Thursday, November 30, 2017

TFBT: Hesiod's Cosmos, Part III


Over the Thanksgiving holiday I read Jenny Strauss Clay’s “Hesiod’s Cosmos”.  Looking at previous blogposts.  Apparently this is my third read-through.  Apparently, her insights are sticking, because as I read through my posts and studied the underlined items in the text, I said to myself, “I knew this already.”   

So the insights I offer here are a little different for a couple of reasons.  1)  My next big article will be about Aeacus and Arbitration in Ancient Greek myth.  2)  Freed from having to follow the now well-known arguments, I could now read for enjoyment alone.  I hope you will do the same. All quotes are from Clay unless noted otherwise.

Aeacus and Arbitration

 To favored kings they (the Muses) dispense the mollifying rhetoric that has the power to resolve even a great quarrel; those who have been wronged are sooth and reconciled.”

 “The people all look to him as he discerns the ordinances with straight judgments and he speaking without stumbling, quickly and expertly makes and end even to a big quarrel.” Theogony 84-87

 “The setting is clearly a communal feast shared by gods and men[i] a dias, whose very name derives from the act of division or apportionment; hence the formulaic expression, dais eish, referring to a fair and equitable distribution.  As a social institution, the dias eish involves two distinct kinds of apportionment; the first is a division into strictly equal parts…the second constitutes the portion of honor the geras, assigned in recognition of particular excellence or esteem.  With his division of the meat, Prometheus honors men by giving them all the edible parts of the ox.  By this very act, he deprives the gods of that part of the dais eish that legitimately belong to them.”   

Random Notes

“The gods in their blissful state needed the presence of inferior creatures to enjoy their superiority fully.”

“Pandora, who is coeval with the hiding of bios” Hey, same as Eve.

μηδέ ποτ᾽ οὐλομένην πενίην θυμοφθόρον ἀνδρὶ  τέτλαθ᾽ ὀνειδίζειν,
Don’t ever dare to blame a man for cursed soul-destroying poverty. 
Theogony 717

“Cereberus will later receive a place and function in the organization of Tartarus, ensuring that the dead cannot escape from the underworld.”  This is wrong.  Cereberus is there to keep the living from accidentally wandering in.  

At the outset, the cosmos came into being when Gaia became oppressed by the burden of her children within; so now in a parallel fashion  the external pressure of human population weighs her down.”   I think a better parallel is that the cosmos came into being when Gaia was oppressed by the constant weight of Uranus upon her and now “the external pressure of human population weighs her down”.  Gee, what does that say about us?  The severing of the demi-gods from their lives at Thebes and Troy constitutes a new dispensation, because the gods like their grandfather Uranus pull back from the earth.  It renders permanent the gulf separating the eternal gods from ephemeral mortals.”  It is the birth of the Iron Age, when Man rules.

I am convinced that meaning inheres in form.”

“The succession of races is not linear but cyclical; at the end of the age of iron…the cycle of races stars again with a new golden age or more likely a new age of heroes as the sequence reverse itself.”

“Thebes, traditionally reputed to be the first city.”

“Thebes and Troy where the heroes demonstrate their valor – and perhaps provide entertainment for the gods.”  




[i] The feast at Mecone celebrating the victory of the Olympians and their allies over the Titans.  It is the time of the Great Dispensation when Zeus allotted each their prerogatives, privileges and powers.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

TFBT:November Quotes

“Porson, while admitting that the critics have many things to say against Euripides as compared, for instance, with Sophocles, answers in his inarticulate way "illum admiramur, hunc legimus"—"we admire the one, but we read the other."   Gilbert Murray.

ISMENE: What? You'd kill your own son's bride?
CREON: Absolutely: there are other fields for him to plow.”
― Sophocles, Antigone  

The British classicist Emily Wilson said. “ I partly just want to shake them and make them see that all translations are interpretations.”

“the relative pronoun hos ‘who’  functioning as a ‘hinge’ that enables the spatio-temporal shift. “. http://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/a-sampling-of-comments-on-pindar-olympian-5/

“When,” asked Aphrodite, “did Praxiteles see me naked?”

“Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.” Albert Einstein

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

TFBT: Arbitration I

Over at the Kosmos Society we discussed "justice" and a fellow member shared the defining moment in the foundation myth of the juried legal system;

"It is my duty to give the final judgment and I (Athena) shall cast my vote for Orestes. [735] For there was no mother who gave me birth; and in all things, except for marriage, whole-heartedly I am for the male and entirely on the father’s side." (Eumenides) 

My friend added, "To me, this doesn’t sound like a basis for justice, but a foundation for a patriarchal justice system."  I nodded sadly in agreement when she lamented the lack of justice for Ancient women. But, walking my dog Derby last night I recalled Marpessa.  Here is her story:

“Apollodorus [1.7.8] Evenus begat Marpessa, who was wooed by Apollo, but Idas, son of Aphareus, carried her off in a winged chariot which he received from Poseidon.  Pursuing him in a chariot, Evenus came to the river Lycormas, but when he could not catch him he slaughtered his horses and threw himself into the river, and the river is called Evenus after him. [1.7.9] But Idas came to Messene, and Apollo, falling in with him, would have robbed him of the damsel. As they fought for the girl's hand, Zeus parted them and allowed the maiden herself to choose which of the two she would marry; and she, because she feared that Apollo might desert her in her old age, chose Idas for her husband.” 

So, Marpessa got a little justice (avoided an undesirable marriage) thanks to arbitration by Zeus. Pausanias describes Briareus as adjudicator or arbitrator between Helios and Poseidon for dominion over Corinth. (2.4.5 & 2.1.5)The River Inachus with the Rivers Cephisus and Asterion judged concerning the disputed land of Argolis between Poseidon and Hera. (Pausanias 1.15.4) 

I am seeing adjudication here as a third way to justice, rather than just vendetta (violence) or jury. Odysseus adjudicated the conflict between the suitors of Helen, via the Oath of Tyndareus[i].  An adjudication which insured that Marpessa’s cousins Helen[ii] and Penelope[iii] also had a say on who they wed. 

 



[i] Pausanias 3.20.9 & Hyginus Fables 78
[ii] Hyginus Fables 79
[iii] Pausanias 3.20.10-11

Sunday, November 5, 2017

TFBT: The Seven Wives of Zeus: Part V



The Seven Wives of Zeus: Iasion

 

“So again when Demeter of the lovely hair fell in love with Iasion, and yielded to him in a thrice plowed fallow field, Zeus came to hear of it before so long and killed Iasion with his thunder-bolts“  (Odyssey 5.125,   Kosmos Society)

 

I wonder why Iasion got the shaft?  I have three considerations on the topic so far;

 

  1.  First, Calypso who told the tale above also says with a shudder “and her words came forth in rapid flight: “You are merciless, you gods, resentful beyond all other beings; you are jealous if without disguise a goddess makes a man her bedfellow,” (Homer, Odyssey 5.115) So Iasion’s death would be the result of an Olympian taboo on misalliance.  The problem with this argument is that her own lover Odyssey didn’t get the struck by a lightning bolt on account of sleeping with the goddess.

 

  1. Second, several scholars will tell you that the myth reflects the fact that “the cutting of three furrows was part of fertility rites performed to inaugurate the new agricultural year.” (Aaron Atsma)  They will say that the re-enactment of the myth took place between the goddess/priestess and the “agricultural hero” (Atsma) or “the sacred king” (Graves) or “corn spirit” (Frazer).  And that his blood fertilized the fields.   Only none of the scholars can offer literary references.  Surely, if it was a tradition back then Hesiod would have mentioned it in Works and Days.

 

  1. The third consideration in understanding Iasion’s death is something that should have crossed my mind somewhere in the last half century of research.  The phrase “a thrice plowed fallow field” is a euphemism.  To share and example of this euphemism I turn to Sophocles in the Antigone;    

 

 ISMENE: What? You'd kill your own son's bride?
CREON: Absolutely: there are other fields for him to plow.”

 

Plowing the field is a euphemism for sex.  Iasion may have been slain for his hubristic threat to Zeus’ notorious hyper-masculinity.  Clearly Zeus had lain with Demeter, but he had to turn them both into snakes in order to rape her.  His brother and peer Poseidon had to turn Demeter into a mare in order to rape her.  Now comes along a silver-tongued mortal who not only convinces her to join him for a roll in the hay of her own free will, but Demeter enjoys their tryst so much that they “plow the field” three time before returning to Harmonia’s reception.  In short  a jealous Zeus strike shim dead not for  violating Olympic taboos, nor  to make him the prototype for human sacrifice  but rather out of jealousy of  Iasion’s sexual prowess


Any things else I should be considering in my analysis?



