Monday, May 28, 2018

TFBT:Topics for Research, Part IIb

Maya also suggested I should look at the female suicides in Meleager’s family. Unique in that they occur at the death of the husbands. Just three generations as I recall like the curse on Laertes family only have one son, it too lasted three generations; 


Polydora, daughter of Meleager and Cleopatra, who married Protesilaus, the first of the Achaeans to die at Troy, committed suicide on the death of her husband. The same is said of Cleopatra who killed herself when Meleager died. And the same again is told of Cleopatra’s mother Marpessa, who killed herself when her husband Idas was slain by Polydeuces, one of the DIOSCURI. So all these women slew themselves on the death of their husbands.” (www.maicar.com). 

But Maicar’s concise description and Maya’ assignment leave out one link in this chain of suicides, Marpessa’s father Evenus.  But before we look into the story of this suicidal Aetolian prince we need to discuss whether any of them actually died or not.
 Anyone who has studied Greek Mythology knows there is no such thing as death.  No one actually dies.  They might get tossed in Tartarus, or ushered into a dark, dank Hades or snatched up and carried off to the Isle of the Blest to live a life liken to the Golden Ages or kick in the blue doors of heaven and take their rightful spot on Olympus.  But no one dies.  They still exist and many cross back and forth between here and there.  Please keep this in mind as we study the “suicides” of the Evenides.


First, Evenus   

"Evenus, the son of Ares and Sterope, married Alcippe, the daughter of Oenomaus, and begat a daughter Marpessa, whom he endeavored to keep a virgin. Idas, the son of Aphareus, seized her from a band of dancers and fled. Her father gave chase; but, since he could not capture them, he hurled himself into the river Lycormas and became immortal. So Dositheos in the first book of his Aetolian History." (Pseudo-Plutarch, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories 40) 

So, Evenus died after losing a chariot race to his new so-in-law just as the Oenomaus died after losing a chariot race to his new Elian son-in-law Pelops.  This might be part of the greater motif of ALL the other suitors dying when the groom is selected. Evenus throwing himself into the water and becoming immortal might be a little harder to explain.   It was not uncommon for mortals to become the personification or god of the body of water they drown in.  Hence, Atsma describes Eurotas as a river-god of Lacedaemonia and “an early king of the region and possessed a mortal, rather than typical river-god, genealogy.”  We also hear via Atsma at www.theoi.com;


"As I , Helle,  fell into the Hellespont Sea from the back of the Golden Ram, Cymothoe, a Nereid] and Glaucus came swift to my succour; this abode too, this realm the father of the deep , Poseidon  himself awarded me [i.e. he transformed Helle into a sea-goddess], willing justly, and our gulf envies not Ino’s sea the Gulf of Corinth."  Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 2. 585 ff :  

Likewise Homer and Pindar both testify (Odyssey 5. 333 & Olympian Ode 2. 22) that Ino daughter of Cadmus and her son Melicertes were made immortal by the sea nymphs after leaping into the sea. (I just got to mention that Sabrina became goddess the same way. Per Milton, Comus 840)


Next in the line of suicidal Evenides is Marpessa.  

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.” (Apollodorus 1.7.9)

So clearly she feared the life of being old and alone, maybe that prompted her suicide after her husband Idas died.  (Of course the counter argument was she was probably in her twenties when this happen.  


Cleopatra clearly explained the horrors of a captured city to her husband (Iliad 9.590-4) maybe those horrors as a consequence of her husband’s death (at the hands of Apollo) is what prompted her suicide.

Polydora as mentioned above is the daughter of Cleopatra.  She married Protesilaus, the first of the Achaeans to die at Troy.  She committed suicide on the death of her husband.  Protesilaus was the first Greek to leap ashore at Troy thereby insuring his eternal fame and quick doom.  The catch is he didn’t stay dead.  Philostratus in his Hērōikos (2.6–3.6) makes it quite clear that he return for a conjunctly  visit with his wife.  (Here called Laodamia). He continued to return to hero shrine often with buddies, working with the groundskeeper and (later in the text 10.1-2) looking like he did when left home “He was about twenty years old at most when he sailed to Troy. He teems in his life force with the luxuriant fuzz on his cheeks,” (The groundskeeper seems to have quite a thing for him.) Presumably Protesilaus and his buddies were visiting from Achilles’ White Island on the Black Sea  or the Isle of the Blest.  From what Philostratus says our hero convinced his wife to join them in the other side.  From other tellings she was anxious to be with him again.  


