Tuesday, June 21, 2016

TFBT: Telegonus


At Hour 25 we’ve discussed Telegonus on several occasions.  (And Telegonos!) I thought I’d offer a little reminder on him for those that are interested.
 
Telegonus, son of Ulysses (Odysseus) and Circe, sent by his mother to find his father, by a storm was carried to Ithaca, and there, driven by hunger, began to lay waste the fields. Ulysses and Telemachus, not knowing who he was, took up arms against him. Ulysses was killed by his son Telegonus; it had been told him by an oracle to beware of death at his son’s hands. Telegonus on discovering who he was, with Telemachus and Penelope returned to his home on the island of Aeaea by Minerva’s instructions. They brought the body of Ulysses to Circe, and buried it there. By the advice of Minerva (Athena) again, Telegonus married Penelope, and Telemachus married Circe. From Circe and Telemachus Latinus was born, who gave his name to the Latin language; from Penelope and Telegonus Italus was born, who called the country Italy from his own name. Hyginus, Fabulae 127
 
Okay, that was one possible ending to the story of Penelope, Telemachus, Telegonus and Circe.  There are several conflicting and often incestous sounding versions. I like the following;

"When Telegonos learned from Kirke that he was Odysseus’ son, he sailed out in search of his father . . . He took the corpse [of Odysseus] and Penelope to Kirke, and there he married Penelope. Kirke dispatched them both to the Islands of the Blessed (Nesoi Makaron)." Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E7. 36-37
 
The only thing I might add is that if Telegonus and Telemachus’ names represents their father’s epithets, then Odysseus must have (tele) phoned it in a lot.  (Ha, ha!)  Must have been on of the first tele-workers.  (Ha, ha!  Sometimes I just crack myself up!) 

 

Monday, June 20, 2016

TFBT: Gaia, the Primordial Provocateur

I recently saw an ad on-line.  It was for a series of “TED-talks” on war.  I off-handedly thought, it would not be a very even-handed event.  Knowing that crowd there wouldn’t be any pro-war advocates.   Of course, who is pro-war?  Being a mythologist I thought immediately of Gaia; Mother Earth.  Hesiod calls her “vast Earth” in many translations (Theogony 159) In Ancient Greek that is; “Γαῖα πελώρη 

In her aspect as Gaia pelore, “monstrous Earth,” she is specifically linked to the destructive forces represented by the Giants and Typhoeus.  If I have taken so much time over the Greek word (pelore) it is because the available English translation regularly misrepresent it, dulling its pejorative force.  But Hesiod’s Mother Earth is much more vicious creature then these translations imply,  [i] 

The Perseus Greek Word Study Tool seems to agree with Lamberton by listing as definitions of πέλωρος: asmonstrous, prodigious, huge”.  I would like to suggest that the primordial goddess Gaia is the first and primary instigator of war in the mythic timeline of the Greek gods.   

First, let’s start with the first war in Greek mythology; the revolt of the sons of Gaia against their father Uranus; the Sky.   

 huge (monstrous) Earth groaned from within, (160) straitened as she was; and she devised a subtle and evil scheme. For quickly having produced a stock of white iron, she forged a large sickle, and gave the word to her children and said encouragingly, though troubled in her heart: “Children of me and of a father madly violent, if you (165) would obey me, we shall avenge the baneful injury of your father; for he was the first that devised acts of indignity.” So spoke she, but fear seized on them all, nor did any of them speak; till, having gathered courage, great and wily Kronos addressed his dear mother thus in reply: (170) “Mother, this deed at any rate I will undertake and accomplish, since for our father, of-detested-name, I care not, for he was the first that devised acts of indignity.” Thus spoke he, and huge (monstrous) Earth rejoiced much at heart, and hid and planted him in ambush: in his hand she placed (175) a sickle with jagged teeth, and suggested to him all the stratagem. Then came vast Sky bringing Night with him, and, eager for love, brooded around Earth, and lay stretched on all sides: but his son from out his ambush grasped at him with his left hand, while in his right he took the huge sickle, long and jagged-toothed, and hastily (180) mowed off the genitals of his father, and threw them backwards to be carried away behind him. [ii] 

The second example of monstrous Earth’s instigation of war was when Cronus, was now King of the Titans.  He learned from the great example of his father, did not trust his own sons and therefore swallowed whole every child brought forth the by his wife Rhea.  Eventually, his wife and mother conceive of a plan to save one child by substituting a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes.  The baby’s name was Zeus and they raise him in a cave.  [iii] 