 

TFBT: The Seven Wives of Zeus, Part IV.

Seven Wives of Zeus, Their other Lovers

1.    Metis, no known other lover
2.    Themis in Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus is called the mother of Prometheus.  The Titan himself confounds his “mother” with her mother Gaia.  Maybe the Titan was delirious.  Regardless no other lover is ever mentioned.
3.    Eurynome and Ophion;"He [Orpheus] sang of . . . how, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Oceanus, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Cronus, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos; and how their successors ruled the happy Titan gods." Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 498 ff      Orphic myth never exactly explains who Ophion is, his genealogy or lists his descendatns.  Ophion might have ended up in Tartarus but not by Zeus’ jealous hand.
4.     Demeter had five recorded lovers including Zeus. Following Aaron Atsma;
·      “Zeus, the king of the gods and Demeter mated in the form of intertwining serpents. From this union the goddess Persephone was born.
·      Poseidon, the god of the sea, raped their sister Demeter while she was wandering around in a daze about the loss of Persephone.  They were both in the forms of horses at the time.  She bore him; the horse Areion and the goddess Despoine.
·      Carmanor, Lord of Tarrha on Crete and Purifier of Python-slaying Apollo bedded Demeter. She bore him a son Eubouleos and a daughter Khrysothemis.  Carmanor is of unknow ancestry, apparently pious, and long lived with many descendants
·      On the other hand Prince Iasion of Samothrake, brother of Dardanos,    who lay with Demeter in a thrice ploughed field during the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia was struck with a thunderbolt by the jealous Zeus. She bore him twin demi-gods Ploutos and Philomelos.
·      Mecon is another man loved by the goddess Demeter.  He was changed into a poppy flower. With apparently no issue.
5.    Mnemosyne with the beautiful hair, the possible love-match with Zeus had no other recorded lovers.
6.    Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis had no other recorded lovers.
7.    Hera his blooming wife, might have had a previous lover; the river-god Imbrasos.  On the island of Samos, before the PanHellenic poets promoted her to Olympus, Hera and Imbrasus were intimately connected nuimastically and ritually. And by Joan V. O’Brien says;  “The local river god may have been understood as her early Samian spouse” (The Transformation of Hera.)    Interestingly, Susan A. Stephens inCallimachus: The Hymns lists “Chesia” as a Samian epithet for Hera.  Atsma reports that the Samina Naiad Chesias bore a son to Imbrasus named Ocyrhoe.  Admittedly the epithet Chesia could mean that Hera a temple beside the free flowing stream.  But knowing Hera’s jealously it is hard to believe that she would allow some nymph to jump the bones of her offical companion.

Friday, November 3, 2017

TFBT: Quotes October


“It all works out in the end cuz you can’t get to the end until it all works out.”  Dirk Gently

“Films are like life with the boring bits cut out" Alfred Hitchcock. 

Χρυ_σηίς : daughter of Chryses, Chrysēïs, Her proper name was Astynome” Perseus Greek Word Study Tool 

“Brisēís also known as Hippodameia .  Her character lies at the heart of a dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon that drives the plot of Homer's Iliad.    In Greek Mythology, Briseis, a daughter of Briseus, was a princess of Lyrnessus. “. Wikipedia 

“You are the only one you’re fooling, when you put down what you don’t understand.” Kris Kristofferson

“I been obnoxious.  I been unconscious.  I been all kinds of things that are hard to spell. I've been unruly, speakin' truly. I've been so cool, I couldn't hardly even stand myself.” Stephen Bruton & John "00" Fleming

“Oh, you can go on forever and make the same mistakes.  Or you can stand up on your hind legs and change your fate.” Stephen Bruton & John "00" Fleming

“go forth, taking a shapely oar, until thou comest to men that know naught of the sea ...And I will tell thee a sign right manifest, which will not escape thee. When another wayfarer, on meeting thee, shall say that thou hast a winnowing-fan on thy stout shoulder, then do thou fix in the earth thy shapely oar and make goodly offerings to lord Poseidon”. Odyssey Xi

Every hour of our lives seems to be a test.  Greg Nagy

“gods and god-born heroes Whose arm with righteous death could tame Grim Centaurs, tame Chimaeras fell, Out-breathing flame” Horace Ode 4.2

The best way to deal with temporal paradoxes is not to think about them.— Captain Kathryn Janeway Star Trek: Voyager