. Her story gives us all hope that we, too, will reach our happy endings without ever really knowing which hand guides us.

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Felson-Rubin, Nancy. “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot.” Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Seth L. Schein, ed. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope (Part 1), Hera-Like Penelope,  Artemis-Like Penelope, and Aphrodite-Like Penelope below.

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“Ordinary men may surmise that “some god” has intervened, but the poet [Homer] knows which one,” Clay points out. But the audience doesn’t count as “ordinary men.” Odysseus and Penelope don’t know who has intervened, but the audience (us and the ancient Greek audience listening to the same story some 2500 years ago) realizes that “the goddess Athena quickly emerges as the source and sponsor of the plot that follows.”(Murnaghan, 61) And while Hera offers only a currently unattainable status quo, Artemis brings chaste death, and Aphrodite gives new life with a suitor, Athena is the embodiment and purveyor of survival. She clearly celebrates all the lies and tricks and skill that bring Odysseus through to Ithaca and his happy ending. It is almost easier to see her through the cunning acts of Odysseus that she endorses.

Although Penelope does call upon Athena in Book Four, the poet doesn’t say they are alike, as she is like Aphrodite and Artemis. Instead, she only seems to be like her. Penelope is a weaver, like Athena, and what’s more, she weaves mêtis (a cool word meaning craftiness, prudence, wisdom, trickiness, etc and not coincidentally, the name of Athena’s biological mother who was swallowed by Zeus) into her work. The epithet most associated with Penelope, periphrôn, thinking-around, is clearly more like Athena than either the Huntress or the Goddess of Love. And Athena has a distinctive way of approaching the situation. Although she nearly necks Penelope in order to get her to submit to a makeover, she does not send her down as Aphrodite might have, itching for a man. She sends her down conflicted. In order for the tricks to succeed, the inner conflict, displayed to the audience in Penelope’s laugh through gritted teeth, is necessary.

Athena never deals directly with sexuality, but only through mêtis, even inspiring Nausicaa in the guise of a virgin friend. (Murnaghan, 66) Despite the extremes represented by Artemis and Aphrodite, for Penelope, as for Athena, sexuality is something to be controlled. I argue that even the reason for Penelope’s silence on her true emotional state is a result of either her likeness to Athena or Athena’s direct action. Emoting is not what Athena does, and despite the number of tears the run down Penelope’s cheeks (a common enough reaction in epic poetry), her thoughts are still mysterious enough to have inspired an entire generation of Classicists to write.

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope, Hera-Like Penelope, and Artemis-Like Penelope below.

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Aphrodite, on the other hand, offers Penelope New Life. The myths of the Goddess of Love are in many ways the most applicable to Penelope’s situation. Think, for example, of the fling she had with Ares, the God of War while she was still Hephaestus’ wife, or the fact that it was her intervention that caused Helen to leave Menelaus and elope with Paris, thus beginning the Trojan War. These are examples of Dalliance as described by Nancy Felson-Rubin.

Nevertheless, Aphrodite does not merely advocate free love in this scenario but new marriage. This is particularly noticeable in the quotation below where it is she, and not the Protectress of Marriage (Hera), who petitions Zeus for the marriage of the daughters of Pandareos. When Penelope washes her face in the ambrosia of Aphrodite (18.185), the hardship, the old weighing life she had, falls away and she is born anew, just as the Goddess of Beauty ritually renews herself in the sea.

So if Aphrodite is running the show, Penelope would do well to go ahead and choose one of the Suitors for her husband and start a new life with him. Likewise, if Artemis is running the show, the only option that will bring her relief is a chaste death. Hera, as we saw in a previous post, is not well-equipped to help women in Penelope’s position and indeed, barely manages when her own husband isn’t in eye-sight.

It’s also worth noting that Aphrodite is a powerful goddess, and more of a personality in the Odyssey than Artemis - who, as you may recall from the last post, represents the chaste-death option for Penelope. Helen, who comes down the stairs looking like Artemis, of all people, is the one who makes that power most obvious. Helen takes no responsibility for her behavior; she was forced, she says, by Aphrodite. Poor Penelope. She knows the story of Helen, and that of Klytaimnestra, and so she knows the influences that Aphrodite can have on women’s lives when she chooses to interfere. But she does not know which goddess is running the show in her own life, and is caught in between trying to decide on the correct direction.