Quickly then throve the spirit and beauteous limbs of the (future) king, and, as years came round, having been beguiled by the wise counsels of Earth (495)  huge Kronos, wily counselor, let loose again his offspring, having been conquered by the arts and strength of his son. And first he disgorged the stone, since he swallowed it last.  [iv] 

Apparently, Cronus wasn’t doing too well after that.  So, the third example of monstrous Earth’s involvement in war is when the rest of the Titans displayed their displeasure with this turn of events by rebelling against Zeus and his brothers.  There followed a ten year war between the Titans and the sons of Cronus. (629-639) Eventually;  

“the son of Cronus, Zeus and the other deathless gods whom rich-haired Rhea bare from union with Cronus, brought (Obriareus and Cottus and Gyes of exceeding manhood and comeliness and great size) up again (from Tartarus) to the light at Earth's advising. For she herself recounted all things to the gods fully, how that with these they would gain victory and a glorious cause to vaunt themselves.”  (Hesiod Theogony 617-629)…Now the others among the first ranks roused the keen fight, Kottos, Briareus, and Gyes insatiable in war, (715) who truly were hurling from sturdy hands three hundred rocks close upon each other, and they had overshadowed the Titans with missiles, sent them beneath the broad-wayed earth, and bound them in painful bonds, having conquered them with their hands, over-haughty though they were, (720) as far beneath under earth as the sky is from the earth, for equal is the space from earth to murky Tartaros[v] 

Zeus was a passable father, looked like there would be peace in the universe.  Until our fourth example of monstrous Earth’s instigation… 

Earth, vexed on account of the Titans (having been tossed into Tartarus by the Olympians) brought forth the giants, whom she had by (Uranus) …And they darted rocks and burning oaks at (Mt Olympus). … Now the gods had an oracle that none of the giants could perish at the hand of gods, but that with the help of a mortal they would be made an end of. Learning of this, Earth sought for a simple to prevent the giants from being destroyed even by a mortal. But Zeus forbade the Dawn and the Moon and the Sun to shine, and then, before anybody else could get it, he culled the simple himself, [vi] 

Apollodorus shortly thereafter describes a fifth example of monstrous Earth’s provocation of war;

When the gods had overcome the giants, Earth, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and brought forth Typhon in Cilicia… Typhon when, hurling kindled rocks, he made for the very heaven with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth. But when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt in flight, and being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals.  However Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, [vii] 

And finally for our final example; though most accounts credit the wars at Thebes and Troy to the will of Zeus on account of the groaning of Gaia, Christopoulos phrases it this way;   

“…Earth, being weighed down by the multitude of people, there being no piety among humankind, asked Zeus to be relieved from the burden. Zeus firstly and at once brought about the Theban War, by means of which he destroyed very large numbers, and afterwards the Trojan one,” [viii]       

In summary, monstrous Earth suggested the stratagem for castrating their father to her sons and rejoiced when one agreed, came up with the wise counsels that removed Cronus from power, advised the Olympians how to defeat the Titans, raised up the Giants and Typhoeus to defeat the Olympians and was at the very least the root cause of the wars at Thebes and Troy.   

What do you think? Was Mother Earth a loving mother or vicious monster?

  



[i] "Hesiod" by Robert Lamberton in the Hermes Series,  Yale University Press, 1988, page 73
[ii] Hesiod, Theogony 159-180,  Translated by Gregory Nagy and J. Banks and adapted by Gregory Nagy    http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5289
[iii] (Hesiod, Theogony 454-489) Translated by Gregory Nagy and J. Banks and adapted by Gregory Nagy    http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5289
[iv] (Hesiod. Theogony) Translated by Gregory Nagy and J. Banks and adapted by Gregory Nagy    http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5289
[v] (Hesiod. Theogony) Translated by Gregory Nagy and J. Banks and adapted by Gregory Nagy    http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5289
[vi] Apollodorus [1.6.1] Apollodorus. The Library. Translated by Sir James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 121 & 122. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html
[vii] Apollodorus [1.6.3] Apollodorus. The Library. Translated by Sir James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 121 & 122. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html
[viii] Menelaos Christopoulos, "Casus belli: Causes of the Trojan War in the Epic Cycle," Classics@ Volume 6: Efimia D. Karakantza, ed. The Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University, edition of February 4, 2011. http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/3367
 

