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Athena (Greek)
Athena
Abode: Mount Olympus
Symbol: Owl, Olive tree
Parents: Zeus and Metis
Siblings: None
Roman equivalent: Minerva
Goddess of wisdom, warfare and crafts
Patron goddess of Athens
Athena (pronounced /əˈθiːnə/) or Athene (/əˈθiːniː/; Attic: Ἀθηνᾶ, Athēnā or Ἀθηναία, Athēnaia; Epic: Ἀθηναίη, Athēnaiē; Ionic: Ἀθήνη, Athēnē; Doric: Ἀθάνα, Athana; Latin: Minerva), also referred to as Pallas Athena (Παλλάς Αθηνά; pronounced /ˈpæləs/), is the goddess of civilization, wisdom, strength, strategy, craft, justice and skill in Greek mythology. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens. The Athenians built the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens, in her honour (Athena Parthenos).
Overview
Athena's cult as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest times and was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes. The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified her with the Libya deity, Neith, the war-goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient predynastic period, also identified with weaving. This is sensible as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River. Classicist Martin Bernal created the "Black Athena Theory" to explain this associated origin by claiming that the conception of Neith was brought over to Greece from Egypt with "an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia." Athena the goddess as philosophy became a part of the cult in the later fifth century and Classical Greece. She was the patroness of weaving, especially, and other crafts (Athena Ergane); the metalwork of weapons also fell under her patronage. She led battles (Athena Promachos or the warrior maiden Athena Parthenos) as the disciplined, strategic side of war, in contrast to her brother Ares, the patron of violence, bloodlust and slaughter-"the raw force of war". Athena's wisdom includes the cunning intelligence (metis) of such figures as Odysseus. Not only was this version of Athena the opposite of Ares in combat, it was also the polar opposite of the serene earth goddess version, Athena Polias, earning the title Athena Parthenos. A remnant of archaic myth depicts her as the adoptive mother of Erechtheus/Erichthonius by the foiled rape by Hephaestus. Other variants relate that the serpent who accompanied Athena, also called Erichthonius, was born to Gaia when the rape failed and the semen landed on Gaia, impregnating her, and that after the birth he was given to Athena by Gaia.
Though Athena was a goddess of war strategy, she disliked fighting without a purpose and preferred using wisdom to settle predicaments. The goddess would only encourage fighting if it was for a reasonable cause or to solve conflict.
In her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena as Athena Polias ("Athena of the city"). Athens and Athena bear etymologically connected names.
Mythology
Birth
In The Greek Myths (8.a, ff.), Robert Graves notes early myths about the birth of Athena whose worship began in Crete after arriving there as early as 4,000 BC. According to Graves, Hesiod (c. 700 BC) relates that Athena was a parthenogenous daughter of Metis, wisdom or knowledge, a Titan who ruled the fourth day and the planet Mercury. Other variants relate that although Metis was of an earlier generation of the Titans, Zeus became her consort when his cult gained dominance. In order to avoid a prophecy made when that change occurred, that any offspring of his union with Metis would be greater than he, Zeus swallowed Metis to prevent her from having offspring, but she already was pregnant with Athena. Metis gave birth to Athena and nurtured her inside Zeus until Zeus complained of headaches and called for Hephaestus to split open his head with his smithing tools. Athena burst forth from his forehead fully armed with weapons given by her mother. She famously wields the thunderbolt and the Aegis, which she and Zeus share exclusively.
The story of her birth from the head of Zeus was adapted by Christianity to parallel the emergence of arts and inventions from the mind of God. Plato, in Cratylus(407B) gave the etymology of her name as signifying "the mind of god", theou noesis. The Christian apologist of the second century Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Kore, whom he interprets as Athena:
"They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word (logos) his first thought was Athena"
On the other hand, John Milton's Paradise Lost interprets this myth as a model for the birth of Sin from the head of Satan.
The Olympian version
Although at Mycenaean Knossos Athena appears before Zeus does —in Linear B, as a-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja, "Mistress Athena"— in the Classical Olympian pantheon, Athena was remade as the favorite daughter of Zeus, born fully armed from his forehead. The story of her birth comes in several versions. In the one most commonly cited, Zeus lay with Metis, the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, but he immediately feared the consequences. It had been prophesied that Metis would bear children more powerful than the sire, even Zeus himself. In order to forestall these dire consequences, after lying with Metis, Zeus "put her away inside his own belly;" he "swallowed her down all of a sudden." He was too late: Metis already conceived.
Eventually Zeus experienced an enormous headache; Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, or Palaemon (depending on the sources examined) cleaved Zeus's head with the double-headed Minoan axe, the labrys. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown and armed — with a shout, "and pealed to the broad sky her clarion cry of war. And Ouranos trembled to hear, and Mother Gaia..." (Pindar, Seventh Olympian Ode). Plato, in the Laws, attributes the cult of Athena to the culture of Crete, introduced, he thought, from Libya during the dawn of Greek culture.
Classical myths thereafter note that Hera was so annoyed at Zeus producing a child that she conceived and bore Hephaestus by herself.
Other origin tales
Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan war, make Athena instead, the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited 'the inhabitable world' and bequeathed Attica to Athena. Sanchuniathon's account would make Athena the sister of Zeus and Hera, not Zeus' daughter.
Pallas Athena
The major competing tradition regarding Athena's parentage involves some of her more mysterious epithets: Pallas, as in Ancient Greek Παλλάς Άθήνη (also Pallantias) and Tritogeneia (also Trito, Tritonis, Tritoneia, Tritogenes). A separate entity named Pallas is invoked—whether Athena's father, sister, foster-sister, companion, or opponent in battle. In every case, Athena kills Pallas, accidentally, and thereby gains the name for herself.
When Pallas is Athena's father the events, including her birth, are located near a body of water named Triton or Tritonis, the result of an etymology of Tritogeneia from Tritonis. When Pallas is Athena's sister or foster-sister, Athena's father or foster-father is Triton, the son and herald of Poseidon. But Athena may be called the daughter of Poseidon and a nymph named Tritonis, without involving Pallas. Likewise, Pallas may be Athena's father or opponent, without involving Triton. On this topic, Walter Burkert says "she is the Pallas of Athens, Pallas Athenaie, just as Hera of Argos is Here Argeie. For the Athenians, Burkert notes, Athena was simply "the Goddess", he thea, certainly an ancient title.
Athena Parthenos: Virgin Athena
Athena never had a consort or lover and thus, also was known as Athena Parthenos, "Virgin Athena". Her most famous temple, the Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens takes its name from this title. It was not merely an observation of her virginity, but a recognition of her role as enforcer of rules of sexual modesty and ritual mystery. Even beyond recognition, the Athenians allotted the goddess value based on this pureness of virginity as it upheld a rudiment of female behavior in the patriarchal society. Kerenyi's study and theory of Athena accredits her virginal toponym to be a result of the relationship to her father Zeus and a vital, cohesive piece of her character throughout the ages. This role is expressed in a number of stories about Athena. Marinus reports that when Christians removed the statue of the Goddess from the Parthenon, a beautiful woman appeared in a dream to Proclus, a devotee of Athena, and announced that the "Athenian Lady" wished to dwell with him.
Erichthonius
Hephaestus attempted to rape Athena, but she eluded him. His semen fell on the ground, and Erichthonius was born from the Earth, Gaia. Athena then raised the baby as a foster mother.
Athena put the infant Erichthonius in a small box (cista) which she entrusted to the care of three sisters, Herse, Pandrosus, and Aglaulus of Athens. The goddess did not tell them what the box contained, but warned them not to open it until she returned. One or two sisters opened the cista to reveal Erichthonius, in the form (or embrace) of a serpent. The serpent, or insanity induced by the sight, drove Herse and Pandrosus to throw themselves off the Acropolis. Jane Harrison (Prolegomena) finds this to be a simple cautionary tale directed at young girls carrying the cista in the Thesmophoria rituals, to discourage them from opening it outside the proper context.
Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Hermes demands help from Aglaulus to seduce Herse. Aglaulus demands money in exchange. Hermes gives her the money the sisters had already offered to Athena. As punishment for Aglaulus's greed, Athena asks the goddess Envy to make Aglaulus jealous of Herse. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. He turns her to stone.
With this mythic origin, Erichthonius became the founder-king of Athens, where many beneficial changes to Athenian culture were ascribed to him. During this time, Athena frequently protected him.
Medusa and Tiresias
In a late myth, Medusa, unlike her two sister-Gorgons, came to be thought of by the Classical Greeks during the fifth century as mortal and extremely beautiful, but she was raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena and Hephasteus. Upon discovering the desecration of her temple, Athena changed Medusa's form to match that of her sister Gorgons as punishment. Medusa's hair turned into snakes, her lower body was transformed also, and meeting her gaze would turn any living creature to stone. In the earliest of myths there is but one Gorgon and the only snakes were two wrapped around her waist as a belt.
In one version of the Tiresias myth, Tiresias stumbled upon Athena bathing, and she blinded him because she was nude. To compensate him for his loss, she sent serpents to lick his ears, which gave him the gift of prophecy.
Lady of Athens
Athena competed with Poseidon to be the patron deity of Athens, which was yet unnamed, in a version of one founding myth. They agreed that each would give the Athenians one gift and that the Athenians would choose the gift they preferred. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a spring sprang up; this gave them a means of trade and water —Athens at its height was a significant sea power, defeating the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis— but the water was salty and not very good for drinking. Athena, however, offered them the first domesticated olive tree. The Athenians (or their king, Cecrops) accepted the olive tree and with it the patronage of Athena, for the olive tree brought wood, oil, and food. Robert Graves was of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political myths" which reflect the conflict between matriarchical and patriarchical religions.
Other sites of cult
Athena also was the patron goddess of several other Greek cities, notably Sparta, where the archaic cult of Athena Alea had its sanctuaries in the surrounding villages of at Alea, Mantineia and, notably, Tegea. Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece, containing the Temple of Athena Alea. The temenos was founded by Aleus, Pausanias was informed. Votive bronzes at the site from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer; there are sealstones and fibulae. In the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism to form one city. Tegea was listed in Homer's Catalogue of Ships as one of the cities that contributed ships and men for the Achaean assault on Troy.
Counselor
Later myths of the Classical Greeks relate that Athena guided Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. She instructed Heracles to skin the Nemean Lion by using its own claws to cut through its thick hide. She also helped Heracles to defeat the Stymphalian Birds, and to navigate the underworld so as to capture Cerberus.
In The Odyssey, Odysseus' cunning and shrewd nature quickly won Athena's favour. In the realistic epic mode, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, as by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. Her guiding actions reinforce her role as the "protectress of heroes" or as mythologian Walter Friedrich Otto dubbed her the "goddess of nearness" due to her mentoring and motherly probing. It is not until he washes up on the shore of an island where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. She appears in Nausicaa's dreams to ensure that the princess rescues Odysseus and plays a role in his eventual escort to Ithaca.
Athena appears in disguise to Odysseus upon his arrival, initially lying and telling him that Penelope, his wife, has remarried and that he is believed to be dead; but Odysseus lies back to her, employing skillful prevarications to protect himself. Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know in order to win back his kingdom. She disguises him as an elderly man or beggar so that he cannot be noticed by the suitors or Penelope, and helps him to defeat the suitors. She also plays a role in ending the resultant feud against the suitors' relatives, although she seems strange to readers. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill the father of Antinous, Eupeithes. But she must have forgotten her task of bringing peace to Ithaca and wiping the thought of slaughter from the suitors' families, because she suddenly told them to stop fighting.
Roman fable of Arachne
The fable of Arachne is a late Roman addition to Classical Greek mythology but does not appear in the myth repertoire of the Attic vase-painters. Arachne's name simply means spider (αράχνη). Arachne was the daughter of a famous dyer in Tyrian purple in Hypaipa of Lydia, and a weaving student of Athena. She became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena herself.
Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill.
Athena wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon that had inspired her patronage of Athens. According to the Latin narrative, Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the infidelity of the deities, including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Danaë. Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's disrespectful choice of subjects that displayed the failings and transgressions of the deities. Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. Athena then struck Arachne with her staff, which changed her into a spider.
The fable suggests that the origin of weaving lay in imitation of spiders and that it was considered to have been perfected first in Asia Minor.
Cult and attributes
Athena's epithets include Άτρυτώνη, Atrytone (= the unwearying), Παρθένος, Parthénos (= virgin), and Ή Πρόμαχος, Promachos (the First Fighter, i. e. she who fights in front).
In poetry from Homer, an oral tradition of the eighth or seventh century BC, onward, Athena's most common epithet is glaukopis (γλαυκώπις), which usually is translated as, bright-eyed or with gleaming eyes. The word is a combination of glaukos (γλαύκος, meaning gleaming, silvery, and later, bluish-green or gray) and ops (ώψ, eye, or sometimes, face). It is interesting to note that glaux (γλαύξ, "owl") is from the same root, presumably because of the bird's own distinctive eyes. The bird which sees well in the night is closely associated with the goddess of wisdom: in archaic images, Athena is frequently depicted with an owl perched on her head. This pairing evolved in tangent so that even in present day the owl is upheld as a symbol of perspicacity and erudition. Unsurprisingly, the owl became a sort of Athenian mascot. The olive tree is likewise sacred to her. In earlier times, Athena may well have been a bird goddess, similar to the unknown goddess depicted with owls, wings, and bird talons on the Burney relief, a Mesopotamian terracotta relief of the early second millennium BC.