In short: the first and fourth Evenides did not die, apparently the second and third did (Ring composition!) Now that we have reviewed why the Evenides did or did not kill themselves, we can move onto the larger question. Do the suicides of the widowed Marpessa, Cleopatra,  and Polydora (Laodamia) represent an Aetolian tradition of suttee?


Suttee according to Wikipedia is an Indo-European tradition, where the wife (oldest wife?) commits suicide upon the death of her husband often by leaping into the funeral pyre!  It is a well know custom in Vedic and Hindu culture.  As a Greek example Wikipedia shares the story of Capaneus and Evadne;

 Evadne, daughter of Iphis of Argos or Phylax and wife of Capaneus, with whom she gave birth to Sthenelus. Her husband was killed by a lightning bolt at the siege of Thebes and she threw herself on his funeral pyre and died.”   

Philostratus the elder at 2.30 tells pretty much the same story but mentions other widows who committed suicide upon the husband’s death, but lists no names and tells no stories.  (I will check the list of suicides in Greek myth at www.maicar.com 1) Of course Capaneus and Evadne were Argives not Aetolian.  But, more critically Capaneus didn’t die. According to Stesichorus, Fragment 147, Apollo’s son Asclepius raised Capaneus from the dead once and forever. Following the Protesilaus and Polydora example (along with the Dioscuri & their wives and Achilles & eight different woman associated with him) we can assume that Evadne survived her fiery death and awoke in a better place

I had some doubts about suttee being an Ancient Greek custom, but that is four examples with Philostratus knowing of more. Now I am leaning towards this actually being an Indo European custom because I know the story of the Norse goddess Nana

“Then was the body of (the god) Balder borne out on shipboard; and when his wife, Nanna the daughter of Nep, saw that, straightway her heart burst with grief, and she died ; she  was borne to the pyre, and fire was kindled“  Prose Edda

But as usual in our stories today Balder and Nanna did not die. Victor Rydberg in Teutonic Mythology tells us that the Aesir sent Balder’s brother on their fastest horse to rescue them from the goddess of death.  She was named Hel. But when the messenger arrived he found Balder and Nanna living in the Grove of Mimir in a beautiful castle with tables heavily laden. And the poets tell us that when the universe is destroyed at Ragnarök, the couple would be the gracious rulers of world that will rise to replace it.



___________________________________________

Footnote 1) Homer has something else to say about Cleopatra “Her of old in their halls had her father and honoured mother called Halcyone by name” (Iliad 9.556 ). I looked at the lists of suicides at www.maicar.com for deaths matching the suttee motif. Two of them were late, peculiar and barbarians.  The third was “Alcyone ; Out of grief for the death of her husband, she threw herself into the sea and was transformed into a halcyon or a kingfisher  (Apd.1.7.3-4; Hyg.Fab.65).  


Sunday, May 27, 2018

TFBT:Topics for Research, Part III

Absence of the Heraclidae at Troy

    Recently, in reviewing my blogposts I noticed many posts on similar topics.  I hope my research is building on itself rather than circling endlessly around the same two posts.  So I wrote my friend Maya for help.  I believe she is brilliant and having read everything I have written she might have some insights on my work. So the question here, is why there were so few Heraclidae at Troy.  My answwer is threefold, speculative and maybe a little ludicrous. 

First, tradition informs us that Heracles had myriad sons, after all Thespius had fifty daughters.  But our knowledge of that tradition is based on Herodotus (5th century BC ) and Pausanias &  Apollodorus (2nd century AD). Hesiod (8th century BC) mentions none and Homer only four;

And Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, a valiant man and tall, led from Rhodes nine ships” (Iliad 2.653)

And they that held Nisyrus and Crapathus and Casus and Cos, the city of Eurypylus, and the Calydnian isles, these again were led by Pheidippus and Antiphus, the two sons of king Thessalus, son of Heracles. And with them were ranged thirty hollow ships. “ (Iliad 2.676)

So my first suggestion on why there are so few Hraclidae at Troy is that they did not enter literary tradition for another 300 years yet.