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

TFBT: The Argonaut Menoetius

I was researching the Argonaut Menoetius of Opus.  First let’s not confuse him with the very glorious and outrageous Titan Menoetius, blasted into Tartarus for his “mad presumption and exceeding pride."(Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 8) 
We are speaking about a mortal man here.  There didn’t seem much to say about him.  He is father of Patroclus, (Il 9.608) an Argonaut, maybe the first to give Heracles annual heroic honors (Diodorus 4.39.1), "Menoetius, the child of Aegina and Actor." (Pindar, Olympian Ode 9. 69was half-brother of Aeacus and grandfather of the goddess Eucleia who presided over the Greek victory at Marathon. (Paus. i.14.4)

But on closer examination, maybe there is something to say.  There is only on reference to Menoetius being an Argonaut; “Moreover Actor sent his son Menoetius from Opus that he might accompany the chiefs.”  (Argonautica 1.69)  It sounds as though he was a dutiful son rather than someone chasing after the glory of the ancestors.  

When young Patroclus kills the son of Amphidamas over a dice game, Menoetius whisked the boy off to Peleus in Phthia to be educated with his cousin Achilles. (Hom. Il. 23.85) Quite the loving father, not something you see often in Greek myth.  

Myth is skimpy about Menoetius, but as an Argonaut he would have known Heracles personally prior to the disappearance of Hylas.  And yet years later he offers up his old war-buddy heroic honors. 

Son of a nymph, he doesn’t rate as a demi-god, but Menoetius’ daughter
Myrto, with Heracles assistance, bore a gracious goddess in her father’s house.  (PlutarchAristides, 20. 6) Which has to say something about his dash of divinity and maybe even his piety. 

With a little optimism, the man I see when considering Menoetius is an honorable, loving man devoted to his friends and family, friend to demi-gods (Heracles) and if Plutarch is right,  family to the gods.  
 of Opus.  First let’s not confuse him with the very glorious and outrageous Titan Menoetius, blasted into Tartarus for his “mad presumption and exceeding pride."(Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 8)

We are speaking about a mortal man here.  There didn’t seem much to say about him.  He is father of Patroclus, (Il 9.608) an Argonaut, maybe the first to give Heracles annual heroic honors (Diodorus 4.39.1), "Menoetius, the child of Aegina and Actor." (Pindar, Olympian Ode 9. 69was half-brother of Aeacus and grandfather of the goddess Eucleia who presided over the Greek victory at Marathon. (Paus. i.14.4)

But on closer examination, maybe there is something to say.  There is only on reference to Menoetius being an Argonaut; “Moreover Actor sent his son Menoetius from Opus that he might accompany the chiefs.”  (Argonautica 1.69)  It sounds as though he was a dutiful son rather than someone chasing after the glory of the ancestors.  

When young Patroclus kills the son of Amphidamas over a dice game, Menoetius whisked the boy off to Peleus in Phthia to be educated with his cousin Achilles. (Hom. Il. 23.85) Quite the loving father, not something you see often in Greek myth.  

Myth is skimpy about Menoetius, but as an Argonaut he would have known Heracles personally prior to the disappearance of Hylas.  And yet years later he offers up his old war-buddy heroic honors. 

Son of a nymph, he doesn’t rate as a demi-god, but Menoetius’ daughter
Myrto, with Heracles assistance, bore a gracious goddess in her father’s house.  (PlutarchAristides, 20. 6) Which has to say something about his dash of divinity and maybe even his piety. 

With a little optimism, the man I see when considering Menoetius is an honorable, loving man devoted to his friends and family, friend to demi-gods (Heracles) and if Plutarch is right,  family to the gods.  