Other epithets include: Aethyta under which she was worshiped in Megara. The word aithyia (αίθυια) signifies a diver, and figuratively, a ship, so the name must reference Athena teaching the art of shipbuilding or navigation. In a temple at Phrixa in Elis, which was reportedly built by Clymenus, she was known as Cydonia.
The various Athena subgroups, or cults, all branching from the central goddess herself often proctored various initiation rites of Grecian youth. For example, the passage into citizenship by young men and for women the elevation to the status of citizen wife. Her various cults were portals of a uniform socialization, even beyond mainland Greece.
Epithets
In the Iliad (4.514), the Homeric Hymns, and in Hesiod's Theogony, Athena is given the curious epithet Tritogeneia. The meaning of this term is unclear. It seems to mean "Triton-born", perhaps indicating that the sea-deity was her parent according to some early myths, In Ovid's Metamorphoses Athena is occasionally referred to as "Tritonia."
Another possible meaning may be triple-born or third-born, which may refer to a triad or to her status as the third daughter of Zeus or the fact she was born from Metis, Zeus, and herself; various legends list her as being the first child after Artemis and Apollo, though other legends identify her as Zeus' first child. The latter would have to be drawn from Classical myths, however, rather than earlier ones.
In her role as judge at Orestes' trial on the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra (which he won), Athena won the epithet Athena Areia.
Other epithets were Ageleia and Itonia.
Athena was given many other cult titles. She had the epithet Athena Ergane as the patron of craftsmen and artisans. With the epithet Athena Parthenos ("virgin")she was especially worshipped in the festivals of the Panathenaea and Pamboeotia where both militaristic and athletic displays took place. With the epithet Athena Promachos she led in battle. With the epithet Athena Polias ("of the city"), Athena was the protector of not only Athens but also of many other cities, including Argos, Sparta, Gortyn, Lindos, and Larisa.
She was given the epithet Athena Hippeia or Athena Hippia, horse as the inventor of the chariot, and was worshipped under this title at Athens, Tegea and Olympia. As Athena Hippeia she was given an alternative parentage: Poseidon and Polyphe, daughter of Oceanus. In each of these cities her temple frequently was the major temple on the acropolis.
Athena often was equated with Aphaea, a local goddess of the island of Aegina, located near Athens, once Aegina was under Athenian's power. The Greek historian Plutarch (46 AD–120 AD) also refers to an instance during the Parthenon's construction of her being called Athena Hygieia ("healer"):
A strange accident happened in the course of building, which showed that the goddess was not averse to the work, but was aiding and co-operating to bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the handiest workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down from a great height, and lay in a miserable condition, the physicians having no hope of his recovery. When Pericles was in distress about this, the goddess [Athena] appeared to him at night in a dream, and ordered a course of treatment, which he applied, and in a short time and with great ease cured the man. And upon this occasion it was that he set up a brass statue of Athena Hygeia, in the citadel near the altar, which they say was there before. But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess's image in gold, and he has his name inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it.
In classical times the Plynteria, or “Feast of Adorning”, was observed every May, it was a festival lasting five days. During this period the Priestesses of Athena, or “Plyntrides”, performed a cleansing ritual within “the Erecththeum”, the personal sanctuary of the goddess. Here Athena's statue was undressed, her clothes washed, and body purified.
In Arcadia, she was assimilated with the ancient goddess Alea and worshiped as Athena Alea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena
National Museum of Rome – Palazzo Altemps, Rome, Italy
Artist/Maker: Antiochos (signed), copy of Phidias
Description: Athena of the Parthenos Athena type. Pentelic marble, Greek copy from the 1st century BC after the original from the 5th century BC. Some 17th-century restorations: arms, ends of the belt, some folds of the peplos, aegis, tip of the nose.
Athena | Attic mythology | Crafts goddesses | Deities in the Iliad | Greek goddesses | Greek mythology | National personifications | Offspring of Zeus | Smithing goddesses | Twelve Olympians | War goddesses | Wisdom goddesses
Abode: Mount Olympus
Symbol: Owl, Olive tree
Parents: Zeus and Metis
Siblings: None
Roman equivalent: Minerva
Goddess of wisdom, warfare and crafts
Patron goddess of Athens
Athena (pronounced /əˈθiːnə/) or Athene (/əˈθiːniː/; Attic: Ἀθηνᾶ, Athēnā or Ἀθηναία, Athēnaia; Epic: Ἀθηναίη, Athēnaiē; Ionic: Ἀθήνη, Athēnē; Doric: Ἀθάνα, Athana; Latin: Minerva), also referred to as Pallas Athena (Παλλάς Αθηνά; pronounced /ˈpæləs/), is the goddess of civilization, wisdom, strength, strategy, craft, justice and skill in Greek mythology. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens. The Athenians built the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens, in her honour (Athena Parthenos).
Overview
Athena's cult as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest times and was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes. The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified her with the Libya deity, Neith, the war-goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient predynastic period, also identified with weaving. This is sensible as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River. Classicist Martin Bernal created the "Black Athena Theory" to explain this associated origin by claiming that the conception of Neith was brought over to Greece from Egypt with "an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia." Athena the goddess as philosophy became a part of the cult in the later fifth century and Classical Greece. She was the patroness of weaving, especially, and other crafts (Athena Ergane); the metalwork of weapons also fell under her patronage. She led battles (Athena Promachos or the warrior maiden Athena Parthenos) as the disciplined, strategic side of war, in contrast to her brother Ares, the patron of violence, bloodlust and slaughter-"the raw force of war". Athena's wisdom includes the cunning intelligence (metis) of such figures as Odysseus. Not only was this version of Athena the opposite of Ares in combat, it was also the polar opposite of the serene earth goddess version, Athena Polias, earning the title Athena Parthenos. A remnant of archaic myth depicts her as the adoptive mother of Erechtheus/Erichthonius by the foiled rape by Hephaestus. Other variants relate that the serpent who accompanied Athena, also called Erichthonius, was born to Gaia when the rape failed and the semen landed on Gaia, impregnating her, and that after the birth he was given to Athena by Gaia.
Though Athena was a goddess of war strategy, she disliked fighting without a purpose and preferred using wisdom to settle predicaments. The goddess would only encourage fighting if it was for a reasonable cause or to solve conflict.
In her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena as Athena Polias ("Athena of the city"). Athens and Athena bear etymologically connected names.
Mythology
Birth
In The Greek Myths (8.a, ff.), Robert Graves notes early myths about the birth of Athena whose worship began in Crete after arriving there as early as 4,000 BC. According to Graves, Hesiod (c. 700 BC) relates that Athena was a parthenogenous daughter of Metis, wisdom or knowledge, a Titan who ruled the fourth day and the planet Mercury. Other variants relate that although Metis was of an earlier generation of the Titans, Zeus became her consort when his cult gained dominance. In order to avoid a prophecy made when that change occurred, that any offspring of his union with Metis would be greater than he, Zeus swallowed Metis to prevent her from having offspring, but she already was pregnant with Athena. Metis gave birth to Athena and nurtured her inside Zeus until Zeus complained of headaches and called for Hephaestus to split open his head with his smithing tools. Athena burst forth from his forehead fully armed with weapons given by her mother. She famously wields the thunderbolt and the Aegis, which she and Zeus share exclusively.
The story of her birth from the head of Zeus was adapted by Christianity to parallel the emergence of arts and inventions from the mind of God. Plato, in Cratylus(407B) gave the etymology of her name as signifying "the mind of god", theou noesis. The Christian apologist of the second century Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Kore, whom he interprets as Athena:
"They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word (logos) his first thought was Athena"
On the other hand, John Milton's Paradise Lost interprets this myth as a model for the birth of Sin from the head of Satan.
The Olympian version
Although at Mycenaean Knossos Athena appears before Zeus does —in Linear B, as a-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja, "Mistress Athena"— in the Classical Olympian pantheon, Athena was remade as the favorite daughter of Zeus, born fully armed from his forehead. The story of her birth comes in several versions. In the one most commonly cited, Zeus lay with Metis, the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, but he immediately feared the consequences. It had been prophesied that Metis would bear children more powerful than the sire, even Zeus himself. In order to forestall these dire consequences, after lying with Metis, Zeus "put her away inside his own belly;" he "swallowed her down all of a sudden." He was too late: Metis already conceived.
Eventually Zeus experienced an enormous headache; Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, or Palaemon (depending on the sources examined) cleaved Zeus's head with the double-headed Minoan axe, the labrys. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown and armed — with a shout, "and pealed to the broad sky her clarion cry of war. And Ouranos trembled to hear, and Mother Gaia..." (Pindar, Seventh Olympian Ode). Plato, in the Laws, attributes the cult of Athena to the culture of Crete, introduced, he thought, from Libya during the dawn of Greek culture.
Classical myths thereafter note that Hera was so annoyed at Zeus producing a child that she conceived and bore Hephaestus by herself.
Other origin tales
Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan war, make Athena instead, the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited 'the inhabitable world' and bequeathed Attica to Athena. Sanchuniathon's account would make Athena the sister of Zeus and Hera, not Zeus' daughter.
Pallas Athena
The major competing tradition regarding Athena's parentage involves some of her more mysterious epithets: Pallas, as in Ancient Greek Παλλάς Άθήνη (also Pallantias) and Tritogeneia (also Trito, Tritonis, Tritoneia, Tritogenes). A separate entity named Pallas is invoked—whether Athena's father, sister, foster-sister, companion, or opponent in battle. In every case, Athena kills Pallas, accidentally, and thereby gains the name for herself.
When Pallas is Athena's father the events, including her birth, are located near a body of water named Triton or Tritonis, the result of an etymology of Tritogeneia from Tritonis. When Pallas is Athena's sister or foster-sister, Athena's father or foster-father is Triton, the son and herald of Poseidon. But Athena may be called the daughter of Poseidon and a nymph named Tritonis, without involving Pallas. Likewise, Pallas may be Athena's father or opponent, without involving Triton. On this topic, Walter Burkert says "she is the Pallas of Athens, Pallas Athenaie, just as Hera of Argos is Here Argeie. For the Athenians, Burkert notes, Athena was simply "the Goddess", he thea, certainly an ancient title.
Athena Parthenos: Virgin Athena
Athena never had a consort or lover and thus, also was known as Athena Parthenos, "Virgin Athena". Her most famous temple, the Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens takes its name from this title. It was not merely an observation of her virginity, but a recognition of her role as enforcer of rules of sexual modesty and ritual mystery. Even beyond recognition, the Athenians allotted the goddess value based on this pureness of virginity as it upheld a rudiment of female behavior in the patriarchal society. Kerenyi's study and theory of Athena accredits her virginal toponym to be a result of the relationship to her father Zeus and a vital, cohesive piece of her character throughout the ages. This role is expressed in a number of stories about Athena. Marinus reports that when Christians removed the statue of the Goddess from the Parthenon, a beautiful woman appeared in a dream to Proclus, a devotee of Athena, and announced that the "Athenian Lady" wished to dwell with him.
Erichthonius
Hephaestus attempted to rape Athena, but she eluded him. His semen fell on the ground, and Erichthonius was born from the Earth, Gaia. Athena then raised the baby as a foster mother.
Athena put the infant Erichthonius in a small box (cista) which she entrusted to the care of three sisters, Herse, Pandrosus, and Aglaulus of Athens. The goddess did not tell them what the box contained, but warned them not to open it until she returned. One or two sisters opened the cista to reveal Erichthonius, in the form (or embrace) of a serpent. The serpent, or insanity induced by the sight, drove Herse and Pandrosus to throw themselves off the Acropolis. Jane Harrison (Prolegomena) finds this to be a simple cautionary tale directed at young girls carrying the cista in the Thesmophoria rituals, to discourage them from opening it outside the proper context.
Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Hermes demands help from Aglaulus to seduce Herse. Aglaulus demands money in exchange. Hermes gives her the money the sisters had already offered to Athena. As punishment for Aglaulus's greed, Athena asks the goddess Envy to make Aglaulus jealous of Herse. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. He turns her to stone.
With this mythic origin, Erichthonius became the founder-king of Athens, where many beneficial changes to Athenian culture were ascribed to him. During this time, Athena frequently protected him.
Medusa and Tiresias
In a late myth, Medusa, unlike her two sister-Gorgons, came to be thought of by the Classical Greeks during the fifth century as mortal and extremely beautiful, but she was raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena and Hephasteus. Upon discovering the desecration of her temple, Athena changed Medusa's form to match that of her sister Gorgons as punishment. Medusa's hair turned into snakes, her lower body was transformed also, and meeting her gaze would turn any living creature to stone. In the earliest of myths there is but one Gorgon and the only snakes were two wrapped around her waist as a belt.
In one version of the Tiresias myth, Tiresias stumbled upon Athena bathing, and she blinded him because she was nude. To compensate him for his loss, she sent serpents to lick his ears, which gave him the gift of prophecy.
Lady of Athens
Athena competed with Poseidon to be the patron deity of Athens, which was yet unnamed, in a version of one founding myth. They agreed that each would give the Athenians one gift and that the Athenians would choose the gift they preferred. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a spring sprang up; this gave them a means of trade and water —Athens at its height was a significant sea power, defeating the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis— but the water was salty and not very good for drinking. Athena, however, offered them the first domesticated olive tree. The Athenians (or their king, Cecrops) accepted the olive tree and with it the patronage of Athena, for the olive tree brought wood, oil, and food. Robert Graves was of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political myths" which reflect the conflict between matriarchical and patriarchical religions.
