Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess

I’ve been working up to writing this post for over a month, ever since Wendy responded to The Dangers of de-Mystification. I can’t address the whole thing in one post, so this will have to be a series. But by the end of this post, I hope to demonstrate a little better what the problems with appropriating myths might be.

What Wendy took issue with was not my dilemma, but the foundational concept underlying my dilemma: Are We Authentic? Her post is well written, and I suggest you read it, but there are two points that I want to respond to in particular: 1) that even if we’re not “authentic,” it’s okay to re-use other people’s stories

Are all of those mentioned above, and many more, examples of appropriation as the legends and myths travel with us to new places and times? Very possibly. But is it wrong, is it a sort of cheating? No. They all serve our very human need to explain ourselves, not just to ourselves, but to the universe, to our ancestors and descendants.¹

and 2) we very well may be more authentic than the source material we have available to us

I can’t agree that your ‘appropriation of Greek Goddesses isn’t authentic’. Oh yes, the records we have today come down to us mostly in male voices, from men who lived in a society that feared and hated women, but are we much different than that today? … I don’t believe the myths and characters from ancient Greece were born in a vacuum, but that they were revised, re-written and co-opted from earlier times, changed to appeal to the audience of the day. … So… a reinterpretation for today’s women and purpose is as authentic as the Greek myths were in their time.²

She is right, of course, that stories are constantly being reframed, and, indeed, that is how they continue to live and remain meaningful. And she is right that, “in reality, we cannot know what they thought,” and that our reframing may give voice to people we cannot hear in the textual sources. The problem comes, however, when you erase someone else’s voice to do that. And it’s really a problem, when that erasure reproduces oppression. And that’s exactly what is meant by appropriation; that’s why it’s not a neutral word. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The truth is, even though there is SO much more to be said about the Greek goddesses, I’m just not spending much time thinking about them anymore. In fact, other than slowly reading Kirk Ormand’s book Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome, I’m really not thinking about the Classics at all these days.

I am, however, still thinking about stories, and myths, and religion, and women, and goddesses. Hopefully, that’s still interesting to the people who make their way to this website. I’ve been considering trying another start-up like the attempt I linked to in my post on Celtic Pretties, but this time doing it on some of the myths and goddesses of Mexico and Central America. There are tons of amazing goddesses to learn about - take the goddess Coyolxauqui, the moon, who tried to kill her brother Huitzilopochtli, and whose body was broken into pieces, or their mother Coatlicue (the Lady of the Serpent Skirt). I would love to learn more about them and share the awesomeness with you.

But I face a dilemma. I do NOT want to write about this in a way that goes: look! exotic! and encourages cultural appropriation. On the other hand, I do believe that these stories - while they should continue to “belong” to the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America - should be known and respected and retold and made relevant in new ways as continues to be done with Greek mythology. That said, I don’t necessarily think that I, as a white person with very little background in the topic at hand, should necessarily be the person making the call on how to go about doing that. While what I’ve done with (women in) Greek Myths hadn’t really been done when I got started, I’m not sure that it’s an appropriate approach to other mythologies.

As I mentioned in the last post, I am doing a bit of introspection about why I bother to write here (this blog and this site more generally).

The answer is that I wanted to know about women in Greek myths. Duh. But, really, that’s it. I mean, I wanted to know, not just their names, but why they were interesting.

I wanted to understand why some Goddesses, like Hemera, Gaia,  and Amphictyonis were relatively simple personifications of their names when others, like say, Persephone, have names, backgrounds, and myths so deeply ensconced in the past that we may never know what the deities represented.

I wanted to understand why the Greeks, so very long ago, had Great Goddesses like Demeter when we modern people, so much further along towards enlightenment (yes, I was a Hegelian youngster), didn’t even write spunky heroines that weren’t relying on men into movies!

And, perhaps most of all, I was hungry for stories of women that I could be proud to tell. Stories imbued with the rich respect of our mythical ancestors, but stories that I could make mine, that could make me stronger, that could root me.

I realize, now, that, although I still long for such things, I have given up on finding them in ancient Greek myth.

The first blow came when I fully appreciated that, in fact, things weren’t as feminist as they appeared. I learned that, while visibility is definitely a powerful thing, being visibly powerless isn’t nearly so exciting. I also discovered, somewhere along the way, to reject a progressive history and with that I lost the need to rely on the authority of our mythical ancestors in Classical civilization.

My interests changed, and I began to find more stories I could be proud of today (go see my Goodreads shelf to find some) and saw ancient Greek myths interesting primarily as a cross-culture comparison. And, for a few years there, I was allowed to read these myths in exquisite detail. But now that I do not, and now that I am surrounded by so many more cultures with rich mythologies to learn from, I am not sure what my new connection to this will be.