Saturday, June 11, 2016

TFBT: Eurybates

The wide-wandering Eurybates of Ithaca (Iliad ii. 184) was the herald of Odysseus.  It is said of him;

“a little older than (Odysseus), and I will tell thee of him too, what manner of man he was. He was round-shouldered, dark of skin, and curly-haired, and his name was Eurybates; and Odysseus honored him above his other comrades, because he was like-minded with himself.” Od. xix. 246

It is generally believed that this was the same Herald Eurybates that accompanied Odysseus as party of the embassy to Achilles (Iliad ix. 170)  and along with Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius had the inenviable task to   "Go to the hut of Achilles, Peleus' son, and take by the hand the fair-cheeked Briseis, (Hom. Il. i. 319,   





 




 

Friday, June 3, 2016

TFBT: Proteus, Another Old Man of the Sea

“Proteus I call…All-honored, prudent, whose sagacious mind knows all that was and is of every kind, with all that shall be in succeeding time, so vast thy wisdom, wondrous and sublime: for all things Nature first to thee consigned, and in thy essence omniform confined. O father, to the mystics' rites attend, and grant, a blessed life a prosperous end."  Orphic Hymn 25 to Proteus  

Proteus is the unerring “Old Man of the Sea”[i]as are the sea-gods Nereus[ii] and Phorcys.[iii] He, like other marine divinities, possessed power of prophesy and shape-shifting.  He and one of his daughters are major characters in the story of Odysseus.  Proteus rides through the Carpathian Sea, in a chariot drawn by Hippocampal[iv] or with fishes and two-footed sea-horses.[v] He was a son Phoenice, the eponymous nymph Phoenicia and of Poseidon.[vi]  

"This is Egypt; here flows the virgin river, the lovely Nile, who brings down melted snow to slake the soil of the Egyptian plain with the moisture heaven denies. Proteus…lived…on the island of Pharos. Now Proteus married Psamathe, one of the sea-nymphs, and formerly the wife of Aeacus.” Euripides, Helen 11   

 According Virgil, Proteus was a blue marine deity who ruled the Carpathian Gulf off the island of Karpathos.  His father Poseidon’s “monstrous flocks and ugly seals he herds under the gulf.”  Though ambiguous of form he was straight forward in his prophecies.  Though famous for living in Pharos, for a while he tarried on Emathia's borders at his birthplace of Pallene.[vii]  (Pallene, interestingly enough, is another name for Phlegra,[viii] the birth-place of the giants.) 

He prophesied to Menelaus about his future[ix] and therebye revealed to humanity a hope for a brighter life beyond dread Hades.  He prophesized to Aristaeus about his bees[x] and established the erroneous doctrine of spontaneous generation which held sway over philosophers for two millennia.  And he prophesized to the mother of Apollonius of Tyana;  

"To his mother, just before he was born, there came an apparition of Proteus, who changes his form so much in Homer, in the guise of an Egyptian daemon. She was in no way frightened, but asked him what sort of child she would bear. And he answered: ‘Myself.’ ‘And who are you?’ she asked. ‘Proteus,’ answered he, ‘the god of Egypt’ Well, I need hardly explain to readers of the poets the quality of Proteus and his reputation as regards wisdom; how versatile he was, and for ever changing his form, and defying capture, and how he had the reputation of knowing both past and future. And we must bear Proteus in mind all the more, when my advancing story shows (Apollonius) to have been more a prophet than Proteus." Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1. 4  

One final aside before we leave this wise, honest, god of ambiguous form, born in the nursery of the giants.  According to Strabo,[xi] Proteus was grandfather of the gods and goddesses of the Mysteries at Samothrace.   

But that’s another blogpost.  



[i] Od 4:350
[ii] Hom. Il. 18.140-141
[iii] Odyssey 13.93
[iv] (Virgil. Georg. iv. 389.) 
[v] Aeneid Book 4)
[vi] Chiliades 2:12, John Tzetzes 
[vii] (Aeneid Book 4) 
[viii] (Herod. viii. 123)
[ix] (Od 4:350)
[x] (Ovid, Fasti 1. 363)
[xi] (Geography 10. 3. 21)

Thursday, June 2, 2016

TFBT: Prose Version of "I, the Goddess Cassandra"



Ah, ah! Oh, oh, the agony! 1215 Once more the dreadful ordeal [ponos] of true prophecy whirls and distracts me with its ill-boding onset. Do you see them there—sitting before the house—young creatures like phantoms of dreams? Children, they seem, slaughtered by their own kindred, 1220 their hands full of the meat of their own flesh; they are clear to my sight, holding their vitals and their inward parts—piteous burden![1]

 

This is the Cassandra that tradition gives us and is foremost in our minds; a half-mad character, foaming at the mouth, hysterical, helpless to escape her doom, hair-risen and shaken, seeing visions of horrific things no one else sees.  She predicts that “by Cocytus and the banks of Acheron, I think, I soon must chant my prophecies.”[2]   Considering the above tirade and most of her wailing in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon we might be persuaded to believe that she is helpless and hapless.  But why should we be persuaded by her performance when Cassandra herself says, “I consented (marriage) to Loxias but broke my word…Ever since that fault I could persuade no one of anything.”[3] Rather I contend Cassandra was a second-sighted seeress who moved with Machiavellian skill to the most blessed state a mortal can know.