Other sites of cult
Athena also was the patron goddess of several other Greek cities, notably Sparta, where the archaic cult of Athena Alea had its sanctuaries in the surrounding villages of at Alea, Mantineia and, notably, Tegea. Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece, containing the Temple of Athena Alea. The temenos was founded by Aleus, Pausanias was informed. Votive bronzes at the site from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer; there are sealstones and fibulae. In the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism to form one city. Tegea was listed in Homer's Catalogue of Ships as one of the cities that contributed ships and men for the Achaean assault on Troy.
Counselor
Later myths of the Classical Greeks relate that Athena guided Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. She instructed Heracles to skin the Nemean Lion by using its own claws to cut through its thick hide. She also helped Heracles to defeat the Stymphalian Birds, and to navigate the underworld so as to capture Cerberus.
In The Odyssey, Odysseus' cunning and shrewd nature quickly won Athena's favour. In the realistic epic mode, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, as by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. Her guiding actions reinforce her role as the "protectress of heroes" or as mythologian Walter Friedrich Otto dubbed her the "goddess of nearness" due to her mentoring and motherly probing. It is not until he washes up on the shore of an island where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. She appears in Nausicaa's dreams to ensure that the princess rescues Odysseus and plays a role in his eventual escort to Ithaca.
Athena appears in disguise to Odysseus upon his arrival, initially lying and telling him that Penelope, his wife, has remarried and that he is believed to be dead; but Odysseus lies back to her, employing skillful prevarications to protect himself. Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know in order to win back his kingdom. She disguises him as an elderly man or beggar so that he cannot be noticed by the suitors or Penelope, and helps him to defeat the suitors. She also plays a role in ending the resultant feud against the suitors' relatives, although she seems strange to readers. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill the father of Antinous, Eupeithes. But she must have forgotten her task of bringing peace to Ithaca and wiping the thought of slaughter from the suitors' families, because she suddenly told them to stop fighting.
Roman fable of Arachne
The fable of Arachne is a late Roman addition to Classical Greek mythology but does not appear in the myth repertoire of the Attic vase-painters. Arachne's name simply means spider (αράχνη). Arachne was the daughter of a famous dyer in Tyrian purple in Hypaipa of Lydia, and a weaving student of Athena. She became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena herself.
Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill.
Athena wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon that had inspired her patronage of Athens. According to the Latin narrative, Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the infidelity of the deities, including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Danaë. Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's disrespectful choice of subjects that displayed the failings and transgressions of the deities. Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. Athena then struck Arachne with her staff, which changed her into a spider.
The fable suggests that the origin of weaving lay in imitation of spiders and that it was considered to have been perfected first in Asia Minor.
Cult and attributes
Athena's epithets include Άτρυτώνη, Atrytone (= the unwearying), Παρθένος, Parthénos (= virgin), and Ή Πρόμαχος, Promachos (the First Fighter, i. e. she who fights in front).
In poetry from Homer, an oral tradition of the eighth or seventh century BC, onward, Athena's most common epithet is glaukopis (γλαυκώπις), which usually is translated as, bright-eyed or with gleaming eyes. The word is a combination of glaukos (γλαύκος, meaning gleaming, silvery, and later, bluish-green or gray) and ops (ώψ, eye, or sometimes, face). It is interesting to note that glaux (γλαύξ, "owl") is from the same root, presumably because of the bird's own distinctive eyes. The bird which sees well in the night is closely associated with the goddess of wisdom: in archaic images, Athena is frequently depicted with an owl perched on her head. This pairing evolved in tangent so that even in present day the owl is upheld as a symbol of perspicacity and erudition. Unsurprisingly, the owl became a sort of Athenian mascot. The olive tree is likewise sacred to her. In earlier times, Athena may well have been a bird goddess, similar to the unknown goddess depicted with owls, wings, and bird talons on the Burney relief, a Mesopotamian terracotta relief of the early second millennium BC.
Other epithets include: Aethyta under which she was worshiped in Megara. The word aithyia (αίθυια) signifies a diver, and figuratively, a ship, so the name must reference Athena teaching the art of shipbuilding or navigation. In a temple at Phrixa in Elis, which was reportedly built by Clymenus, she was known as Cydonia.
The various Athena subgroups, or cults, all branching from the central goddess herself often proctored various initiation rites of Grecian youth. For example, the passage into citizenship by young men and for women the elevation to the status of citizen wife. Her various cults were portals of a uniform socialization, even beyond mainland Greece.
Epithets
In the Iliad (4.514), the Homeric Hymns, and in Hesiod's Theogony, Athena is given the curious epithet Tritogeneia. The meaning of this term is unclear. It seems to mean "Triton-born", perhaps indicating that the sea-deity was her parent according to some early myths, In Ovid's Metamorphoses Athena is occasionally referred to as "Tritonia."
Another possible meaning may be triple-born or third-born, which may refer to a triad or to her status as the third daughter of Zeus or the fact she was born from Metis, Zeus, and herself; various legends list her as being the first child after Artemis and Apollo, though other legends identify her as Zeus' first child. The latter would have to be drawn from Classical myths, however, rather than earlier ones.
In her role as judge at Orestes' trial on the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra (which he won), Athena won the epithet Athena Areia.
Other epithets were Ageleia and Itonia.
Athena was given many other cult titles. She had the epithet Athena Ergane as the patron of craftsmen and artisans. With the epithet Athena Parthenos ("virgin")she was especially worshipped in the festivals of the Panathenaea and Pamboeotia where both militaristic and athletic displays took place. With the epithet Athena Promachos she led in battle. With the epithet Athena Polias ("of the city"), Athena was the protector of not only Athens but also of many other cities, including Argos, Sparta, Gortyn, Lindos, and Larisa.
She was given the epithet Athena Hippeia or Athena Hippia, horse as the inventor of the chariot, and was worshipped under this title at Athens, Tegea and Olympia. As Athena Hippeia she was given an alternative parentage: Poseidon and Polyphe, daughter of Oceanus. In each of these cities her temple frequently was the major temple on the acropolis.
Athena often was equated with Aphaea, a local goddess of the island of Aegina, located near Athens, once Aegina was under Athenian's power. The Greek historian Plutarch (46 AD–120 AD) also refers to an instance during the Parthenon's construction of her being called Athena Hygieia ("healer"):
A strange accident happened in the course of building, which showed that the goddess was not averse to the work, but was aiding and co-operating to bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the handiest workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down from a great height, and lay in a miserable condition, the physicians having no hope of his recovery. When Pericles was in distress about this, the goddess [Athena] appeared to him at night in a dream, and ordered a course of treatment, which he applied, and in a short time and with great ease cured the man. And upon this occasion it was that he set up a brass statue of Athena Hygeia, in the citadel near the altar, which they say was there before. But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess's image in gold, and he has his name inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it.
In classical times the Plynteria, or “Feast of Adorning”, was observed every May, it was a festival lasting five days. During this period the Priestesses of Athena, or “Plyntrides”, performed a cleansing ritual within “the Erecththeum”, the personal sanctuary of the goddess. Here Athena's statue was undressed, her clothes washed, and body purified.
In Arcadia, she was assimilated with the ancient goddess Alea and worshiped as Athena Alea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena
National Museum of Rome – Palazzo Altemps, Rome, Italy
Artist/Maker: Antiochos (signed), copy of Phidias
Description: Athena of the Parthenos Athena type. Pentelic marble, Greek copy from the 1st century BC after the original from the 5th century BC. Some 17th-century restorations: arms, ends of the belt, some folds of the peplos, aegis, tip of the nose.
Athena | Attic mythology | Crafts goddesses | Deities in the Iliad | Greek goddesses | Greek mythology | National personifications | Offspring of Zeus | Smithing goddesses | Twelve Olympians | War goddesses | Wisdom goddesses
Friday, July 5, 2002
Aset (Egyptian)
Aset
Alternative Names:
Auset, Isis(Greek)
Section: Egyptian Mythology
Supreme goddess of magic and wisdom, mother of Heru, associated with the vulture, a protector spirit, and the cobra, the only creature in all creation made by someone other than Amun. She retrieved and remade Ausar's mutilated body with the help of Anpw and her sister Nebt-het, so that his soul, and all who came after, could enjoy the afterlife.
Aset was the Queen of the Gods, and the wife of Asar.
When Asar was killed and Set threatened to become King, Aset threw a party. But she conspired with her sister Nebt-het, the wife of Set. Aset dressed as Nebt-het, and when Set was thourghly drunk, she began her plan. She first asked Set if her son could become king now with Osiris dead. Set, thinking they were discussing Anpw, agreed. It was then she revealed her real identity, and declared Heru King. That act, along with Asar's murder, set off the Heru-Set war.
Alternative Names:
Auset, Isis(Greek)
Section: Egyptian Mythology
Supreme goddess of magic and wisdom, mother of Heru, associated with the vulture, a protector spirit, and the cobra, the only creature in all creation made by someone other than Amun. She retrieved and remade Ausar's mutilated body with the help of Anpw and her sister Nebt-het, so that his soul, and all who came after, could enjoy the afterlife.
Aset was the Queen of the Gods, and the wife of Asar.
When Asar was killed and Set threatened to become King, Aset threw a party. But she conspired with her sister Nebt-het, the wife of Set. Aset dressed as Nebt-het, and when Set was thourghly drunk, she began her plan. She first asked Set if her son could become king now with Osiris dead. Set, thinking they were discussing Anpw, agreed. It was then she revealed her real identity, and declared Heru King. That act, along with Asar's murder, set off the Heru-Set war.
Wednesday, July 3, 2002
Asclepius (Greek)
Asclepius
A god of healing. His symbol is a snake. His parents were Apollo and Coronis. His birth was accompanied by scandal. While carrying him Coronis slept with Ischys. This was considered an insult. The act was reported to Apollo by a crow. Apollo turned all crows, until then white, to black to mark that they were untrustworthy. Apollo then felt compelled to slay Coronis with his arrows. He rescued Asclepius from her funeral pyre.
Asclepius was raised by Chiron. Chiron taught him healing which he went on to perfect. Athena gave him two vials of Gorgon's blood. Blood from the right side of the Gorgon revived life. Blood from the left killed. Asclepius started using the blood to raise dead mortals. For this overstepping of bounds Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.
Apollo could not take revenge on Zeus himself. So he killed the Cyclopes that forged the thunderbolt.
A god of healing. His symbol is a snake. His parents were Apollo and Coronis. His birth was accompanied by scandal. While carrying him Coronis slept with Ischys. This was considered an insult. The act was reported to Apollo by a crow. Apollo turned all crows, until then white, to black to mark that they were untrustworthy. Apollo then felt compelled to slay Coronis with his arrows. He rescued Asclepius from her funeral pyre.
Asclepius was raised by Chiron. Chiron taught him healing which he went on to perfect. Athena gave him two vials of Gorgon's blood. Blood from the right side of the Gorgon revived life. Blood from the left killed. Asclepius started using the blood to raise dead mortals. For this overstepping of bounds Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.
Apollo could not take revenge on Zeus himself. So he killed the Cyclopes that forged the thunderbolt.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
Artemis (Greek)
Artemis (Greek)
Alternative Names(異名):
Artemis (Greek), 아르테미스, Diana (Roman), 디아나, 다이아나, 다이애나,
Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto. Her twin brother is Apollo . She is the lady of the wild things. She is the huntsman of the gods. She is the protector of the young. Like Apollo she hunts with silver arrows. She became associated with the moon. She is a virgin goddess, and the goddess of chastity. She also presides over childbirth, which may seem odd for a virgin, but goes back to causing Leto no pain when she was born. She became associated with Hecate. The cypress is her tree. All wild animals are scared to her, especially the deer.
Alternative Names(異名):
Artemis (Greek), 아르테미스, Diana (Roman), 디아나, 다이아나, 다이애나,
Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto. Her twin brother is Apollo . She is the lady of the wild things. She is the huntsman of the gods. She is the protector of the young. Like Apollo she hunts with silver arrows. She became associated with the moon. She is a virgin goddess, and the goddess of chastity. She also presides over childbirth, which may seem odd for a virgin, but goes back to causing Leto no pain when she was born. She became associated with Hecate. The cypress is her tree. All wild animals are scared to her, especially the deer.
Saturday, June 15, 2002
Prometheus (Greek)
Prometheus
Prometheus was the wisest Titan. His name means "forethought" and he was able to foretell the future. He was the son of Iapetus . When Zeus revolted against Cronus Prometheus deserted the other Titans and fought on Zeus side.
By some accounts he and his brother Epimetheus were delegated by Zeus to create man. In all accounts, Prometheus is known as the protector and benefactor of man. He gave mankind a number of gifts including fire. He also tricked Zeus into allowing man to keep the best part of the animals sacrificed to the gods and to give the gods the worst parts.
For this Zeus punished Prometheus by having him chained to a rock with an eagle tearing at his liver. He was to be left there for all eternity or until he agreed to disclose to Zeus which of Zeus children would try to replace him. He was eventually rescued by Heracles without giving in to Zeus.
Prometheus was the wisest Titan. His name means "forethought" and he was able to foretell the future. He was the son of Iapetus . When Zeus revolted against Cronus Prometheus deserted the other Titans and fought on Zeus side.