So I’m TAing a class this semester called “Many Ways of Being Human,” and on the first day of class I mentioned the blog Savage Minds as a place they might be interested in heading. But then I asked how many of them read blogs; for that matter, how many of them even checked news online; how many, I asked, use the internet for anything other than email (and porn, but I didn’t know them well enough to ask them that yet).

Like one person.

So, even though I care (really, I do) about the people who have found there way here, my total lack of time to commit to this project has just been horribly reinforced by de-motivation.

In my imagination, when I am not feeling so pressed by other concerns (like, say, funding, trying to start my research, being unable to keep up with my classes, and sleeping), I will be back. But the fact that I’ve said that in the last three entries DOES NOT BODE WELL.

Suggestions? Comments? All welcome.

Hi. This is not the Monster Syncroblog post promised. Nope. In my imagination, I will get it done. Obviously, I have already missed the deadline. However, I have another deadline. Actually, 5 deadlines. All for major real world projects. I will spend every waking moment working on these projects until December 12. Then I will return here and start up with some more good stuff, especially some monsters and some feminist interpretations of myths.

In the meantime, go read some of the awesome people on my blogroll. Mahud put up his post for the syncroblog, for example (and links to the other responsible people). And J. Harker, my old pal, wrote a neato review of a book.

What else … oh! Does anyone want to buy me Kirk Ormand’s Controlling Desires for Thesmophoria? It has actually been published (earlier than expected!) but is slightly outside of my price range (which ranges all the way up to about $3.39). An equally awesome present would be to convince the University of Arizona to buy it so that I can borrow it.

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’ve been tagged. It’s a meme that I got from Stregheria Pratica (an awesome witchcraft and spirituality blog that stretches my knowledge of romance languages to read without Babelfish’s help). Here’s how to play:

1. Link you the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six Random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and them link you.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave comment on to their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Random things are as follows:

I have a cat named Nikos. It’s a common enough name, but I decided to name him that after Athena Nike, except he’s a boy, so I masculinized it (is that even a word?).

When I started this website at 13, I chose the name “Ailia” because I thought it was prettier than “Stheno” (my original pseudonym choice). I later realized how close it is to Dune’s St. Alia of the Knife, but I wasn’t awesome enough to know that at the time.

For the first time in my life, I live in a place with such a black sky and so many stars that I can identify constellations other than Orion and the Big Dipper.

I really like painting and knitting even though I haven’t done either for a long time.

I have always secretly wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.

When I was a little girl, I dressed up like Sybil Ludington on the anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment and marched around my neighborhood with some friends and my mother (dressed as Susan B. Anthony) carrying signs exhorting everyone to give us women the right to vote.

And now, I tag Lord Alford, J. Harker,  Mahud, Aquila ka Hecate, Sarah, and A. Venefica to get random. If you don’t want to play, I totally understand, but I’m trying to build community here people!

I was playing on Gender Analyzer and discovered that I am a man.

I’m actually not (although I’ve gotten emails from wingnuts telling me I can’t possibly be a woman), but I am extremely curious what the heck it is that makes me sound manly.

I’m taking a class in sociolinguistics now, and really enjoying it. This program would be an interesting thing to write a paper on (not mine though). But I think it would be fascinating to find out what’s involved? And what would such a study have looked like in ancient Greece?

Sadly, I doubt there are enough extant texts to make such a call, but wouldn’t it be interesting to know?

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?

Watch out, Paleothea is about to get partisan. What little readership I have does not come here for this, but this is how I see the world, and yes, I think it relates to ancient Greece.

Women’s health, it is helpfully explained to us, is not like men’s health. For one thing, simply being a virgin past the “appropriate age” (14-17?) makes a girl susceptible to hysteria and suicidal insanity. Hippocrates’ solution to this: “My prescription is that when virgins experience this trouble, they should cohabit with a man as quickly as possible. If they become pregnant, they will be cured.” There are plenty of variations on this them, but it all reinforces the idea of women as, essentially, mothers.

That said, even Hippocrates recognized that pregnancy held many dangers for women. If abortion was anathema (and it wasn’t for everyone, Galen gives a useful prescription of jumping up and down to expel a fetus which he says actually worked in his office when his kinswomen brought in a slave-girl she was prostituting - it wasn’t an act of kindness, the kinswoman just didn’t want to lose her money-maker), it was at least partly because abortifacients were generally so dangerous, including severe bloodletting and “sharp-edged” things that wounded adjacent parts.

Remember, these are people who thought that the womb moved around the body like a furry animal and could be moved back into place (if it had traveled too low) by giving her sweet-scented wine to drink  (the carrot) and burning “foul-scented vapours below her womb” (the stick).  But damn, at least these people were trying …

All the ancient Greek medicine is from Women’s Life in Greece and Rome by Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant.

You may have heard by now about Nailin’ Paylin. It’s being made by Larry Flint and that’s really all you need to know.