Second suggestion involves the notion of  many people who confound the Heraclidae and Dorians.  If the Dorians did not enter Greece until 1100 BC and the traditional date for Troy is 1285, then there can be no Heraclidae at Troy because their people (the Dorians) haven't arrived yet.

Third, a belief among the Greeks “particularly the anti-Dorian Athenians with their marked likeness to Ionians”  that the Dorians were not true Greeks. (1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dorians).  If the primal audiences of god-like Homer were Ionian and his publisher the Athenian Peisistratos, maybe Homer and his Athenian editors removed reference to the Dorians in order to better please their audience

In summary, the Heraclldae did not appear in large numbers at Troy, because there were not that many in the mythic tradition at that time, there were no Dorians in Greece at the time of the Trojan War and anti-Dorian bias among audiences and editors required their removal from the cultural memory.









.

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

TFBT:Topics for Research, Part IIa

Recently, in reviewing my blogposts I noticed many posts on similar topics.  I hope my research is building on itself rather than circling endlessly around the same two posts.  So I wrote my friend Maya for help.  I believe she is brilliant and having read everything I have written she might have some insights on my work.  Maya suggested: Meleager, The Lack of Herclidae in the Trojan War and Otus & Ephialtes.  

So, here is Part IIa; Meleager, The Non-PanHellenic Hero.  I am suggesting here that we cannot judge Meleager’s myth by Modern standards, Homeric standards even by the standards of the Theban Cycle but rather in terms of the local epic cycle.

So much of the study on Meleager is contrasting Meleager/Cleopatra and Achilles/Patroclus.  There are two versions of his story.  One is told by Phoenix trying to compare Achilles to Meleager, hence the above research.  In that version he his killed by his relatives the mysterious Curetes. The other is a version where his soul is tied with a magical piece of firewood, which is burned by his mother during the battle above.  She is a Curetes.  We could try to combine to two myths. But why?  In both he is killed by one of the Curetes and in both the cause of this trouble is, to Quote Ajax, “All this for one girl, just one girl.”  Atalanta specifically, the Argonaut Meleager and Atalanta participated in the Calydonian Boar Hunt with his mother’s relatives the Curetes.  (Books have been written about who the Curetes are.) after several fatalities, the boar is slain and prizes passed out.  Thanks to Meleager’s gallantry Atalanta receives an inappropriate prize and war breaks out.  

“Then the goddess set the Kouretes and the Aetolians fighting furiously about the head and skin of the boar.[550] So long as Meleagros, dear [philos] to Arēs, was fighting in the war, 551 things went badly for the Kouretes [of the city of Pleuron], and they could not 552 put up a resistance against the Aetolians] outside the city walls [of Pleuron, the city of the Kouretes], even though they [= the Kouretes] had a multitude of fighters. 553 But as soon as anger [kholos] entered Meleagros—the kind of anger that affects also others, 554 making their thinking [noos] swell to the point of bursting inside their chest even if at other times they have sound thoughts [phroneîn], [555] [then things changed:] he [= Meleagros] was angry [khōomenos] in his heart at his dear mother Althaea,” book nine  

Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 174 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"The wrath of Diana [Artemis] sent a boar of huge size to lay waste the district of Calydon, because Oeneus had not made yearly offerings to her. Meleager, with the help of chosen youths of Greece, killed it, and gave the hide to the virgin Atalanta because of her valor. Ideus, Plexippus, Lynceus . . . brothers of Althaea, wished to take if from her. When she asked the help of Meleager, he intervened, and putting love before family relationship, killed his uncles. When Althaea, the mother, heard that her son had dared to commit such a crime, remembering the warning of the Parcae, she brought out the brand from the chest and threw it on the fire. Thus, in desiring to avenge the death of her brothers, she killed her son."

Without getting into the whole issue of who the Curetes are, I would suggest that are a type of people (Lutherans. Moose Club members, Kosmonauts) rather than a race of people.  