By some accounts he and his brother Epimetheus were delegated by Zeus to create man. In all accounts, Prometheus is known as the protector and benefactor of man. He gave mankind a number of gifts including fire. He also tricked Zeus into allowing man to keep the best part of the animals sacrificed to the gods and to give the gods the worst parts.
For this Zeus punished Prometheus by having him chained to a rock with an eagle tearing at his liver. He was to be left there for all eternity or until he agreed to disclose to Zeus which of Zeus children would try to replace him. He was eventually rescued by Heracles without giving in to Zeus.
Sunday, June 9, 2002
Arianrhod (Welsh)
Arianrhod
Alternative Names(異名):
Arianrhod
Arianrhod is a figure in Welsh mythology who plays her most important role in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. She is the daughter of Dôn and the sister of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy; the Welsh Triads give her father as Beli Mawr. In the Mabinogi her uncle Math ap Mathonwy is the King of Gwynedd, and during the course of the story she gives birth to two sons, Dylan Ail Don and Lleu Llaw Gyffes, through magical means.
Mabinogion
According to the Fourth Branch, Arianrhod's uncle Math fab Mathonwy would die if he did not keep his feet in the lap of a virgin when he was not at war. Gilfaethwy falls in love with his original footholder, Goewin, and he and his brother Gwydion engineer a war with King Pryderi of Dyfed, forcing Math to leave his court. In his absence Gilfaethwy rapes Goewin, but is punished severely when Math returns (Math turns him and Gwydion into a series of mated pairs of animals). Math marries Goewin to alleviate her shame, but must find a new virgin to hold his feet.
Gwydion suggests his sister, Arianrhod. To test her virginity, Math tells her to step over his magician's rod. On doing this, however, she immediately gives birth to a young boy, Dylan Ail Don, and an entity which becomes Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Dylan is a sea spirit, who flees to the ocean immediately after he is baptized; Gwydion grabs the entity before anyone else sees it and places it in a chest. Before long it becomes a boy who grows at twice the normal rate; when he is four he is as big as an eight-year-old. Gwydion takes him to see his mother at her home, Caer Arianrhod.
However, Arianrhod is still angry about her humiliation at Math's court. She places a tynged (a geis or curse) on the boy that he will never have a name unless she gives it to him. Gwydion disguises the boy as a shoemaker and returns to Caer Arianrhod; while Arianrhod is being fitted, she sees the boy killing a wren with a single stone and remarks that the fair-haired one ("lleu") has a skillful hand ("llaw gyffes"). Gwydion reveals the disguise, and says she has just given her son a name – Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Arianrhod then places a second tynged on Lleu, that he would never take arms unless she armed him. A few years later Gwydion and Lleu return to Caer Arianrhod, this time disguised as bards. Gwydion is an accomplished storyteller and entertains her court. That night, while everyone sleeps, he conjures a fleet of warships. Arianrhod gives them weapons and armor to help her fight, thereby dispelling her second curse. When Gwydion reveals the trickery, Arianrhod places a final tynged on Lleu: he would never have a wife from any race that is on this earth now. Gwydion and Math eventually break this curse by creating a woman out of oak blossom, broom, and meadowsweet; she is named Blodeuwedd ("flower face"). With her curses, Arianrhod denied Lleu the three aspects of masculinity: a name, arms, and a wife.
In other sources
One of the Welsh Triads, 35 by Rachel Bromwich's numbering, establishes a different family connection for Arianrhod. Her father is named as Beli Mawr, and her brother is Caswallawn (the historical Cassivellaunus). She has two sons by Lliaws son of Nwyfre, Gwenwynwyn and Gwanar, who both accompany Caswallawn in his pursuit of Julius Caesar, who has been chased from Britain. This triad is the only source connecting Arianrhod to Beli Mawr and the Caswallawn saga, but it is not incompatible with the tradition recorded in the Mabinogion. The stories of Welsh mythology changed over time, and the Mabinogion does not contain the only version of them. Welsh scholar William John Gruffydd noted that 15th- and 16th-century poets apparently knew an alternate tradition in which Arianrhod actually became Math's footholder. Additionally, some scholars have suggested that in an earlier form of the Fourth Branch, Gwydion was the father of Arianrhod's sons.
Arianrhod's palace, Caer Arianrhod, is connected with a rock formation visible off the coast of northern Gwynedd at low tide. This formation is one of several landmarks that attest to the localization of the events in the Fourth Branch in this area. The name "Caer Arianrhod" is also used in Welsh for the constellation Corona Borealis.
Etymology
The name "Arianrhod" (from the Welsh arian, "silver," and rhod, "wheel") may be cognate with Proto-Celtic *Arganto-rotā, meaning "silver wheel." Alternately, the earliest form of the name may have been Aranrot, in which case the first part of the name would be related to "Aran."
Tag
Names | Welsh goddesses | Welsh mythology |
Alternative Names(異名):
Arianrhod
Arianrhod is a figure in Welsh mythology who plays her most important role in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. She is the daughter of Dôn and the sister of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy; the Welsh Triads give her father as Beli Mawr. In the Mabinogi her uncle Math ap Mathonwy is the King of Gwynedd, and during the course of the story she gives birth to two sons, Dylan Ail Don and Lleu Llaw Gyffes, through magical means.
Mabinogion
According to the Fourth Branch, Arianrhod's uncle Math fab Mathonwy would die if he did not keep his feet in the lap of a virgin when he was not at war. Gilfaethwy falls in love with his original footholder, Goewin, and he and his brother Gwydion engineer a war with King Pryderi of Dyfed, forcing Math to leave his court. In his absence Gilfaethwy rapes Goewin, but is punished severely when Math returns (Math turns him and Gwydion into a series of mated pairs of animals). Math marries Goewin to alleviate her shame, but must find a new virgin to hold his feet.
Gwydion suggests his sister, Arianrhod. To test her virginity, Math tells her to step over his magician's rod. On doing this, however, she immediately gives birth to a young boy, Dylan Ail Don, and an entity which becomes Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Dylan is a sea spirit, who flees to the ocean immediately after he is baptized; Gwydion grabs the entity before anyone else sees it and places it in a chest. Before long it becomes a boy who grows at twice the normal rate; when he is four he is as big as an eight-year-old. Gwydion takes him to see his mother at her home, Caer Arianrhod.
However, Arianrhod is still angry about her humiliation at Math's court. She places a tynged (a geis or curse) on the boy that he will never have a name unless she gives it to him. Gwydion disguises the boy as a shoemaker and returns to Caer Arianrhod; while Arianrhod is being fitted, she sees the boy killing a wren with a single stone and remarks that the fair-haired one ("lleu") has a skillful hand ("llaw gyffes"). Gwydion reveals the disguise, and says she has just given her son a name – Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Arianrhod then places a second tynged on Lleu, that he would never take arms unless she armed him. A few years later Gwydion and Lleu return to Caer Arianrhod, this time disguised as bards. Gwydion is an accomplished storyteller and entertains her court. That night, while everyone sleeps, he conjures a fleet of warships. Arianrhod gives them weapons and armor to help her fight, thereby dispelling her second curse. When Gwydion reveals the trickery, Arianrhod places a final tynged on Lleu: he would never have a wife from any race that is on this earth now. Gwydion and Math eventually break this curse by creating a woman out of oak blossom, broom, and meadowsweet; she is named Blodeuwedd ("flower face"). With her curses, Arianrhod denied Lleu the three aspects of masculinity: a name, arms, and a wife.
In other sources
One of the Welsh Triads, 35 by Rachel Bromwich's numbering, establishes a different family connection for Arianrhod. Her father is named as Beli Mawr, and her brother is Caswallawn (the historical Cassivellaunus). She has two sons by Lliaws son of Nwyfre, Gwenwynwyn and Gwanar, who both accompany Caswallawn in his pursuit of Julius Caesar, who has been chased from Britain. This triad is the only source connecting Arianrhod to Beli Mawr and the Caswallawn saga, but it is not incompatible with the tradition recorded in the Mabinogion. The stories of Welsh mythology changed over time, and the Mabinogion does not contain the only version of them. Welsh scholar William John Gruffydd noted that 15th- and 16th-century poets apparently knew an alternate tradition in which Arianrhod actually became Math's footholder. Additionally, some scholars have suggested that in an earlier form of the Fourth Branch, Gwydion was the father of Arianrhod's sons.
Arianrhod's palace, Caer Arianrhod, is connected with a rock formation visible off the coast of northern Gwynedd at low tide. This formation is one of several landmarks that attest to the localization of the events in the Fourth Branch in this area. The name "Caer Arianrhod" is also used in Welsh for the constellation Corona Borealis.
Etymology
The name "Arianrhod" (from the Welsh arian, "silver," and rhod, "wheel") may be cognate with Proto-Celtic *Arganto-rotā, meaning "silver wheel." Alternately, the earliest form of the name may have been Aranrot, in which case the first part of the name would be related to "Aran."
Tag
Names | Welsh goddesses | Welsh mythology |
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
Ares (Greek)
Ares
Alternative Names:
Ares, 아레스
Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. He was disliked by both parents. He is the god of war. He is considered murderous and bloodstained but, also a coward. When caught in an act of adultery with Aphrodite her husband Hephaestus is able publicly ridicule him. His bird is the vulture. His animal is the dog.
Alternative Names:
Ares, 아레스
Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera. He was disliked by both parents. He is the god of war. He is considered murderous and bloodstained but, also a coward. When caught in an act of adultery with Aphrodite her husband Hephaestus is able publicly ridicule him. His bird is the vulture. His animal is the dog.
Saturday, May 18, 2002
Verðandi (Norse)
Verðandi
In Norse mythology, Verðandi (Old Norse, meaning possibly "happening" or "present"), sometimes anglicized as Verdandi or Verthandi, is a norn. Along with Urðr (Old Norse "fate") and Skuld (possibly "debt" or "future"), Verðandi makes up a trio of Norns that are described as deciding the fates (wyrd) of people.
Etymology
Verðandi is literally the present tense of the Old Norse verb "verða", "to become", and is commonly translated as "in the making" or "that which is happening/becoming"; it is related to the Dutch word worden and the German word werden, both meaning "to become".
Attestation
Völuspá
She appears in the following verse from the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, along with Urðr and Skuld:
Þaðan koma meyjar
margs vitandi
þrjár, ór þeim sal
er und þolli stendr;
Urð hétu eina,
aðra Verðandi,
skáru á skíði,
Skuld ina þriðju;
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja.
Thence come maidens
much knowing
three from the hall
which under that tree stands;
Urd hight the one,
the second Verdandi,
on a tablet they graved,
Skuld the third;
Laws they established,
life allotted
to the sons of men,
destinies pronounced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver%C3%B0andi
Anime and Manga
Oh My Goddess!, Ah! My Goddess : Belldandy
Belldandy (ベルダンディー Berudandī) is a character in the popular manga Oh My Goddess! (OMG) and in the anime Ah! My Goddess. She was created by Kosuke Fujishima as one of three Goddesses who come to Earth to reside with Keiichi Morisato, and she serves as his love interest. She is depicted as a beautiful and powerful young woman, with strong nurturing tendencies, a trusting and innocent character, and an extremely kind heart. Belldandy is accidentally summoned from heaven by Keiichi in order to grant him a wish and stays when Keiichi wishes for "a goddess like you to be by my side forever". The stories follow Belldandy as she builds a relationship with Keiichi, using her powers (which include teleportation, telekinesis and levitation) to help both Keiichi and his friends while keeping her true identity a secret.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belldandy
In Norse mythology, Verðandi (Old Norse, meaning possibly "happening" or "present"), sometimes anglicized as Verdandi or Verthandi, is a norn. Along with Urðr (Old Norse "fate") and Skuld (possibly "debt" or "future"), Verðandi makes up a trio of Norns that are described as deciding the fates (wyrd) of people.
Etymology
Verðandi is literally the present tense of the Old Norse verb "verða", "to become", and is commonly translated as "in the making" or "that which is happening/becoming"; it is related to the Dutch word worden and the German word werden, both meaning "to become".
Attestation
Völuspá
She appears in the following verse from the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, along with Urðr and Skuld:
Þaðan koma meyjar
margs vitandi
þrjár, ór þeim sal
er und þolli stendr;
Urð hétu eina,
aðra Verðandi,
skáru á skíði,
Skuld ina þriðju;
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja.
Thence come maidens
much knowing
three from the hall
which under that tree stands;
Urd hight the one,
the second Verdandi,
on a tablet they graved,
Skuld the third;
Laws they established,
life allotted
to the sons of men,
destinies pronounced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver%C3%B0andi
The norns of Norse mythology.
By J.L. Lund (1777-1867)
Anime and Manga
Belldandy (ベルダンディー Berudandī) is a character in the popular manga Oh My Goddess! (OMG) and in the anime Ah! My Goddess. She was created by Kosuke Fujishima as one of three Goddesses who come to Earth to reside with Keiichi Morisato, and she serves as his love interest. She is depicted as a beautiful and powerful young woman, with strong nurturing tendencies, a trusting and innocent character, and an extremely kind heart. Belldandy is accidentally summoned from heaven by Keiichi in order to grant him a wish and stays when Keiichi wishes for "a goddess like you to be by my side forever". The stories follow Belldandy as she builds a relationship with Keiichi, using her powers (which include teleportation, telekinesis and levitation) to help both Keiichi and his friends while keeping her true identity a secret.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belldandy
Monday, April 15, 2002
Apollon (Greek)
Apollon
Alternative Names:
Apollo, 아폴론, 아폴로, Phoebus, 포에부스, Phoibos, 포이부스
Apollon is the son of Zeus and Leto. His twin sister is Artemis. He is the god of music, playing a golden lyre. The Archer, far shooting with a silver bow. The god of healing who taught man medicine. The god of light. The god of truth, who can not speak a lie.