 
Let’s start with her story.  In [1] happier days the Scamander, was her native stream.  Upon his sandy banks and flowery meadows she wandered.[4] Beneath the elms, the Pleiades’ chargers and amongst the willows and tamarisks, besid[2] e “the lotus, rushes and the galingale, that round the fair streams of the river grew abundantly”.[5]  Leaving gifts for the naiads, the daughters of Lord Xanthus upon his sandy banks, combs for their hair and “sacred toys” for their hands in preparation for their dances upon Mt Ida.[6] 

 

Her father was King Priam of Troy.  “Priam ruled from a magnificent palace, which was fronted by marble colonnades. In the main building there were fifty apartments of polished stone, where his sons lived with their wives. His daughters occupied the chambers in the building on the other side of the courtyard, and there they lived with the sons-in-law of the king.”[7]   In his youth her father journeyed to the land of Phrygia, rich in vines, and there he saw in multitudes the Phrygian warriors, masters of glancing steeds, even “the people of Otreus and godlike Mygdon, that were then encamped along the banks of Sangarius.” Priam was accounted an ally of the Phrygians when the Amazons, equal-to-men, came against them. [8]  All these nations will play apart in the war to come. 

 

Cassandra’s mother was Hecuba, wife of Priam, mother of Hector; he was “the invincible, steadfast pillar of Troy”. [9] Queen Hecuba dreamed once that she gave birth to  a fire-brand; a torch. [10]

 

Cassandra and her twin brother Helenus  were left by their  parents in the shrine of the Thymbraean Apollo. There the Thymbrios River flows through the plain and empties into the Scamander River.[11] 

 

“…the festival in honour of the birth of the twins was being held in the sanctuary of the Thymbraean Apollo, the two children played with each other there and fell asleep in the temple. Meantime the parents and their friends, flushed with wine, had gone home, forgetting all about the twins whose birth had given occasion to the festivity. Next morning, when they were sober, they returned to the temple and found the sacred serpents purging with their tongues the organs of sense of the children. Frightened by the cry which the women raised at the strange sight, the serpents disappeared among the laurel boughs which lay beside the infants on the floor; but from that hour Cassandra and Helenus possessed the gift of prophecy.”  [12]

 

In like manner Melampus is said to have acquired the art of soothsaying through the action of serpents which licked his ears.  He…

“lived in the country, and before his house there was an oak, in which there was a lair of snakes. His servants killed the snakes, but Melampus gathered wood and burnt the reptiles, and reared the young ones. And when the young were full grown, they stood beside him at each of his shoulders as he slept, and they purged his ears with their tongues. He started up in a great fright, but understood the voices of the birds flying overhead, and from what he learned from them he foretold to men what should come to pass. He acquired besides the art of taking the auspices, and having fallen in with Apollo at the (River) Alpheus he was ever after an excellent soothsayer.”[13] 

In due time Cassandra would have her own interview with Apollo alongside a lovely river.  

Her twin-brother Helenus was the greatest seer among the Trojans and their allies.  and could understand the will of the gods.[14] He was also a warrior and one of the leaders of the host attempting to take the black ships of the Achaeans.[15]   His birth name was Scamandrius, named, like his nephew Astyanax,  for the local river.  He “received the name of Helenus from a Thracian seer, who also instructed him in the prophetic art.” [16]  It was Helenus, who predicted that if that fire-brand, Prince Alexander brought home an Argive wife, the Achaeans would pursue, destroy Troy, and then slay their father and all their brothers.[17]   

Naturally when Cassandra heard of her father’s intentions to send Hector and Paris to Sparta her words echoed her twin’s,  telling what the Trojans would suffer if he should sent a fleet into Greece.[18] “I see thee, hapless city, fired a second time by Aeacide hands.” [19] 

With the war came her suitors; Othryoneus, Coroebus and Loxias[20], Lord of Ptoon

     “Othryoneus of Cabesus…asked in marriage the comeliest of the daughters of Priam, even Cassandra; he brought no gifts of wooing,” [21]

