TFBT: Athena Could See in the Dark

Latest research from the Oinops Group at Hour 25 indicates Athena can see in the dark! http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?p=6152

So the theory is that Athena of the “flashing-eyes” has “tapetum lucidum” like deer in the ditch on a dark night and consequently notices that the water is deep blue at Odyssey 2.420. So at least metaphorically, she can see in the dark. 

I never thought about this before.  It would explain how Zeus found the magic herb that would have made the giants invulnerable when he banished the Hyperionides from the sky.  Zeus could see in the dark and the Giants couldn’t . (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 34 – 38) It explains how the Muses saw events at night, like the Doloneia and could inform the poets.  It explains how Hermes (in his hymn) so successful stole Apollo’s cattle at night while only “Selene's soft light shone down”. 

 I will have to think on this

TFBT: Random Notes from Hour Seventeen of “The Ancient Greek Hero”

“Daughter of Zeus, you will hear it all in brief. We are the eternal children of Night. We are called Curses at home beneath the earth.” (Eumenides 415) The "Curses" are called Erinnyes on earth.  Is "Curses" another example of a divine name? Like Scamander on earth is called Xanthus in Olympus.

“And I will aid the suppliant and rescue him! For the mēnis of the suppliant would be awesome to mortals and gods, if I intentionally abandoned him” Apollo in Eumenides. I thought menis was limited to gods and Achilles. Is the suggestion here that Apollo failing to save Orestes will have cosmic consequences? Orestes is certainly no demi-god. So is menis attached to the results rather than victim?

“I establish this law court, which is untouched by desire for profit. It is fully deserving of reverence and is quick to anger. Watching over those who sleep, it is a wakeful guardian of the land.” Eumenides 704-706 Good writing!

“ the transformation of the Erinyes into the Eumenides represents their acculturation within the framework of Athenian society, where they are also known as the Semnai or 'Revered Ones' (there is a most revealing report about them in Pausanias 1.28.6-7). Conversely, such acculturation represents the transformation of the dead heroes of the past into the cult heroes of the immediate present.” The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours 17:17

“Be gone, quit my sanctuary of the seer’s art, or else you might be struck by a flying, winged, glistening snake shot forth from a golden bow-string, and then you would spit out black foam from your lungs in pain, vomiting the clotted blood.” Eumenides 180

“For one must nurse that little thing, which doesn’t yet have any thoughts, as if it were a grazing animal, of course one must, by following its twists and turns that lead toward a thought.” Agamemnon 755

TFBT: Random Notes from Hour Ten

Odyssey 8:1 "Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, Alkinoos, the hallowed prince, and Odysseus, ransacker of cities, both rose". Third of the way through the story and Odysseus is still a ransacker of cities rather than king of one.

In Chapter Five of the Odyssey, the gods decide to send Odysseus on his way home. They assign Hermes the task of informing the shining goddess Calypso that she must release her mortal lover Odysseus.  She doesn’t take the news well and curses the gods in general for their jealousy of goddesses who take mortal lovers.  Hermes terse response is located at Od 5:145,  “Then again the messenger Argeiphontes answered her: “Even so send him forth now, and beware of the wrath of Zeus, lest haply he wax wroth and visit his anger upon thee hereafter.” Nagy in the sourcebook for The Ancient Greek Hero says of Calypso’s argument,  " For example, the hero Orion is killed off by Artemis because he became the lover of Ēōs, the goddess of the dawn (v 121–124). And the narrative of the Odyssey actually foretells a similar death for Odysseus - if he had continued to be the lover of Calypso "  Silly me!  I assumed Hermes’ was warning Calypso about the wrath of Zeus descending on here.  Just another example of the gods nothing interfering in the business of other gods, but having no qualms about killing other gods’ mortal favorites.

Some pretty lines from the Odyssey;

Od 8:105 “the wood-nymphs, daughters of Aegis-bearing Zeus, take their sport along with her, then is Leto proud at seeing her daughter stand a full head taller than the others, and eclipse the loveliest amid a whole bevy of beauties. “   

Od 6: 41 “Olympus, where, they say, is the abode of the gods that stands fast forever. Neither is it shaken by winds nor ever wet with rain, nor does snow fall upon it, but the air is outspread clear and cloudless, and over it hovers a radiant whiteness. Therein the blessed gods are glad all their days,”  

Od 4:335 “(Ino) had been since raised to the rank of a marine goddess. Seeing in what great distress Odysseus now was, she had compassion upon him, and, rising like a sea-gull from the waves, took her seat upon the raft. “My poor good man,” said she, “why is Poseidon the shaker of the earth so furiously [340] angry with you? He is giving you a great deal of trouble, but for all his bluster he will not kill you. You seem to be a sensible person, do then as I bid you; strip, leave your raft to drive before the wind, and swim”  Admittedly the divine  realm of Ino is  rescuing drowning sailors, still she seem remarkable unworried about the wrath of Poseidon. 

Od 4:355  Odysseus says of  the goddess Ino “Alas,” he said to himself in his dismay, “this is only someone or other of the gods who is luring me to ruin by advising me to quit my raft.  What’s with Odysseus constant worry constantly about being lured to his watery death  by a goddess?  He flat out accuses Calypso of the same at 5:171and deals with the Sirens attempt to beguile him at 12:36 .    It might be this compulsive liar proving the proverb, that “People with trust issues can’t be trusted.  At 10:302 he make Circe swear a great oath not to render him “a weakling and unmanned” after she proposes a romp in the hay.  He even accuses Athena of trying to beguile him on the day of his homecoming at 22:311-329.  Admittedly Hector was “lured” to his death by the same goddess at Il 22:289-306 and Anchises famously worries about being unmanned after bedding Aphrodite, but Odysseus’s worry borders on obsession.