One of Apollon's more important daily tasks is to harness his chariot with four horses an drive the Sun across the sky.
He is famous for his oracle at Delphi. People traveled to it from all over the Greek world to divine the future.
His tree was the laurel. The crow was his bird. The dolphin was his animal.
Alternative Names:
Apollo, 아폴론, 아폴로, Phoebus, 포에부스, Phoibos, 포이부스
Apollon is the son of Zeus and Leto. His twin sister is Artemis. He is the god of music, playing a golden lyre. The Archer, far shooting with a silver bow. The god of healing who taught man medicine. The god of light. The god of truth, who can not speak a lie.
One of Apollon's more important daily tasks is to harness his chariot with four horses an drive the Sun across the sky.
He is famous for his oracle at Delphi. People traveled to it from all over the Greek world to divine the future.
His tree was the laurel. The crow was his bird. The dolphin was his animal.
Apollo and Aurora by Gérard de Lairesse
Monday, April 8, 2002
Aphrodite (Greek)
Aphrodite
Abode: Mount Olympus
Symbol: Dolphin, Rose, Scallop Shell, Myrtle, Dove, Sparrow, mirror, and Swan
Consort: Hephaestus, Ares, Hermes, Dionysus and Anchises
Parents: Uranus
Siblings: The Woodlnad Nymphs, The Furies and The Gigantes
Children: Eros, Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, Anesta, Himeros, Hermaphroditos, Rhode, Peitho, Tyche, Eunomia, Charets and Aeneas
Roman equivalent: Venus
Goddess of love and beauty
Aphrodite (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη, IPA: [apʰrodíːtɛː]; English: /ˌæfrɵˈdaɪtiː/; Latin: Venus) is the Greek goddess of love, desire, lust, beauty and sexuality.[2][3] According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros (sea foam) arose Aphrodite.[4]
Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Her unhappiness in marriage caused her to frequently seek out the companionship of her lover Ares. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and his surrogate mother.
Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two places, Cythera and Cyprus, which claim her birth. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite.[5]
Origin
Aphrodite has numerous equivalents: Inanna (Sumerian counterpart), Astarte (Phoenician), Astghik (Armenian), Turan (Etruscan), and Venus (Roman). She has parallels with Indo-European dawn goddesses such as Ushas or Aurora. The Hellenes were well aware that her origins lay in the East: according to Pausanias, the first to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[6] It was said Aphrodite could make any man fall in love with her at his first sight of her.
Aphrodite also has many other names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea, Pandemos and Cerigo. These names were used in specific areas of Greece. When the Greek cities combined, these lesser names were abandoned and a single name, Aphrodite, was adopted. Each goddess represented a slightly different religion but with overall similarities.
Etymology
The name Άφροδίτη was connected by folk etymology with ἀφρός (aphros) "foam," interpreting it as "risen from the foam" and embodying it in an etiological myth that was already known to Hesiod.[7] Another folk etymology found in the Etymologicum Magnum and attributed to Didymus attempts to etymologize Aphrodite from the Greek compound ἁβροδίαιτος habrodiaitos ("she who lives delicately" from ἁβρός habros + δίαιτα diaita) explaining the alternation between b and ph as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians".[8] Aphros has reflexes in Messapic and Etruscan (whence April), which were probably borrowed from Greek.
Though Herodotus was aware of the Phoenician origins of Aphrodite,[9] linguistic attempts to derive the name Aphrodite from Semitic Aštoret, via undocumented Hittite transmission, remain inconclusive. If Semitic, a not implausible etymology would be from Assyrian barīrītu, a female demon found in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts (see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary vol. 2 p. 111). The name probably means "she who (comes) at dusk," a manifestation of the planet Venus as the evening star, a well known attribute of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar.
A suggestion by M. Hammarström,[10] rejected by Hjalmar Frisk, connects the name with πρύτανις, a loan into Greek from a cognate of Etruscan (e)pruni, "lord" or similar. An etymology from Indo-European abhor "very" + dhei "to shine" is offered by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams.[11]
Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos
By the late 5th century BC, philosophers might separate Aphrodite into two separate goddesses, not individuated in cult: Aphrodite Ourania, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Ouranos, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the common Aphrodite "of all the folk," born from Zeus and Dione.[12] Among the neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul, while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love. The representation of Aphrodite Ouranos, with a foot resting on a tortoise, was read later as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; the image is credited to Phidias, in a chryselephantine sculpture made for Elis, of which we have only a passing remark by Pausanias.[13]
Thus, according to the character Pausanias in Plato's Symposium,[14] Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older the other younger. The older, Urania, is the "heavenly" daughter of Ouranos, and inspires homosexual male (and more specifically, ephebic) love/eros; the younger is named Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and all love for women comes from her. Pandemos is the common Aphrodite. The speech of Pausanias distinguishes two manifestations of Aphrodite, represented by the two stories: Aphrodite Ourania ("heavenly" Aphrodite), and Aphrodite Pandemos ("Common" Aphrodite).[15]
Myths
Birth
"Foam-arisen" Aphrodite was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea, while the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood. Hesiod's Theogony described that the genitals "were carried over the sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew" to become Aphrodite. Aphrodite floated in on a scallop shell. When she arose, she was hailed as "Cyprian," and is referred to as such often, especially in the poetic works of Sappho. This myth of a fully mature Venus (the Roman name for Aphrodite), Venus Anadyomene[16] ("Venus Rising From the Sea") was one of the iconic representations of Aphrodite, made famous in a much-admired painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.
Thus Aphrodite is of an older generation than Zeus. Iliad (Book V) expresses another version of her origin, by which she was considered a daughter of Dione, who was the original oracular goddess ("Dione" being simply "the goddess, the feminine form of Δíος, "Dios," the genitive of Zeus) at Dodona. Aphrodite herself was sometimes referred to as "Dione." Once the worship of Zeus had usurped the oak-grove oracle at Dodona, some poets made him out to be the father of Aphrodite.
In Homer, Aphrodite, venturing into battle to protect her son, Aeneas, is wounded by Diomedes and returns to her mother, to sink down at her knee and be comforted. "Dione" seems to be an equivalent of Rhea, the Earth Mother, whom Homer has relocated to Olympus, and refers to a hypothesized original Proto-Indo-European pantheon, with the chief male god (Di-) represented by the sky and thunder, and the chief female god (feminine form of Di-) represented as the earth or fertile soil.
Aphrodite's chief center of worship remained at Paphos, on the south-western coast of Cyprus, where the goddess of desire had been worshipped from the early Iron Age as Ishtar and Ashtaroth. It was said that, as Kythereia, she first tentatively came ashore at Cythera,[17] a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus. Thus perhaps we have hints of the track of Aphrodite's original cult from the Levant to mainland Greece.
In other tales, Aphrodite was a daughter of Thalassa and Zeus.
Adulthood
Aphrodite had no childhood: in every image and each reference she is born adult, nubile, and infinitely desirable. Aphrodite, in many of the late anecdotal myths involving her, is characterized as vain, ill-tempered and easily offended. Though she is one of the few gods of the Greek Pantheon to be actually married, she is frequently unfaithful to her husband. Hephaestus is one of the most even-tempered of the Hellenic deities; in the narrative embedded in the Odyssey Aphrodite seems to prefer Ares, the volatile god of war. She is one of a few characters who played a major part in the original cause of the Trojan War itself: not only did she offer Helen of Sparta to Paris, but the abduction was accomplished when Paris, seeing Helen for the first time, was inflamed with desire to have her—which is Aphrodite's realm.
Due to her immense beauty, Zeus was frightened that she would be the cause of violence between the other gods. He married her off to Hephaestus, the dour, humorless god of smithing. In another version of this story, Hera, Hephaestus' mother, had cast him off Olympus; deeming him ugly and deformed. His revenge was to trap her in a magic throne, and then to demand Aphrodite's hand in return for Hera's release. Hephaestus was overjoyed at being married to the goddess of beauty and forged her beautiful jewelry, including the cestus, a girdle that made her even more irresistible to men. Her unhappiness with her marriage caused Aphrodite to seek out companionship from others, most frequently Ares, but also Adonis.
Worship
The epithet Aphrodite Acidalia was occasionally added to her name, after the spring she used to bathe in, located in Boeotia (Virgil I, 720). She was also called Kypris or Cytherea after her birth-places in Cyprus and Cythera, respectively, both centers of her cult. She was associated with Hesperia and frequently accompanied by the Oreads, nymphs of the mountains. Her festival, Aphrodisia, was celebrated across Greece but particularly in Athens and Corinth. At the temple of Aphrodite on the summit of Acrocorinth (before the Roman destruction of the city in 146 BC) intercourse with her priestesses was considered a method of worshiping Aphrodite. This temple was not rebuilt when the city was reestablished under Roman rule in 44 BC, but it is likely that the fertility rituals continued in the main city near the agora.
Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with, the sea, dolphins, doves, swans, pomegranates, apples, myrtle, rose trees, lime trees, clams, scallop shells, and pearls.
Cult of Aphrodite
One aspect of the cult of Aphrodite and her precedents that Thomas Bulfinch's much-reprinted The Age of Fable; or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855 etc.) elided[18] was the practice of ritual prostitution in her shrines and temples. The euphemism in Greek is hierodule, "sacred servant." The practice was an inherent part of the rituals owed to Aphrodite's Near Eastern forebears, Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar, whose temple priestesses were the "women of Ishtar," ishtaritum.[19] The practice has been documented in Babylon, Syria and Palestine, in Phoenician cities and the Tyrian colony Carthage, and for Hellenic Aphrodite in Cyprus, the center of her cult, Cythera, Corinth and in Sicily (Marcovich 1996:49). Aphrodite is everywhere the patroness of the hetaira and courtesan. In Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor, hierodules served in the temple of Artemis. The practice however is not attested in Athens and can be considered a foreign import.
Aphrodite and Psyche
Aphrodite figures as a secondary character in the Tale of Eros and Psyche, which first appeared as a digressive story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D.. In it Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of a mortal woman named Psyche. She asked Eros to use his golden arrows to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest man on earth. Eros agreed, but then fell in love with Psyche on his own, by accidentally pricking himself with a golden arrow.
Meanwhile, Psyche's parents were anxious that their daughter remained unmarried. They consulted an oracle who told them she was destined for no mortal lover, but a creature that lived on top of a particular mountain, that even the gods themselves feared. Eros had arranged for the oracle to say this. Psyche was resigned to her fate and climbed to the top of the mountain. She told the townsfolk that followed her to leave and let her face her fate on her own. There, Zephyrus, the west wind, gently floated her downwards. She entered a cave on the appointed mountain, surprised to find it full of jewelry and finery. Eros visited her every night in the cave and they made passionate love; he demanded only that she never light any lamps because he did not want her to know who he was (having wings made him distinctive). Her two sisters, jealous of Psyche, convinced her that her husband was a monster, and she should strike him with a dagger. So one night she lit a lamp, but recognizing Eros instantly, she dropped her dagger. Oil spilled from the lamp onto his shoulder, awaking him, and he fled, saying "Love cannot live where there is no trust!"
When Psyche told her two jealous elder sisters what had happened, they rejoiced secretly and each separately walked to the top of the mountain and did as Psyche described her entry to the cave, hoping Eros would pick them instead. Eros was still heart broken and did not pick them and they fell to their deaths at the base of the mountain.
Psyche searched for her love across much of Greece, finally stumbling into a temple to Demeter, where the floor was covered with piles of mixed grains. She started sorting the grains into organized piles and, when she finished, Demeter spoke to her, telling her that the best way to find Eros was to find his mother, Aphrodite, and earn her blessing. Psyche found a temple to Aphrodite and entered it. Aphrodite assigned her a similar task to Demeter's temple, but gave her an impossible deadline to finish it by. Eros intervened, for he still loved her, and caused some ants to organize the grains for her. Aphrodite was outraged at her success and told her to go to a field where deadly golden sheep grazed and get some golden wool. Psyche went to the field and saw the sheep but was stopped by a river-god, whose river she had to cross to enter the field. He told her the sheep were mean and vicious and would kill her, but if she waited until noontime, the sheep would go into the shade on the other side of the field and sleep; she could pick the wool that stuck to the branches and bark of the trees. Psyche did so and Aphrodite was even more outraged at her survival and success.
Finally, Aphrodite claimed that the stress of caring for her son, depressed and ill as a result of Psyche's unfaithfulness, had caused her to lose some of her beauty. Psyche was to go to Hades and ask Persephone, the queen of the underworld, for a bit of her beauty in a black box that Aphrodite gave to Psyche. Psyche walked to a tower, deciding that the quickest way to the underworld would be to die. A voice stopped her at the last moment and told her a route that would allow her to enter and return still living, as well as telling her how to pass the three-headed dog Cerberus, Charon and the other dangers of the route. She was to not lend a hand to anyone in need. She baked two barley cakes for Cerberus, and took two coins for Charon. She pacified Cerberus with the barley cake and paid Charon to take her to Hades. On the way there, she saw hands reaching out of the water. A voice told her to toss a barley cake to them. She refused. Once there, Persephone said she would be glad to do Aphrodite a favor. She once more paid Charon, and gave the other barley cake to Cerberus.