Although I understand people’s anger, I think that’s exactly what Flint is challenging. I see it as a critique of Palin’s and the West’s (especially the U.S.’s) hypocrisy about sex and sexiness.

What is it that makes her sexual portrayal of herself in beauty contests more acceptable than her portrayal in porn except for societal values about the lines of acceptable sexuality? (Well, that and consent - but that’s why it’s a critique.) As a beauty queen she is like Artemis, irresistible but untouchable (think of Actaeon, people). But make her Aphrodite’s devotee, as porn star/sex worker in this scenario, but it could as easily have been as sex education advocate (remember Jocelyn Elders‘ ideas about masturbation?), and she would be perceived as vulgar. As she is now, beautiful and inaccessible but also the “ideal” mother,  Palin is a walking reinforcement of patriarchal standards of acceptable womanhood; she’s a friggin’ Hestia for goodness sake.

As for the inclusion of Condi and Hillary, these two women have generally been cast in our culture as Athena and Hera, respectively. Condi as the asexual woman who is the Man’s scion (Bush as Zeus here) extending His power; Hillary as the long-suffering wife who cannot be sexy except in the context of her stereotypically sexist relationship (Bill Clinton as Zeus here) and longs for ultimate power in her own right. And yet, sadly, they are both the symbols of success for woman in this culture. This video turns that on its head, challenging public conceptions, expectations, and values that are sadly consistent with some from ancient Greece.

By thrusting them without consent into Aphrodite’s realm, Larry Flint reminds us of the violence inherent in our current portrayals of acceptable gender and sexuality. If we could embrace Aphrodite - the erotic - in our public and private lives, it would take us far closer to the equality we long for.*

I figure most of my readers are going to disagree with me, and that’s fine. One of the best things about a video like this, no matter where you fall on the issue, is the discussion that it motivates. Passionate discussion. Because sex matters and gender matters and they matter even more in politics, the public forum for our national identities.

*And there, too Aphrodite is should be our teacher as longing, himeros, is  under her jurisdiction.

Today is my birthday and I’m too exhausted to dress myself properly let alone do my classwork or write a coherent post. But life is good!

I’m actually not in Ecuador anymore and have successfully moved across the United States to my new home by the University where I’m going for my MA and then PhD. That’s why 1) I haven’t posted recently and 2) I may end up punking out on this blog. But here’s hoping I can keep up with it all and keep this baby running.

So anyway, back to the Ancient Greek Ladies. Sort of.

While I was visiting Quito, I encountered the very beautiful Virgin of Quito. I fell in love. This is a virgin who is also called “The Dancing Woman” and “The Woman of the Apocalypse.” It was the latter name that helped me put the pieces together: crown of 12 stars, check; moon under her feet, check; dragon, check; shiny clothes, check; eagle wings, check; this chick is straight out of Revelation! So I dug out my trusty old New Oxford Annotated Bible and read what it had to say.

One well-known version of the story tells of the goddess Leto, pregnant with Apollo [and Artemis, thank you very much], who is menaced by the dragon Python who pursues her because he knows that Apollo [geez, stop forgetting Artemis!] is destined to kill him. Here this material is reinterpreted in terms of Jewish traditions and expectations as the story of the birth of the Messiah.

So there you have it. I’m excited. I love stuff like this. Sychretism=my favorite.

P.S. Do that poll thingie. I don’t feel like this blog fits too easily into any one of those categories, but hopefully you’ll disagree and help me with registering this durn thing in other people’s lists.

I got home yesterday from Ecuador and the nicest thing I saw when I got back to my place was my dear old reference books scattered all over the floor. There’s a bunch I rely on. I keep meaning to review them in some form here, but I guess I’m not really much of a reviewer. If you’re interested in what I recommend, you should check out my Bibliography.

If not then you probably won’t be interested in what follows either, but I won’t let that stop me! Books I want to add to my collection include:

Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality

Recommended to me by Carol Christ herself, and by an anthropologist (Peggy Reeves Sanday) that I respect.

Spartan Women

By the impressive Classicist Sarah Pomeroy, who I frequently refer to and quote liberally. Also, I know almost nothing about Spartan women, most of my ladies come from an Athenian perspective.

Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan’s Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Legal cases are crucial to our understanding of ancient Greek life, and of all the ancient Greek lives I could learn about, Neaira’s seems to be among the most fascinating.

Greek Religion and Society

Seems like a good place to start for me since my Classical background is so heavily literary and mythic. That’s the same reason I want to read Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece and Finding Persephone: Women’s Rituals in the Ancient Mediterranean recommended to me via Anahita-L.

The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece

I’m not sure why I didn’t read this in college, but I want to remedy that as soon as possible. Winkler founded this branch of Classical research in many ways.

Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore

I’ve got Amazons covered, but I’m ready to learn more about these wily lovable women.