Felson-Rubin, Nancy. “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot.” Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Seth L. Schein, ed. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996

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Next week: Which goddess is Penelope really like?

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope and Hera-Like Penelope below.

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Artemis, the Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, is directly, and somewhat confusingly, compared to Penelope. Artemis, most frequently described as hagnê, pure, is alternatively depicted as possessing a particularly lofty stature and as being incredibly deadly, most especially to women . This isn’t surprising, since she is often understood to represent the time in the life of a parthenos, or virgin, directly before marriage: a time as desirable as it is off-limits.

In the quotation I mention Part 1, Artemis offers her “lofty stature” to the daughters of Pandareos but ultimately the daughters died. Penelope actually prays to be destroyed her like them. Felson-Rubin calls this plot-type the Bride of Death but I would combine it with Tease because of the parthenos, or virgin, aspect of the Goddess and what that means. It is worth pointing out that, ultimately, Penelope cannot ask Artemis for the marriage that a virgin girl would be looking forward to. Her husband’s big house and her grown son Telemachus are constant reminders that the only gift Artemis can give to Penelope is the violent one. Death can keep her from “not only an unwanted marriage, but betrayal and infidelity as well” (Felson-Rubin, 181).

If Penelope is like Artemis in the Odyssey, it must be in her longing for Death.

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Part 1 below.

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Hera is in some ways the least obvious connection to Penelope. Penelope is not described as being like her, and Hera’s part in the Odyssey is much smaller than in the “prequel,” (six mentions to the Iliad’s 115 or so) having no active role at all and only passing mention in metaphor. That said, it is still possible to construct a specific identity from the examples.

It is significant that three out of the six examples are formulaic phrases actually referring to Zeus: “Zeus, mighty husband of Hera.” It seems from the construction that the Father (that would be Zeus) gains power from his association with her, and reinforces the common theme of homophrosyne - this awesome idea of being-of-the-same-mind - and the unstoppable power of a strong couple. The other two examples are describing the protection that Hera has provided for other heroes, specifically Agamemnon (you remember his wife Clytemnestra?) (4.512) and Jason (impossible to forget his fling with Medea) (12.55). These examples emphasize the savior aspect of the goddess, and one that is particularly focused on a safe nostos, or homecoming.

In many ways, it would be easy to imagine this story as the brainchild of the Queen of the Gods (Hera) instead of the virgin Goddess of Wisdom (yep, Athena! the real power in this story). This connection is only heightened by the passage quoted in part 1, where Hera gives Clytie and Cameira (the daughters of Pandareos) form and prudence, the two things for which Penelope is most renowned. In fact, it would be easy to see the relationship of Penelope and Odysseus as mirrored in the relationship of Hera and Zeus (at least as far as that relationship is portrayed within the Odyssey).

But Hera’s domestic power, while able to keep kings safe through scary straits, is not equipped to aid women with long-term separation from their partners (as is the unfortunate case of Penelope). In fact, as we see in other myths, Hera is often involved in tracking her wayward hubby down - something that is certainly not an option in Penelope’s position. Because this plot-type is not even among the options listed for Penelope, Hera’s role in the Odyssey is relatively minor, but she still serves to remind the audience of the “connubial fidelity” both she and Penelope embody.

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Next up: Artemis-Like Penelope (Part 2 continued)

Because the Wayward Classicist did it:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next few sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the closest.

“So if the three goddesses took the apple immediately to Paris on Mount Ida to have him judge which was the fairest, at least 18 years had to pass before Achilles arrived in Troy. In any event, the judgment of Paris, Priam and Hecuba’s supposedly dead son, was swayed by the awesome force of love when, over bribes of power and wisdom, he chose the love of the most beautiful woman in the world - Helen of Sparta.”

- from Robert Bell’s Women of Classical Mythology in the section on Aphrodite

You may have picked up from previous entries that I really dig Penelope, but now you’ll start to understand why in this series!

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There has been a great deal of work done in recent years to “reclaim” the Goddess. Women look to Her for spiritual guidance, for wisdom, for empowerment. They call out to Her by her various names. I myself participate in this new Goddess movement to some degree and it makes sense to me to see goddesses as archetypes guiding or reflecting human behavior. Furthermore, this seems to apply flawlessly to reading the Odyssey, especially as relates to the much-debated action of Penelope.