Psyche left the underworld and decided to open the box and take a little bit of the beauty for herself, thinking that if she did so Eros would surely love her. Inside was a "Stygian sleep" which overtook her. Eros, who had forgiven her, flew to her body and wiped the sleep from her eyes, then begged Zeus and Aphrodite for their consent to his wedding of Psyche. They agreed and Zeus made her immortal. Aphrodite danced at the wedding of Eros and Psyche, and their subsequent child was named Pleasure, or (in the Roman mythology) Voluptas.
Adonis
Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother to him. Cinyras, the King of Cyprus, had an intoxicatingly beautiful daughter named Myrrha. When Myrrha's mother commits Hubris against Aphrodite by claiming her daughter is more beautiful than the famed goddess, Myrrha is punished with a never ending lust for her own father. Cinyras is repulsed by this, but Myrrha disguises herself as a prostitute, and secretly sleeps with her father at night. Eventually, Myrrha becomes pregnant and is discovered by Cinyras. In a rage, he chases her out of the house with a knife. Myrrha flees from him, praying to the gods for mercy as she runs. The gods hear her plea, and change her into a Myrrh tree so her father cannot kill her.
Eventually, Cinyras takes his own life in an attempt to restore the family's honor.
Myrrha gives birth to a baby boy named Adonis. Aphrodite happens by the Myrrh tree and, seeing him, takes pity on the infant. She places Adonis in a box, and takes him down to Hades so that Persephone can care for him. Adonis grows into a strikingly handsome young man, and Aphrodite eventually returns for him. Persephone, however, is loath to give him up, and wishes Adonis would stay with her in the underworld. The two goddesses begin such a quarrel that Zeus is forced to intercede. He decrees that Adonis will spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third of the year with Persephone, and a third of the year with whomever he wishes. Adonis, of course, chooses Aphrodite.
Adonis begins his year on the earth with Aphrodite. One of his greatest passions is hunting, and although Aphrodite is not naturally a hunter, she takes up the sport just so she can be with Adonis. They spend every waking hour with one another, and Aphrodite is enraptured with him. However, her anxiety begins to grow over her neglected duties, and she is forced to leave him for a short time. Before she leaves, she gives Adonis one warning: do not attack an animal who shows no fear. Adonis agrees to her advice, but, secretly doubting her skills as a huntress, quickly forgets her warning.
Not long after Aphrodite leaves, Adonis comes across an enormous wild boar, much larger than any he has ever seen. It is suggested that the boar is the god Ares, one of Aphrodite's lovers made jealous through her constant doting on Adonis. Although boars are dangerous and will charge a hunter if provoked, Adonis disregards Aphrodite's warning and pursues the giant creature. Soon, however, Adonis is the one being pursued; he is no match for the giant boar. In the attack, Adonis is castrated by the boar, and dies from a loss of blood. Aphrodite rushes back to his side, but she is too late to save him and can only mourn over his body. Wherever Adonis' blood falls, Aphrodite causes anemones to grow in his memory. She vows that on the anniversary of his death, every year there will be a festival held in his honor.
On his death, Adonis goes back to the underworld, and Persephone is delighted to see him again. Eventually, Aphrodite realizes that he is there, and rushes back to retrieve him. Again, she and Persephone bicker over who is allowed to keep Adonis until Zeus intervenes. This time, he says that Adonis must spend six months with Aphrodite and six months with Persephone, the way it should have been in the first place.
Adonis, as a dying god archetype, represents the cycle of vegetation. His birth is like the birth of new plants; his maturation like the ripening of the plant. Once the crop is harvested, it dies—like Adonis returning to the underworld. The new seeds are then placed again in the ground, where they grow into new life, like Adonis returning to the earth to be with Aphrodite.
The Judgement of Paris
The gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only the goddess Eris (Discord) was not invited, but she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word kallistēi ("to the fairest one") which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple.
The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris. Hera tried to bribe Paris with Asia Minor, while Athena offered wisdom, fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite whispered to Paris that if he were to choose her as the fairest he would have the most beautiful mortal woman in the world as a wife, and he accordingly chose her. This woman was Helen. The other goddesses were enraged by this and through Helen's abduction by Paris they brought about the Trojan War.
Pygmalion and Galatea
Pygmalion was a sculptor who had never found a woman worthy of his love. Aphrodite took pity on him and decided to show him the wonders of love. One day, Pygmalion was inspired by a dream of Aphrodite to make a woman out of ivory resembling her image, and he called her Galatea. He fell in love with the statue and decided he could not live without her. He prayed to Aphrodite, who carried out the final phase of her plan and brought the exquisite sculpture to life. Pygmalion loved Galatea and they were soon married.
Another version of this myth tells that the women of the village in which Pygmalion lived grew angry that he had not married. They all asked Aphrodite to force him to marry. Aphrodite accepted and went that very night to Pygmalion, and asked him to pick a woman to marry. She told him that if he did not pick one, she would do so for him. Not wanting to be married, he begged her for more time, asking that he be allowed to make a sculpture of Aphrodite before he had to choose his bride. Flattered, she accepted.
Pygmalion spent a lot of time making small clay sculptures of the Goddess, claiming it was needed so he could pick the right pose. As he started making the actual sculpture he was shocked to discover he actually wanted to finish, even though he knew he would have to marry someone when he finished. The reason he wanted to finish it was that he had fallen in love with the sculpture. The more he worked on it, the more it changed, until it no longer resembled Aphrodite at all.
At the very moment Pygmalion stepped away from the finished sculpture Aphrodite appeared and told him to choose his bride. Pygmalion chose the statue. Aphrodite told him that could not be, and asked him again to choose a bride. Pygmalion put his arms around the statue, and asked Aphrodite to turn him into a statue so he could be with her. Aphrodite took pity on him and brought the statue to life instead.
Consorts and children
Ares
Eros, Phobos (Fright), Deimos (Dread), Harmonia (Harmony), Arethousa, Adrestia, Anteros (requited and unrequited love), Himerus (Lust), Atesia
Butes (or Poseidon)
Eryx
Hermes
Tyche, Rhodes, Eunomia, Hermaphroditus, Peitho, Priapus (in some traditions)
Dionysus
The Charites, Hymenaios, Priapus, Aglaea, Euphrosyne
Adonis
Beroe
Anchises
Aeneas
Other Tales
In one version of the story of Hippolytus, she was the catalyst for his death. He scorned the worship of Aphrodite for Artemis and, in revenge, Aphrodite caused his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus would reject her. In the most popular version of the story, as told in the play Hippolytus by Euripides, Phaedra seeks revenge against Hippolytus by killing herself and, in her suicide note, telling Theseus, her husband and Hippolytus' father, that Hippolytus had raped her. Hippolytus was oath-bound not to mention Phaedra's love for him and nobly refused to defend himself despite the consequences. Theseus then cursed his son, a curse that Poseidon was bound to fulfill and so Hippolytus was laid low by a bull from the sea that caused his chariot-team to panic and wreck his vehicle. This is, interestingly enough not quite how Aphrodite envisaged his death in the play, as in the prologue she says she expects Hippolytus to submit to lust with Phaedra and for Theseus to catch the pair in the act. Hippolytus forgives his father before he dies and Artemis reveals the truth to Theseus before vowing to kill the one Aphrodite loves (Adonis) for revenge.
Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite and she made her horses angry during the funeral games of King Pelias. They tore him apart. His ghost supposedly frightened horses during the Isthmian Games.
Surnames and titles
Acidalia, of the Acidalia spring
Anadyomene (Ἀναδυομένη), the emerging as in Aphrodite Anadyomene, a painting by Apelles
Cytherea (Κυθήρεια), of Cythera
Despina (Δέσποινα), the mistress
Kypris (Κύπρις), of Cyprus
Hetaira (Ἑταίρα), the courtesan
Aphrodite Porne (Πόρνη), the prostitute, Goddess of lust
Kalligloutos (Καλλίγλουτος), of the beautiful thighs
Morpho (Μορφώ), the shapely, she of the various shapes
Ambologera, she who postpones old age
Aphrodite en kepois (Ἀφροδίτη ἐν Κήποις), of the gardens
Genetyllis, of motherhood
Epitragidia, she upon the buck (young male goat)
Enoplios (Ἐνόπλιος), the armed one
Melaina (Μέλαινα), the black one (similar to Epitymbidia and Melainis)
Melainis (Μελαινίς), the young black one (similar to Epitymbidia and Melaina)
Skotia (Σκοτία), the dark
Anosia (Ἀνόσια), the unholy
Androphonos (Ἀνδροφόνος), the killer of men
Tymborychos (Τυμβωρύχος), the gravedigger
Epitymbidia, she upon the graves (similar to Melaina and Melainis)
Basilis (Βασιλίς), the queen
Persephaessa (Περσεφάεσσα), the queen of the underworld
Praxis (Πράξις), of (sexual) action
Kallipygos (Καλλίπυγος), of the beautiful buttocks
Pandemos (Πάνδημος), common to all, a form worshipped near the agora in Athens
Urania (Οὐράνια), the heavenly one
Aphrodite and foreign goddesses
The Ancient Greeks and Romans often equated their deities with foreign ones. Aphrodite was equated by the Greeks to Egyptian Hathor, Assyrian Mylitta, Canaanite/Phoenician Astarte, Arabian Alilat, and Roman Venus.
Images
Aphrodite of the Syracuse type. Parian marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Greek original of the 4th century BC; neck, head and left arm are restorations by Antonio Canova. Found at Baiae, Southern Italy.
References
Notes
1.^ According to Olympian mythology, but also sprung from Ouranos's seed.
2^ Pantheon.org
3^ "Aphrodite"
4^ The implied etymology of Aphrodite is not considered authentic by modern linguists.
5^ Reginald Eldred Witt, Isis in the ancient world (Johns Hopkins University Press)1997:125. ISBN 0801856426
6^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, XIV.7
7^ Hesiod, Theogony, 176ff.
8^ Etymologicum Magnum, Ἀφροδίτη
9^ Herodotus, Histories, I.105 and .131. The traditional resistance of nineteenth-century Hellenists to Eastern sources of Greek culture is expressed by A. Enmann, Kypros und der Ursprung des Aphroditekultes (1881), among others; the series of waves of resistance in favour of a "pure, classical Greece in splendid isolation" (Burkert) is discussed by Walter Burkert in his introduction to The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992), especially in pp 1-6.
10^ In Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 11, 21 5f.
11^ Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997.
12^ E.g. Plato, Symposium 181a-d.
13^ Pausanias, Periegesis vi.25.1; Aphrodite Pandemos was represented in the same temple riding on a goat, symbol of purely carnal rut: "The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess," Pausanias remarks. The image was taken up again after the Renaissance: see Andrea Alciato, Emblemata / Les emblemes (1584).
14^ Plato, Symposium 180e.
15^ Richard L. Hunter, Plato's Symposium, Oxford University Press: 2004, p. 44
16^ Αναδυόμενη (Anadyómenē), "rising up".
17^ Homer, Odyssey viii. 288; Herodotus i. 105; Pausanias iii. 23. § 1 ; Anacreon v. 9; Horace, Carmina i. 4. 5.
18^ "Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation." Bulfinch's obituary in the Boston Evening Standard noted that the contents were "expurgated of all that would be offensive".
19^ Miroslav Marcovich, "From Ishtar to Aphrodite" Journal of Aesthetic Education 30.2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II (Summer 1996) p 49.
20^ The word callipygian is defined as "having shapely buttocks" by Merriam-Webster.
21^ Conventionally presumed to be Venus, though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman, such as a hetaira, or an image of the goddess modeled on one such
22^ The gesture of Aphrodite/Venus lifting of the robe symbolized religious initiation and the ancient Greeks worshiped the woman's "rich" buttocks to obtain great wealth on earth as the two Syracusan sisters who inspired the Kallipygos idea, had accomplished.
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite
Abode: Mount Olympus
Symbol: Dolphin, Rose, Scallop Shell, Myrtle, Dove, Sparrow, mirror, and Swan
Consort: Hephaestus, Ares, Hermes, Dionysus and Anchises
Parents: Uranus
Siblings: The Woodlnad Nymphs, The Furies and The Gigantes
Children: Eros, Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia, Anesta, Himeros, Hermaphroditos, Rhode, Peitho, Tyche, Eunomia, Charets and Aeneas
Roman equivalent: Venus
Goddess of love and beauty
Aphrodite (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη, IPA: [apʰrodíːtɛː]; English: /ˌæfrɵˈdaɪtiː/; Latin: Venus) is the Greek goddess of love, desire, lust, beauty and sexuality.[2][3] According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros (sea foam) arose Aphrodite.[4]
Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Her unhappiness in marriage caused her to frequently seek out the companionship of her lover Ares. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and his surrogate mother.
Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two places, Cythera and Cyprus, which claim her birth. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite.[5]
Origin
Aphrodite has numerous equivalents: Inanna (Sumerian counterpart), Astarte (Phoenician), Astghik (Armenian), Turan (Etruscan), and Venus (Roman). She has parallels with Indo-European dawn goddesses such as Ushas or Aurora. The Hellenes were well aware that her origins lay in the East: according to Pausanias, the first to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[6] It was said Aphrodite could make any man fall in love with her at his first sight of her.