Lavinia

By favorite author Ursula K. LeGuin, this is actually a historical fiction about the silent princess from the Aeneid. Promises to be interesting - and you can even buy it at the airport!

I used to just buy the books with an interesting title, but I’ve learned the hard way that that doesn’t yield the best information. Recommendations are better. So recommend! Are there any other books you’ve read that were particularly relevant and accurate? Do you know anything about any on this list? Please comment and tell me about them!

So the other day, I was sitting at the kitchen table attempting to take notes on Eliade’s book when suddenly I was surrounded by children. I had a moment of sympathy for Harriet Beecher Stowe and then gave up my academic intentions and started showing them pictures from my Gallery. My mythically inclined nephew T-, who asks me to tell him myths whenever we drive anywhere, wanted to see pictures of monsters. So I began with the Hydra, Echidna, and Cerberus. At that point, L- sat down with us. L- is the totally awesome ancient wrinkled lady who is deaf and mute and so full of joy and was adopted by my husband’s family three generations ago here in Ecuador. She doesn’t have any formal sign language, but still makes herself more or less understood. So do we. So with the help of the pictures, I started to explain who these monsters were to L- as well as T- and I-, the oldest niece. We moved onto Medusa, the Sphinx, then the Sirens.

At that point, I started to forget what other monsters I- could show (no internet to remind me of the lists I’ve made!) and I- started to get bored. Instead I- asked to see some pictures of the goddesses and I was happy to oblige. When I got to Aphrodite I remembered to explain to L- who she was, so I made as if to pray, then vamped a sexy sort of beauty as best I could. We continued and eventually the kids got bored, but when I turned to L- she asked to see the images of Aphrodite again and again until my laptop ran out of batteries.

Ecuador is about 90% Catholic and there are images of the Virgin Mary everywhere. It occurred to me after that since L- can’t read, and DOES know Mary, it is highly likely that the two have been conflated in her head. Maybe this makes me a bad person, but secretly I think that is AWESOME.

I’ve been taking advantage of my two-month break in the isolation to read books that I’ve previously attempted and utterly failed to complete. Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane certainly falls in that category. The second chapter, “Sacred Time and Myths,” reminded me of a common question I get in emails asking for “when” the gods were born. That question – in many cases – can be answered in the context of other god’s births or a larger myth, but in terms of years? Forget about it.

Adfamiliares (who taught me everything I know about Roman Religion, and is a pretty cool cat) made a comment about how different that is from the Christian tradition. Eliade explains it by saying “Christianity radically changed the experience and the concept of liturgical time, and this is due to the fact that Christianity affirms the historicity of the person of Christ.” (72) But the “sacred” time in which the myths of the ancient Greeks took place “is an ontological mythical, Parmenidean time; it always remains equal to itself, it neither changes nor is exhausted.” (69)

Most of the myths I’ve collected on my site involve mortal men and women set in a past that has the potential for being “infinitely repeatable” in a ritual sense. It does not seem like a big leap, to me, to include in that category such stories as those that make up the narratives of the Eleusian Mysteries, or even the stories like that of Adonis, whose death was also ritually noted each year.

But Eliade suggests that “we moderns” cannot possibly appreciate the transportation via ritual and myth into the eternal sacred time of our foremothers and fathers. I think, however, when I tell the myths to my nephews and nieces, they are as transported as a child 2000 years ago. What do you think?

Sorry people, it’s just too hard to get together a post when surrounded by extended family in a far away country without regular internet.

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.

I just got an email that qualifies as one of my favorite ever.

I really am loving your website www.paleothea.com but

you are far too intelligent to use "cuz" for because.

Best wishes,
Sharon

In a way, she’s right. I would never hand a paper into a teacher with “cuz” in it - and I like to giggle to myself about students copying and pasting directly from the site without stopping to correct such silliness - and that’s because I’m generally writing focused formal arguments. This website though? Not so much with the formal.

I imagine that at least part of my audience is made up of adolescents like the ones I try to tell stories to on long bus rides for field trips, etc. You might accuse me of talking down to people - and at one level you’d be right - but what I had in mind more was writing like I actually talk. Recording the stories like I tell them out loud - except that you can’t see my hands flailing or me winking at you. There’s precedence for this - most translations of plays do something similar, and of course not a few of the myths included in Women In Greek Myths are elaborated on thus.

My site ain’t the best researched, the best annotated, the funniest, the most beautiful or, unfortunately, the most accessible. It includes random typos, and slang and the occasional curse. Because it’s been around for so long, my site still gets a fair amount of traffic. But now there are options like theoi.com that give you the original sources (in translation) and brief explanations that are totally accessible. To be perfectly honest, his site’s so good, I’m tempted to stop paying rent and let mine disappear into internet oblivion. Nonetheless, I’m still here for now.

Hope you don’t mind, too much.