There is a flaw in Phoenix argument comparing Achilles to Meleager,  What occurs  to me is that while Achilles grieves for loss of his kLEos at the hands of Agamemnon, Meleager is suffering from a broken heart at his mother’s betrayal. Just as the return of the untouched Briseis cannot ease Achilles pain, no kind words from his cruel mother can now unbreak his heart. These are two different stories

S.C.R. Swain suggests that Meleager’s story is part of the earliest and pre-Homeric cycle in Greek myth; the Aetolian-Elean-Plyian Cycle. (followed by the Iolcus Cycle, Theban and Trojan). The Trojan Cycle at least the Homeric portion was all about unfailing glory, the Theban revenge, why would we assume we know the motivations of the characters of the Aetolian-Elean-Plyian Cycle matched them.  So if we discount our preconceived ideas about epic and the forced parallels with Achilles from Phoenix and Homer we end up with a character more in tune with the family-focused tragedies of the Athenian playwrights.  Maybe we should study Meleager from those paradigms.








Monday, May 21, 2018

TFBT: Topics for Research, Part I

Recently, in reviewing my blogposts I noticed many posts on similar topics.  I hope my research is building on itself rather than circling endlessly around the same two posts.  So I wrote my friend Maya for help.  I believe she is brilliant and having read everything I have written she might have some insights on my work.  Of course prior to her kindly response I stumbled across something I had never looked into; Suitors of Helen versus Suitors of Penelope.  Maya suggested: Meleager, The Lack of Herclidae in the Trojan War and Otus & Ephialtes. 

So, here is Part I; Suitors of Helen versus Suitors of Penelope

I was looking up something in Maicar.com and ran across back to back listings for “The Suitors of Helen” and the “The Suitors of Penelope” it struck me that contrasting the two topics might be interesting.  The thing that struck me immediately was that all of Helen’s suitors survived the engagement party and only one of Penelope’s suitors (Odysseus) survived the big announcement. Sort of like the suitors of;  Atalanta, (whom she skew if the lost a footrace to her. ) Jocasta,  (slain by her counter-part Phix the Sphinx if the failed to explain the riddle. ) Hippodamia daughter of Oenomaus, (Her father slew the suitors that failed to win the chariot race. Of course he died in the cliche chariot crash.  As an aside to discuss later; In Greek vases Pelops and Hippodamia look like a couple eloping with daddy in hot pursuit, rather racers preparing to turn the post.  Likewise, the father in law of Idas met death (at his own hand) when he failed to catch up with his daughter and new husband.  More on them later.  And finally Penelope’s father Icarius chased after the departing newlyweds begging his daughter to stay.  Her response was famously to pull her veil.  He did not die. More on this too.

So in summary to contrast The Suitors of Helen” and the “The Suitors of Penelope”,  in Helen’s case, in sharp contrast to other women, there is no slaughter of the suitors. (Thanks to the Oath of Tyndareus, which was Odysseus’ idea.). Also  unique in the courtship of  the maiden Helene was the lack of a contest.  Her father simply let her chose her new husband.

In the Penelope’s case, as in the case of Atalanta, Hippodamia and Jocasta, the rejected suitors were slain.  Mentor-Athena says that if Odysseus should appear at the door armed with helmet, shield, and two spears as he does appear at the beginning of the spear-combat - the fate of the suitors would be swift and their wedding bitter (a 255 ff.).The contest in Penelope’s case was an archery contest.  First prize for every Homeric archery contest is a woman. 

However, regarding the maiden Penelope’s first round of suitors  “Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 12. 4 :"On the opposite side of the office of the Bidiaians [in Sparta, Lakedaimonia] is a sanctuary of Athena. Odysseus is said to have set up the image and to have named it Keleuthea (Lady of the Road), when he had beaten the suitors of Penelope in the foot-race.”  (Others say that exchange for Odysseus' invaluable service, Tyndareus helped him to win the hand of His niece Penelope.)

So to summarize the similarities of the suitors of the maiden cousins Helen and Penelope.  None of the suitors died and Tyndareus might have influenced the outcome