     Coroebus, the son of Mygdon. Coroebus came to marry Cassandra, and was killed.[22]  He died the day after he arrived when the son of Tydeus plunged his spear point beneath the left ribs of the Phrygian.[23]

     Apollo, Lord of the Seasons whom Cassandra also spurned as if she was following Athena’s example and intending to be a virgin for life. [24]  But maybe she had a better reason.    Pausanias (5.18.2) says; ““Idas brings back, not against her will, fair-ankled Marpessa, daughter of Evenus, whom Apollo carried off.”   Cassandra didn’t chose Apollo as a spouse, maybe for the same reason Marpessa didn’t.  “because she feared that Apollo might desert her in her old age”[25]

 

The one night the war was over!  The Achaeans were gone.  Abandoning their camp and leaving a gift for Athena; the wooden sculpture of a horse, which we know of as the Trojan Horse. 

“So feasted they through Troy, and in their midst loud pealed the flutes and pipes: on every hand were song and dance, laughter and cries confused of banqueters beside the meats and wine. They, lifting in their hands the beakers brimmed, recklessly drank, till heavy of brain they grew, till rolled their fluctuant eyes. Now and again some mouth would babble the drunkard's broken words. The household gear, the very roof and walls seemed as they rocked: all things they looked on seemed whirled in wild dance. About their eyes a veil of mist dropped” [26] 

 

Her twin-brother and fellow seer Helenus was already with the Achaeans.  (He went on to attain his best possible fate; husband to the daughter of Eetion and King of Molossus. [27])   The sooth-sayer Laocoon, brother of Anchises was dead. [28]  But, “One heart was steadfast, and one soul clear-eyed, Cassandra”[29]   She knew perfectly well the Achaeans’ purpose for this horse  and “the ambush hidden there.”  And she was “As mid the hills a furious pantheress… with savage heart. ”  (1260)

 

That night the Horse birthed and the gates burst open. The city was set afire and the streets flooded with blood. It is not surprising that a virgin should take sanctuary in the temple of the virgin-goddess Athena.  Did this seeress know that Athena did not love the Trojans? (Iliad 6.310)  Did Cassandra foresee that the Locrian Ajax, would find her there clinging to the wooden image of Athena?  That he would drag her from there knocking the goddess’ image to the ground in the process?  [30]          Did she know that consequently the majority of the Danaans would die when gods sent a storm and contrary winds against them?  That her  enemies and the enemies of her people upon returning home after the destruction of her my home and the division of her our wealth would wreck on the Cepharean Rocks thanks to the anger of the gods?

 

She was  the loveliest of Priam’s daughters so naturally when the loot was portioned out she received as her prize, finally, as husband the greatest of the Achaean kings; Agamemnon. For those who don’t know the story, men die.  So do women.  So did Cassandra.  (Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

 

But that doesn’t end her story

 

“And my husband shall be called Zeus (-Agamemnon[31])  by the crafty Spartiates, obtaining highest honours from the children of Oebalus. [32]  Nor shall my worship be nameless among men, nor fade hereafter in the darkness of oblivion. But the chiefs of the Daunians shall build for me a shrine on the banks of the Salpe, and those also who inhabit the city of Dardanus,  beside the waters of the lake. And when girls wish to escape the yoke of maidens, refusing for bridegrooms men adorned with locks such as Hector wore, but with defect of form or reproach of birth, they will embrace my image with their arms, winning of mighty shield against marriage, having clothed them in the garb of the Erinyes  and dyed their faces with magic simples. By those staff-carrying women I shall long be called an immortal goddess[3] .” [33]

 

I like to think of Cassandra, the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters wandering upon other sandy banks and flowery meadows. Maybe hand-in-hand with her sister-in-law Helen, the most beautiful of  Priam’s daughters-in-laws. Because;

 

“Zeus the son of Cronos made…(a) nobler and more righteous, a god-like race of hero-men who are called demi-gods, the race before our own, throughout the boundless earth. Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven- gated Thebe when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake: there death's end enshrouded a part of them. But to the others father Zeus the son of Cronos gave a living and an abode apart from men, and made them dwell at the ends of earth. And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean”[34]



[1]Agamemnon, Aeschylus (Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth. Revised by Gregory Crane and Graeme Bird. Further Revised by Gregory Nagy.)  http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?page_id=6586 