There are many goddesses in the Odyssey, Kalypso and Kirke come to mind, but it is the Olympian goddesses - specifically, Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Athena - who so nicely guide our perceptions of Penelope and the outcome of the story. These four only show up once all together, in the context of Penelope’s confusing metaphor describing the daughters of Pandareos:

Hera gave them form and prudence surpassing all other women; pure Artemis gave them an lofty stature, and Athena taught them to do renowned works. When bright Aphrodite had ascended to holy Olympus seeking the accomplishment of a blooming wedding for the girls from thunder-loving Zeus (for well does he know everything, both what shall happen and what not happen to mortal humans) the Snatching winds came and snatched them away and gave them to the hated Furies to care for.

Each of these goddesses has a different gift to give the unfortunate Pandareides and they each have a similar role in the greater telling of the Odyssey. Nancy Felson-Rubin has already done a good job of identifying plot-types, however, by seeing the role of each goddess tied into the story more clearly, the function of those plot-types takes on a different meaning. Felson-Rubin states, “Until 23.205 [the end of the Odyssey] even the knowing reader feels suspense as to whether Penelope or Odysseus will happily reunite,” but I hope to show that what the audience, and the reader, feels is not suspense but empathy, suspense being impossible in a story where the end is known. And with a story this famous, who could fail to know the end?

Felson-Rubin, Nancy. “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot.” Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Seth L. Schein, ed. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996

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Coming soon: Part 2 - the roles of the Goddesses

In 2005, the famous Margaret Atwood published The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus. Whether or not you have actually read the Odyssey (or generally know the story), it is interesting. It is the story from Penelope’s point of view. But don’t expect to find the mysterious, heroic, wily Penelope of the Odyssey. Nope, here she is presented in her own words and she spends much less energy on her responsibilities as the Queen of Ithaca and the mother of the future king and her husband than she does on her day-to-day life while the Suitors were there and her rivalry with Helen. There’s also a lot more attention given to the maids.

Now the maids, you may recall from the Odyssey, are hanged at the end of the story because they were disloyal to the ruling family by 1) sleeping with the Suitors and 2) telling them stuff. The sex part is - I suspect - woefully misunderstood by the majority of people who read it. The Penelopiad definitely fills in one angle of that story that you won’t get elsewhere. It illustrates world of women, the world of powerless people. Check out Slave-Girl’s Goddesses for some background from my perspective.

The thing is, it’s not the best book. Despite Atwood’s insinuations that what we are hearing from Penelope’s own mouth should not be trusted, to me, the book is pedantic and reads more like a really good writing exercise than anything else (she includes random interludes by a Chorus of maids). It is not Atwood’s best. And frankly, if you are really interested in Penelope, you can get a much deeper, much more interesting, and much more emotionally relevant portrayal by going back and re-reading chunks of the Odyssey (plus some of the scholarship about her if you’re really committed). If, however, the Odyssey seems like too big a task and you want to color in the parts of your mental image of ancient Greece involving women and slaves, it’s worth a look. It’s a quick read, anyway.

You are Queen Metaneira. She was suprisingly normal for a character of Greek mythology. She was a good queen and loving mother. She was kind, and had a pretty normal life, until an act of god brought tragedy. Actually it was an act of goddess. She tried to stand down the goddess, but couldn’t save her child, but she did live to tell about it.
See all of the possible results! | Take the test again! | Read more about Metaneira

Paleothea.com - the Ancient Goddess

Take it and tell me what you got in the comments.

Go online, and it is easy to find scores of sites dedicated to Athena as the patron Goddess of good feminist neo-pagans. In my opinion, however, Athena was more of a product and purveyor of “the patriarchy” than any other Goddess in the Olympic pantheon. There was no other goddess with such power in the (Athenian) populace, and this came from the very fact that her power was not that of a feminist revolutionary, but rather the embodiment of the patriarchy as the parthenogenic daughter of The Father (Zeus). The oppression of women had been Athena’s realm since she founded Athens (and decreed that women shouldn’t vote or be citizens). Sex was an important tool for that oppression (keeping in mind the fact that gender identity and erotic desire can and should be distinguished) as illustrated in the myths surrounding the House of Athens. Read the rest of this entry »

This is part of a synchroblog led by A. Venefica’s Weblog: Symbolic Meanings. See the end of the post for a list of other participants.