Aphrodite also has many other names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea, Pandemos and Cerigo. These names were used in specific areas of Greece. When the Greek cities combined, these lesser names were abandoned and a single name, Aphrodite, was adopted. Each goddess represented a slightly different religion but with overall similarities.
Etymology
The name Άφροδίτη was connected by folk etymology with ἀφρός (aphros) "foam," interpreting it as "risen from the foam" and embodying it in an etiological myth that was already known to Hesiod.[7] Another folk etymology found in the Etymologicum Magnum and attributed to Didymus attempts to etymologize Aphrodite from the Greek compound ἁβροδίαιτος habrodiaitos ("she who lives delicately" from ἁβρός habros + δίαιτα diaita) explaining the alternation between b and ph as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians".[8] Aphros has reflexes in Messapic and Etruscan (whence April), which were probably borrowed from Greek.
Though Herodotus was aware of the Phoenician origins of Aphrodite,[9] linguistic attempts to derive the name Aphrodite from Semitic Aštoret, via undocumented Hittite transmission, remain inconclusive. If Semitic, a not implausible etymology would be from Assyrian barīrītu, a female demon found in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts (see Chicago Assyrian Dictionary vol. 2 p. 111). The name probably means "she who (comes) at dusk," a manifestation of the planet Venus as the evening star, a well known attribute of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar.
A suggestion by M. Hammarström,[10] rejected by Hjalmar Frisk, connects the name with πρύτανις, a loan into Greek from a cognate of Etruscan (e)pruni, "lord" or similar. An etymology from Indo-European abhor "very" + dhei "to shine" is offered by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams.[11]
Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos
By the late 5th century BC, philosophers might separate Aphrodite into two separate goddesses, not individuated in cult: Aphrodite Ourania, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Ouranos, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the common Aphrodite "of all the folk," born from Zeus and Dione.[12] Among the neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul, while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love. The representation of Aphrodite Ouranos, with a foot resting on a tortoise, was read later as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; the image is credited to Phidias, in a chryselephantine sculpture made for Elis, of which we have only a passing remark by Pausanias.[13]
Thus, according to the character Pausanias in Plato's Symposium,[14] Aphrodite is two goddesses, one older the other younger. The older, Urania, is the "heavenly" daughter of Ouranos, and inspires homosexual male (and more specifically, ephebic) love/eros; the younger is named Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and all love for women comes from her. Pandemos is the common Aphrodite. The speech of Pausanias distinguishes two manifestations of Aphrodite, represented by the two stories: Aphrodite Ourania ("heavenly" Aphrodite), and Aphrodite Pandemos ("Common" Aphrodite).[15]
Myths
Birth
"Foam-arisen" Aphrodite was born of the sea foam near Paphos, Cyprus after Cronus cut off Ouranos' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea, while the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood. Hesiod's Theogony described that the genitals "were carried over the sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew" to become Aphrodite. Aphrodite floated in on a scallop shell. When she arose, she was hailed as "Cyprian," and is referred to as such often, especially in the poetic works of Sappho. This myth of a fully mature Venus (the Roman name for Aphrodite), Venus Anadyomene[16] ("Venus Rising From the Sea") was one of the iconic representations of Aphrodite, made famous in a much-admired painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.
Thus Aphrodite is of an older generation than Zeus. Iliad (Book V) expresses another version of her origin, by which she was considered a daughter of Dione, who was the original oracular goddess ("Dione" being simply "the goddess, the feminine form of Δíος, "Dios," the genitive of Zeus) at Dodona. Aphrodite herself was sometimes referred to as "Dione." Once the worship of Zeus had usurped the oak-grove oracle at Dodona, some poets made him out to be the father of Aphrodite.
In Homer, Aphrodite, venturing into battle to protect her son, Aeneas, is wounded by Diomedes and returns to her mother, to sink down at her knee and be comforted. "Dione" seems to be an equivalent of Rhea, the Earth Mother, whom Homer has relocated to Olympus, and refers to a hypothesized original Proto-Indo-European pantheon, with the chief male god (Di-) represented by the sky and thunder, and the chief female god (feminine form of Di-) represented as the earth or fertile soil.
Aphrodite's chief center of worship remained at Paphos, on the south-western coast of Cyprus, where the goddess of desire had been worshipped from the early Iron Age as Ishtar and Ashtaroth. It was said that, as Kythereia, she first tentatively came ashore at Cythera,[17] a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus. Thus perhaps we have hints of the track of Aphrodite's original cult from the Levant to mainland Greece.
In other tales, Aphrodite was a daughter of Thalassa and Zeus.
Adulthood
Aphrodite had no childhood: in every image and each reference she is born adult, nubile, and infinitely desirable. Aphrodite, in many of the late anecdotal myths involving her, is characterized as vain, ill-tempered and easily offended. Though she is one of the few gods of the Greek Pantheon to be actually married, she is frequently unfaithful to her husband. Hephaestus is one of the most even-tempered of the Hellenic deities; in the narrative embedded in the Odyssey Aphrodite seems to prefer Ares, the volatile god of war. She is one of a few characters who played a major part in the original cause of the Trojan War itself: not only did she offer Helen of Sparta to Paris, but the abduction was accomplished when Paris, seeing Helen for the first time, was inflamed with desire to have her—which is Aphrodite's realm.
Due to her immense beauty, Zeus was frightened that she would be the cause of violence between the other gods. He married her off to Hephaestus, the dour, humorless god of smithing. In another version of this story, Hera, Hephaestus' mother, had cast him off Olympus; deeming him ugly and deformed. His revenge was to trap her in a magic throne, and then to demand Aphrodite's hand in return for Hera's release. Hephaestus was overjoyed at being married to the goddess of beauty and forged her beautiful jewelry, including the cestus, a girdle that made her even more irresistible to men. Her unhappiness with her marriage caused Aphrodite to seek out companionship from others, most frequently Ares, but also Adonis.
Worship
The epithet Aphrodite Acidalia was occasionally added to her name, after the spring she used to bathe in, located in Boeotia (Virgil I, 720). She was also called Kypris or Cytherea after her birth-places in Cyprus and Cythera, respectively, both centers of her cult. She was associated with Hesperia and frequently accompanied by the Oreads, nymphs of the mountains. Her festival, Aphrodisia, was celebrated across Greece but particularly in Athens and Corinth. At the temple of Aphrodite on the summit of Acrocorinth (before the Roman destruction of the city in 146 BC) intercourse with her priestesses was considered a method of worshiping Aphrodite. This temple was not rebuilt when the city was reestablished under Roman rule in 44 BC, but it is likely that the fertility rituals continued in the main city near the agora.
Aphrodite was associated with, and often depicted with, the sea, dolphins, doves, swans, pomegranates, apples, myrtle, rose trees, lime trees, clams, scallop shells, and pearls.
Cult of Aphrodite
One aspect of the cult of Aphrodite and her precedents that Thomas Bulfinch's much-reprinted The Age of Fable; or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855 etc.) elided[18] was the practice of ritual prostitution in her shrines and temples. The euphemism in Greek is hierodule, "sacred servant." The practice was an inherent part of the rituals owed to Aphrodite's Near Eastern forebears, Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar, whose temple priestesses were the "women of Ishtar," ishtaritum.[19] The practice has been documented in Babylon, Syria and Palestine, in Phoenician cities and the Tyrian colony Carthage, and for Hellenic Aphrodite in Cyprus, the center of her cult, Cythera, Corinth and in Sicily (Marcovich 1996:49). Aphrodite is everywhere the patroness of the hetaira and courtesan. In Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor, hierodules served in the temple of Artemis. The practice however is not attested in Athens and can be considered a foreign import.
Aphrodite and Psyche
Aphrodite figures as a secondary character in the Tale of Eros and Psyche, which first appeared as a digressive story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D.. In it Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of a mortal woman named Psyche. She asked Eros to use his golden arrows to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest man on earth. Eros agreed, but then fell in love with Psyche on his own, by accidentally pricking himself with a golden arrow.
Meanwhile, Psyche's parents were anxious that their daughter remained unmarried. They consulted an oracle who told them she was destined for no mortal lover, but a creature that lived on top of a particular mountain, that even the gods themselves feared. Eros had arranged for the oracle to say this. Psyche was resigned to her fate and climbed to the top of the mountain. She told the townsfolk that followed her to leave and let her face her fate on her own. There, Zephyrus, the west wind, gently floated her downwards. She entered a cave on the appointed mountain, surprised to find it full of jewelry and finery. Eros visited her every night in the cave and they made passionate love; he demanded only that she never light any lamps because he did not want her to know who he was (having wings made him distinctive). Her two sisters, jealous of Psyche, convinced her that her husband was a monster, and she should strike him with a dagger. So one night she lit a lamp, but recognizing Eros instantly, she dropped her dagger. Oil spilled from the lamp onto his shoulder, awaking him, and he fled, saying "Love cannot live where there is no trust!"
When Psyche told her two jealous elder sisters what had happened, they rejoiced secretly and each separately walked to the top of the mountain and did as Psyche described her entry to the cave, hoping Eros would pick them instead. Eros was still heart broken and did not pick them and they fell to their deaths at the base of the mountain.
Psyche searched for her love across much of Greece, finally stumbling into a temple to Demeter, where the floor was covered with piles of mixed grains. She started sorting the grains into organized piles and, when she finished, Demeter spoke to her, telling her that the best way to find Eros was to find his mother, Aphrodite, and earn her blessing. Psyche found a temple to Aphrodite and entered it. Aphrodite assigned her a similar task to Demeter's temple, but gave her an impossible deadline to finish it by. Eros intervened, for he still loved her, and caused some ants to organize the grains for her. Aphrodite was outraged at her success and told her to go to a field where deadly golden sheep grazed and get some golden wool. Psyche went to the field and saw the sheep but was stopped by a river-god, whose river she had to cross to enter the field. He told her the sheep were mean and vicious and would kill her, but if she waited until noontime, the sheep would go into the shade on the other side of the field and sleep; she could pick the wool that stuck to the branches and bark of the trees. Psyche did so and Aphrodite was even more outraged at her survival and success.
Finally, Aphrodite claimed that the stress of caring for her son, depressed and ill as a result of Psyche's unfaithfulness, had caused her to lose some of her beauty. Psyche was to go to Hades and ask Persephone, the queen of the underworld, for a bit of her beauty in a black box that Aphrodite gave to Psyche. Psyche walked to a tower, deciding that the quickest way to the underworld would be to die. A voice stopped her at the last moment and told her a route that would allow her to enter and return still living, as well as telling her how to pass the three-headed dog Cerberus, Charon and the other dangers of the route. She was to not lend a hand to anyone in need. She baked two barley cakes for Cerberus, and took two coins for Charon. She pacified Cerberus with the barley cake and paid Charon to take her to Hades. On the way there, she saw hands reaching out of the water. A voice told her to toss a barley cake to them. She refused. Once there, Persephone said she would be glad to do Aphrodite a favor. She once more paid Charon, and gave the other barley cake to Cerberus.
Psyche left the underworld and decided to open the box and take a little bit of the beauty for herself, thinking that if she did so Eros would surely love her. Inside was a "Stygian sleep" which overtook her. Eros, who had forgiven her, flew to her body and wiped the sleep from her eyes, then begged Zeus and Aphrodite for their consent to his wedding of Psyche. They agreed and Zeus made her immortal. Aphrodite danced at the wedding of Eros and Psyche, and their subsequent child was named Pleasure, or (in the Roman mythology) Voluptas.
Adonis
Aphrodite was Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother to him. Cinyras, the King of Cyprus, had an intoxicatingly beautiful daughter named Myrrha. When Myrrha's mother commits Hubris against Aphrodite by claiming her daughter is more beautiful than the famed goddess, Myrrha is punished with a never ending lust for her own father. Cinyras is repulsed by this, but Myrrha disguises herself as a prostitute, and secretly sleeps with her father at night. Eventually, Myrrha becomes pregnant and is discovered by Cinyras. In a rage, he chases her out of the house with a knife. Myrrha flees from him, praying to the gods for mercy as she runs. The gods hear her plea, and change her into a Myrrh tree so her father cannot kill her.
Eventually, Cinyras takes his own life in an attempt to restore the family's honor.
Myrrha gives birth to a baby boy named Adonis. Aphrodite happens by the Myrrh tree and, seeing him, takes pity on the infant. She places Adonis in a box, and takes him down to Hades so that Persephone can care for him. Adonis grows into a strikingly handsome young man, and Aphrodite eventually returns for him. Persephone, however, is loath to give him up, and wishes Adonis would stay with her in the underworld. The two goddesses begin such a quarrel that Zeus is forced to intercede. He decrees that Adonis will spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third of the year with Persephone, and a third of the year with whomever he wishes. Adonis, of course, chooses Aphrodite.
Adonis begins his year on the earth with Aphrodite. One of his greatest passions is hunting, and although Aphrodite is not naturally a hunter, she takes up the sport just so she can be with Adonis. They spend every waking hour with one another, and Aphrodite is enraptured with him. However, her anxiety begins to grow over her neglected duties, and she is forced to leave him for a short time. Before she leaves, she gives Adonis one warning: do not attack an animal who shows no fear. Adonis agrees to her advice, but, secretly doubting her skills as a huntress, quickly forgets her warning.