[2]  1156 Agamemnon, Aeschylus (Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth. Revised by Gregory Crane and Graeme Bird. Further Revised by Gregory Nagy.)  http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?page_id=6586
[3] 1208 & 1212  Agamemnon, Aeschylus (Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth. Revised by Gregory Crane and Graeme Bird. Further Revised by Gregory Nagy.)  http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?page_id=6586
[4] 1156 Agamemnon, Aeschylus (Translated by Herbert Weir Smyth. Revised by Gregory Crane and Graeme Bird. Further Revised by Gregory Nagy.)  http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?page_id=6586
[5] 21. 347 Homeric Iliad, Translated by Samuel Butler, Revised by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power.  http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5286
[6] Collunthus, “The Rape of Helen” 1, Oppian, Colluthus and Tryphiodorus. Translated by Mair, A. W. Loeb Classical Library Volume 219. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1928.    http://www.theoi.com/Text/Colluthus.html
[7]  Iliad 6.240  Translated by Samuel Butler, Revised by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power.  http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5286
 
[8] 3.182  Homeric Iliad, Translated by Samuel Butler, Revised by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power.  http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5286
[9] 2.89  Homer, Odyssey Samuel Butler’s translation, revised by Timothy Power, Gregory Nagy, Soo-Young Kim, and Kelly McCray. Published under a Creative Commons License 3.0. http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5287
[10] [3.12.5] Apollodorus. The Library. Translated by Sir James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 121 & 122. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.  http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus3.html
[12] Notes on the Library of Apollodorus bY J. G. Frazer Book 3, footnote  230    Apollodorus. The Library. Translated by Sir James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 121 & 122. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. 
[13] Apollodorus, Library 1.9.11
[14] vi. 76, vii. 44  Homeric Iliad, Translated by Samuel Butler, Revised by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power.  http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5286
[15]. xii. 94.   Homeric Iliad, Translated by Samuel Butler, Revised by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power.  http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5286
[16] Eustath. ad Hom. p. 626 via William Smith. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. London. John Murray: printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square and Parliament Street  http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=helenus-bio-1
[17] Dares of Phrygia,  History of the Fall of Troy 7 The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian. Translated by R. M. Frazer (Jr.). Indiana University Press. 1966.
[18] Dares of Phrygia History of the Fall of Troy 8 
[19] Lychophron, Alexandra 31
[20] Another name for Apollo, (Herod. i. 91,  http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?p=1496#Sourcebook
[23] Quintus Smyrnaeus. The Fall of Troy 13.190  Translated by Way. A. S. Loeb Classical Library Volume 19. London: William Heinemann, 1913  http://www.theoi.com/Text/QuintusSmyrnaeus1.html
[24] Lycophron Alexandra 352-353, Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron. Aratus. Translated by Mair, A. W. & G. R. Loeb Classical Library Volume 129. London: William Heinemann, 1921.    http://www.theoi.com/Text/LycophronAlexandra.html
[25] Apollodorus. The Library 1.7.9 . Translated by Sir James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 121 & 122. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921  http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html
[26] Quintus Smyrnaeus. The Fall of Troy 13.1. Translated by Way. A. S. Loeb Classical Library Volume 19. London: William Heinemann, 1913  http://www.theoi.com/Text/QuintusSmyrnaeus1.html 
[28] Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E5. 17 (trans. Aldrich)  http://www.theoi.com/Text/ApollodorusE.html
[29] Quintus Smyrnaeus. The Fall of Troy 12.565. Translated by Way. A. S. Loeb Classical Library Volume 19. London: William Heinemann, 1913  http://www.theoi.com/Text/QuintusSmyrnaeus1.html
[30] Apollodorus, Epitome of the Library 5.22, translation by J.G. Frazier  
[31] Agamemnôn. A surname of Zeus, under which he was worshipped at Sparta. (Lycophr. 335, with the School.; Eustath. ad Il. ii. 25.) via Atsma at http://www.theoi.com/Cult/ZeusTitles.html  Also, Clement of Alexandria. Translated by Butterworth, G W. Loeb Classical Library Volume 92. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1919. http://www.theoi.com/Text/ClementExhortation1.html
[32] Husband of Gorgophone  ancestress of the gods of the Spartans http://shortstories-bill.blogspot.com/2013/01/wfbt-divine-descendants-of-gorgophone.html
[33] Alexandra 3.1122