I realize I am taking a risk of immediately losing your attention by starting off my post with a grammar lesson, but the fact is that, in addition to a singular and a plural, ancient Greek also had a dual form. It was used for things that tend to come in pairs, like eyes or oxen. And in a couple of cases its use makes the reader pay close attention to the relationship between two people. Rather than showing great differences, it highlights the closeness of two people.

The two I am currently thinking of are Antigone and Ismene of Sophocles’ Antigone. Therein, Antigone is a pretty rebellious young woman committed to her ideals, regardless of whose feathers she ruffles, whereas Ismene’s ideals seem to be about ruffling as few feathers as possible. Ismene cannot envision how her actions might improve matters, whereas Antigone cannot imagine remaining passive. That the two sisters are only two had come about after the destruction of their house - most recently the deaths of their two brothers at each others’ hands. The two sisters are foils of each other, but what does this have to do with the dual, apart from, you know, reinforcing the bond they share and the pain of a shared fate being ripped from them.

The dual form is not used throughout, beginning, if I recall correctly, with Antigone’s description of their relationship. Its use ends when Antigone points out that each sister, in her own way, appeared noble to some people and Ismene responds, “And yet the error is the same for the both of us.” After she exits this scene, Ismene is silent. Antigone, on the other hand, finally gets her action, and dies her tragic death.

Duality is frequently used to enforce conceptions of opposites, being interested in women in Greek myths, myself, the genders female and male might have been expected. But from what I have been able to determine, those categories - if we choose to limit ourselves to two - simply do not work in a dual structure. My post, therefore, is meant as an invitation to consider duality as a way to explore 1) sameness and closeness, and 2) defining oneself within the truly unique context one lives in. Duality, here, highlights the shared experience of the two daughters of Iocasta and Oedipus, but it also shows how - in their very unique situation (really, how many of you have had a brother for a father and one of two dead brothers left out for dogs to eat?) - they make the choices that define them. Ismene takes up the role of the proper woman and lives in silence while Antigone, not in the least quietly, dies to honor the dead.

P.S. In case you don’t remember the play and want a short summary, you can read mine here.

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Others participating in this month’s synchroblog include:

1. Archetypes in duality (When Isis Rises)
2. Is duality really a figment of your imagination? (Dream Builders)
3. Duality and Beyond (Quaker Pagan Reflections)
4. Duality - Love With Its Back Turned (Aquila ka Hecate)
5. Seeing Number 11 and Symbolic Duality (Symbolic Meanings)
6. On What Are These Things Woven Back And Forth?: Thoughts on Duality (ReligionThink)
7. Jewish Duality vs. Dualism (Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism)
8. Vertical Dualism of Mother Earth and Father Sky (Mythology Synchroblog 3) (Mythology Blog: Between Old and New Moons)
9. Duality and Creativity (Starweaver’s Corner)
10. Maybe: Pagan Thoughts on the Limits & Uses of Duality (FullCircle* Earthwise News and Notes)
11. Looking Through the Kaleidoscope: Kitchen Thoughts on Duality or Not (Goddess in a Teapot)
12. Duality Synchroblog (Bubo’s Blog)
13. Samh and Geimh (Politics and Polytheism)

So in the U.S. (and lots of other places), we really dig the low-born (and occasionally low-brow) hero. Titanic and Shrek are good examples. But the ancient Greeks had a very different class structure than we do, and you’re really not going to find any good heroes (outside of comedy) that weren’t born seriously aristocratic. The same thing tends to go for women. So when, rarely, we actually see a female slave in Greek myth, she tends to be secretly noble. Like Leucippe and Andromache. Even Briseis - the Achilles’ slave girl in the Iliad - was the daughter of the king of the Leleges at Pedasus.

We rarely see the world from a woman’s perspective, but a lower class woman’s perspective or that of a slave-woman (born a slave) virtually never. Slave-girls were considered to be available for sex pretty much whenever by pretty much whoever (with some exceptions). Whether they were kept concubines, flute-girls (mostly a euphemism), or just unlucky house slaves, sex was wholly outside of their control. Not only were they available to their masters, they were not permitted to form their own sexual relationships without their master’s consent. (27 Pomeroy)

Maybe I shouldn’t even be talking about them, since they are so absent from myth. But they must have grown up with many of the same stories. I wonder, which gods and goddesses they saw as sympathetic. Surely not the aristocratic Athena, but I’d be willing to bet that at least some became supplicants of Aphrodite.