Not long after Aphrodite leaves, Adonis comes across an enormous wild boar, much larger than any he has ever seen. It is suggested that the boar is the god Ares, one of Aphrodite's lovers made jealous through her constant doting on Adonis. Although boars are dangerous and will charge a hunter if provoked, Adonis disregards Aphrodite's warning and pursues the giant creature. Soon, however, Adonis is the one being pursued; he is no match for the giant boar. In the attack, Adonis is castrated by the boar, and dies from a loss of blood. Aphrodite rushes back to his side, but she is too late to save him and can only mourn over his body. Wherever Adonis' blood falls, Aphrodite causes anemones to grow in his memory. She vows that on the anniversary of his death, every year there will be a festival held in his honor.
On his death, Adonis goes back to the underworld, and Persephone is delighted to see him again. Eventually, Aphrodite realizes that he is there, and rushes back to retrieve him. Again, she and Persephone bicker over who is allowed to keep Adonis until Zeus intervenes. This time, he says that Adonis must spend six months with Aphrodite and six months with Persephone, the way it should have been in the first place.
Adonis, as a dying god archetype, represents the cycle of vegetation. His birth is like the birth of new plants; his maturation like the ripening of the plant. Once the crop is harvested, it dies—like Adonis returning to the underworld. The new seeds are then placed again in the ground, where they grow into new life, like Adonis returning to the earth to be with Aphrodite.
The Judgement of Paris
The gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only the goddess Eris (Discord) was not invited, but she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word kallistēi ("to the fairest one") which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple.
The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris. Hera tried to bribe Paris with Asia Minor, while Athena offered wisdom, fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite whispered to Paris that if he were to choose her as the fairest he would have the most beautiful mortal woman in the world as a wife, and he accordingly chose her. This woman was Helen. The other goddesses were enraged by this and through Helen's abduction by Paris they brought about the Trojan War.
Pygmalion and Galatea
Pygmalion was a sculptor who had never found a woman worthy of his love. Aphrodite took pity on him and decided to show him the wonders of love. One day, Pygmalion was inspired by a dream of Aphrodite to make a woman out of ivory resembling her image, and he called her Galatea. He fell in love with the statue and decided he could not live without her. He prayed to Aphrodite, who carried out the final phase of her plan and brought the exquisite sculpture to life. Pygmalion loved Galatea and they were soon married.
Another version of this myth tells that the women of the village in which Pygmalion lived grew angry that he had not married. They all asked Aphrodite to force him to marry. Aphrodite accepted and went that very night to Pygmalion, and asked him to pick a woman to marry. She told him that if he did not pick one, she would do so for him. Not wanting to be married, he begged her for more time, asking that he be allowed to make a sculpture of Aphrodite before he had to choose his bride. Flattered, she accepted.
Pygmalion spent a lot of time making small clay sculptures of the Goddess, claiming it was needed so he could pick the right pose. As he started making the actual sculpture he was shocked to discover he actually wanted to finish, even though he knew he would have to marry someone when he finished. The reason he wanted to finish it was that he had fallen in love with the sculpture. The more he worked on it, the more it changed, until it no longer resembled Aphrodite at all.
At the very moment Pygmalion stepped away from the finished sculpture Aphrodite appeared and told him to choose his bride. Pygmalion chose the statue. Aphrodite told him that could not be, and asked him again to choose a bride. Pygmalion put his arms around the statue, and asked Aphrodite to turn him into a statue so he could be with her. Aphrodite took pity on him and brought the statue to life instead.
Consorts and children
Ares
Eros, Phobos (Fright), Deimos (Dread), Harmonia (Harmony), Arethousa, Adrestia, Anteros (requited and unrequited love), Himerus (Lust), Atesia
Butes (or Poseidon)
Eryx
Hermes
Tyche, Rhodes, Eunomia, Hermaphroditus, Peitho, Priapus (in some traditions)
Dionysus
The Charites, Hymenaios, Priapus, Aglaea, Euphrosyne
Adonis
Beroe
Anchises
Aeneas
Other Tales
In one version of the story of Hippolytus, she was the catalyst for his death. He scorned the worship of Aphrodite for Artemis and, in revenge, Aphrodite caused his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus would reject her. In the most popular version of the story, as told in the play Hippolytus by Euripides, Phaedra seeks revenge against Hippolytus by killing herself and, in her suicide note, telling Theseus, her husband and Hippolytus' father, that Hippolytus had raped her. Hippolytus was oath-bound not to mention Phaedra's love for him and nobly refused to defend himself despite the consequences. Theseus then cursed his son, a curse that Poseidon was bound to fulfill and so Hippolytus was laid low by a bull from the sea that caused his chariot-team to panic and wreck his vehicle. This is, interestingly enough not quite how Aphrodite envisaged his death in the play, as in the prologue she says she expects Hippolytus to submit to lust with Phaedra and for Theseus to catch the pair in the act. Hippolytus forgives his father before he dies and Artemis reveals the truth to Theseus before vowing to kill the one Aphrodite loves (Adonis) for revenge.
Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite and she made her horses angry during the funeral games of King Pelias. They tore him apart. His ghost supposedly frightened horses during the Isthmian Games.
Surnames and titles
Acidalia, of the Acidalia spring
Anadyomene (Ἀναδυομένη), the emerging as in Aphrodite Anadyomene, a painting by Apelles
Cytherea (Κυθήρεια), of Cythera
Despina (Δέσποινα), the mistress
Kypris (Κύπρις), of Cyprus
Hetaira (Ἑταίρα), the courtesan
Aphrodite Porne (Πόρνη), the prostitute, Goddess of lust
Kalligloutos (Καλλίγλουτος), of the beautiful thighs
Morpho (Μορφώ), the shapely, she of the various shapes
Ambologera, she who postpones old age
Aphrodite en kepois (Ἀφροδίτη ἐν Κήποις), of the gardens
Genetyllis, of motherhood
Epitragidia, she upon the buck (young male goat)
Enoplios (Ἐνόπλιος), the armed one
Melaina (Μέλαινα), the black one (similar to Epitymbidia and Melainis)
Melainis (Μελαινίς), the young black one (similar to Epitymbidia and Melaina)
Skotia (Σκοτία), the dark
Anosia (Ἀνόσια), the unholy
Androphonos (Ἀνδροφόνος), the killer of men
Tymborychos (Τυμβωρύχος), the gravedigger
Epitymbidia, she upon the graves (similar to Melaina and Melainis)
Basilis (Βασιλίς), the queen
Persephaessa (Περσεφάεσσα), the queen of the underworld
Praxis (Πράξις), of (sexual) action
Kallipygos (Καλλίπυγος), of the beautiful buttocks
Pandemos (Πάνδημος), common to all, a form worshipped near the agora in Athens
Urania (Οὐράνια), the heavenly one
Aphrodite and foreign goddesses
The Ancient Greeks and Romans often equated their deities with foreign ones. Aphrodite was equated by the Greeks to Egyptian Hathor, Assyrian Mylitta, Canaanite/Phoenician Astarte, Arabian Alilat, and Roman Venus.
Images
National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece
Aphrodite of the Syracuse type. Parian marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Greek original of the 4th century BC; neck, head and left arm are restorations by Antonio Canova. Found at Baiae, Southern Italy.
References
Notes
1.^ According to Olympian mythology, but also sprung from Ouranos's seed.
2^ Pantheon.org
3^ "Aphrodite"
4^ The implied etymology of Aphrodite is not considered authentic by modern linguists.
5^ Reginald Eldred Witt, Isis in the ancient world (Johns Hopkins University Press)1997:125. ISBN 0801856426
6^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, XIV.7
7^ Hesiod, Theogony, 176ff.
8^ Etymologicum Magnum, Ἀφροδίτη
9^ Herodotus, Histories, I.105 and .131. The traditional resistance of nineteenth-century Hellenists to Eastern sources of Greek culture is expressed by A. Enmann, Kypros und der Ursprung des Aphroditekultes (1881), among others; the series of waves of resistance in favour of a "pure, classical Greece in splendid isolation" (Burkert) is discussed by Walter Burkert in his introduction to The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992), especially in pp 1-6.
10^ In Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 11, 21 5f.
11^ Mallory, J.P. and D.Q. Adams. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing, 1997.
12^ E.g. Plato, Symposium 181a-d.
13^ Pausanias, Periegesis vi.25.1; Aphrodite Pandemos was represented in the same temple riding on a goat, symbol of purely carnal rut: "The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care to guess," Pausanias remarks. The image was taken up again after the Renaissance: see Andrea Alciato, Emblemata / Les emblemes (1584).
14^ Plato, Symposium 180e.
15^ Richard L. Hunter, Plato's Symposium, Oxford University Press: 2004, p. 44
16^ Αναδυόμενη (Anadyómenē), "rising up".
17^ Homer, Odyssey viii. 288; Herodotus i. 105; Pausanias iii. 23. § 1 ; Anacreon v. 9; Horace, Carmina i. 4. 5.
18^ "Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation." Bulfinch's obituary in the Boston Evening Standard noted that the contents were "expurgated of all that would be offensive".
19^ Miroslav Marcovich, "From Ishtar to Aphrodite" Journal of Aesthetic Education 30.2, Special Issue: Distinguished Humanities Lectures II (Summer 1996) p 49.
20^ The word callipygian is defined as "having shapely buttocks" by Merriam-Webster.
21^ Conventionally presumed to be Venus, though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman, such as a hetaira, or an image of the goddess modeled on one such
22^ The gesture of Aphrodite/Venus lifting of the robe symbolized religious initiation and the ancient Greeks worshiped the woman's "rich" buttocks to obtain great wealth on earth as the two Syracusan sisters who inspired the Kallipygos idea, had accomplished.
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Poseidon (Greek)
Poseidon
Poseidon is the brother of Zeus. After the overthrow of their Father Cronus he drew lots with Zeus and Hades, another brother, for shares of the world. His prize was to become lord of the sea. He was widely worshiped by seamen. He married Amphitrite, a granddaughter of the Titan Oceanus.
At one point he desired Demeter. To put him off Demeter asked him to make the most beautiful animal that the world had ever seen. So to impress her Poseidon created the first horse. In some accounts his first attempts were unsuccessful and created a variety of other animals in his quest. By the time the horse was created his passion for Demeter had cooled.
His weapon is a trident, which can shake the earth, and shatter any object. He is second only to Zeus in power amongst the gods. He has a difficult quarrelsome personality. He was greedy. He had a series of disputes with other gods when he tried to take over their cities.
Poseidon is the brother of Zeus. After the overthrow of their Father Cronus he drew lots with Zeus and Hades, another brother, for shares of the world. His prize was to become lord of the sea. He was widely worshiped by seamen. He married Amphitrite, a granddaughter of the Titan Oceanus.
At one point he desired Demeter. To put him off Demeter asked him to make the most beautiful animal that the world had ever seen. So to impress her Poseidon created the first horse. In some accounts his first attempts were unsuccessful and created a variety of other animals in his quest. By the time the horse was created his passion for Demeter had cooled.
His weapon is a trident, which can shake the earth, and shatter any object. He is second only to Zeus in power amongst the gods. He has a difficult quarrelsome personality. He was greedy. He had a series of disputes with other gods when he tried to take over their cities.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Amphitrite (Greek)
Amphitrite
In Greek mythology, Amphitrite was a sea goddess. Sources state that she was the daughter of Nereus and Doris, which makes Amphitrite one of the fifty sea goddesses (or nymphs) who are known collectively as the Nereids. The Greek poet Hesiod lists the names of these sea nymphs in his Theogony:
"To Nereus and Doris of the lovely hair,
the daughter of Okeanos, the stream surrounding the earth,
a host of godly daughters was born in the barren sea:
Proto, Eukrante, Amphitrite, and Sao..."
(Hesiod, Theogony, 240-43)
According to the legend, the Olympian Poseidon (who was himself a god of the sea) saw Amphitrite one day and fell in love with the graceful and beautiful goddess. However, the sea nymph initially resisted Poseidon's advances. But Poseidon was not easily discouraged. He sent his sea creatures to find Amphitrite. A dolphin succeeded in locating the Nereid, and it was this creature - the dolphin - who persuaded her to consider Poseidon's proposal. Eventually, Amphitrite accepted Poseidon, and the two gods were married.
Amphitrite and Poseidon were together the parents of several children, including the sea god Triton.
In Greek mythology, Amphitrite was a sea goddess. Sources state that she was the daughter of Nereus and Doris, which makes Amphitrite one of the fifty sea goddesses (or nymphs) who are known collectively as the Nereids. The Greek poet Hesiod lists the names of these sea nymphs in his Theogony:
"To Nereus and Doris of the lovely hair,
the daughter of Okeanos, the stream surrounding the earth,
a host of godly daughters was born in the barren sea:
Proto, Eukrante, Amphitrite, and Sao..."
(Hesiod, Theogony, 240-43)
According to the legend, the Olympian Poseidon (who was himself a god of the sea) saw Amphitrite one day and fell in love with the graceful and beautiful goddess. However, the sea nymph initially resisted Poseidon's advances. But Poseidon was not easily discouraged. He sent his sea creatures to find Amphitrite. A dolphin succeeded in locating the Nereid, and it was this creature - the dolphin - who persuaded her to consider Poseidon's proposal. Eventually, Amphitrite accepted Poseidon, and the two gods were married.
Amphitrite and Poseidon were together the parents of several children, including the sea god Triton.
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