TFBT: Part III of Bill’s Geryoneis, The More Esoteric Interpretation of All This

Gee!  Where to start?  In the Ancient Greek world, the Great River Oceanus, a fresh-water stream, surrounded the known world.  Beyond it lay several mythical lands.  Examples include Helios’ palaces.  One in the east where he rose in the morning and one in the west where his work-day is done. Another mythical place is the realm of Hades and dread Persephone on the western edge of the universe.  Hence Odysseus could sail into the underworld

Pylos

Originally the western edge of the known world was Pylos.  Lord Apollo, son of Zeus, kept his own shambling oxen in goodly Pylos. (HH to Hermes 214)   Above, sandy Pylos Heracles bested Ares. (Hesiod, Shield of Herakles 357) Likewise, “It is said that, when Herakles was leading an expedition against Pylos in Elis, Athena was one of his allies. Now among those who came to fight on the side of the Pylians was Hades, who was the foe of Herakles but worshipped at Pylos…And among them huge Hades suffered a wound from a swift arrow, when the same man, the son of aegis-bearing Zeus, hit him in Pylos among the dead, and gave him over to pains.  (Pausanias, Description of Greece 6.25.2)  In the Iliad Hera appears as an enemy of Heracles possibly at Pylos “So suffered Hera, when the mighty son of Amphitryon smote her on the right breast with a three-barbed arrow; then upon her too came pain that might in no wise be assuaged. And so suffered monstrous Hades even as the rest a bitter arrow, when this same man, the son of Zeus that beareth the aegis, smote him in Pylos.  (v. 392, xviii. 118) East of Pylos is a mountain named after the nymph Minthe.  “Minthe, men say was once a maid beneath the earth, a nymph (daughter) of the Cocytus River, a river of the underworld.  (Oppian, Halieutica 3.485)    She became the lover of Hades. Persephone transformed her into garden-mint.  The mountain   a precinct sacred to Hades.  North of Plyos flows the Acheron.   (Strabo, Geography 8.3.14–15).   The Acheron is one of the five rivers of Hades.   "Circe addresses Odysseus ‘Beach the vessel beside deep-eddying Oceanus and pass on foot to the dank domains of Hades. At the entrance there, the stream of Acheron” (Homer, Odyssey 10. 513) All this to illustrate the belief that Pylos and Acheron were at the entrance of the underworld;   “In ancient geography there occur several rivers of this name, all of which were, at least at one time, believed to be connected with the lower world. The river first looked upon in this light was the Acheron in Thesprotia, in Epirus, a country which appeared to the earliest Greeks as the end of the world in the west, and the locality of the river led them to the belief that it was the entrance into the lower world.” [i]

Ellis

“While Homer speaks only of the gates of Helios in the west, later writers assign to him a second palace in the west, and describe his horses as feeding upon herbs growing in the islands of the blessed”. (Nonn. Dionys. xii. 1, &c.; Athen. vii. 296; Stat. Theb. iii. 407.)  Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

Pylos where this world and the underworld seem to merge is in the region of Greece called Ellis.    Other people became involved in the war discussed above during the reign of Augeias, King of the Epeians in Elis.  Douglas Frame in “Hippota Nestor” proposes an interesting correspondence between Helios and this Augeias. 

“The Epeian king Augeias, “the shining one” and his daughter Agamede, a specialist in drugs, look like local forms of Helios, the sun god and his granddaughter Medeia, likewise a specialist in drugs.  Augeias and his daughter do not play a prominent role in Nestor’s story,   (Heracles put Nestor on the throne of Pylos after the war.)  but, they are still there in the background.  In post-Homeric tradition Augeias himself was famous for his cattle.  As in the myth of the cleaning of his stables by Heracles, and this further connects him with Helios and his cattle….The name Augeias is from auge, “bright light, radiance”, as in the frequent Homeric formula hup’ augas eelioio, “under the rays of the sun”.  In post-Homeric tradition Augeias is called the son of Helios; this make Agamede, like Medeia, a granddaughter of Helios… (And finally,) The cattle of Augeias are closely equated with the cattle of Helios I Theocritus 25.118-121, 129-131”

In summary, there is correspondence between Pylos and the Western entrance to Hades and correspondence between Ellis in general and the Western Home, the Sunset Home of the sun-god Helios.

The Cattle of Helios

“Some scholars said that the herds of Helios were tinged golden because Helios as the sun, lit up the clouds as he rose and set.”  [ii]   “Clouds” like the Vedic god Indra won. 

“Indra shatters Vrtra with his bolt. He cleaves the mountain, making the streams flow or taking the cows, even with the sound of his bolt. He releases the streams which are like imprisoned cows or which, like lowing cows, flow to the ocean. He won the cows and Soma and made the seven rivers to flow.”  AA MacDonell [iii]

MacDonell’s “many-horned swiftly moving cows” are what Cox calls “golden tinted clouds or herds of Helios”. [iv]  Helios cows were white with gold horns^3[v]  as were Apollo’s.  ^[vi] Geryon’s kine grazing in the far west were red. ^[vii]    Hades’ grazing nearby were black. ^[viii]  And finally Hera had a cow named Io which changed in color from white to black to violet.  ^[ix]

 

Italy

Moving further west in our mundane world we find another locale merging this world and the underworld;

"Near Cumae in Italy is Cape Misenon, and between them is Lake Akherousia, a kind of shoal-water estuary of the sea . . . also Gulf Aornos [Avernus] . . . The people prior to my time were wont to make Aornos the setting of the fabulous story of the Homeric Nykeia   and, what is more, writers tell us that there actually was an Oracle of the Dead… here and that Odysseus visited it . . . … And the natives used to add the further fable that all birds that fly over it fall down into the  being killed by the vapours that rise from it, …At any rate, only those who had sacrificed beforehand and propitiated the  Underworld Gods  could sail into Aornos, and priests who held the locality on lease were there to give directions in all such matters; and there is a fountain of potable water at this place, on the sea, but people used to abstain from it because they regarded it as the water of the Styx; and the Oracle, too, is situated somewhere near it; and further, the hot springs nearby and Lake Akherousia betokened the River Pyriphlegethon; the underworld river of fire].   Strabo, Geography 5. 4. 5 ff

In summary Strabo discusses another place on the western edge of the universe confounded with the world below.  Lycophron seems to confirm Strabo in Alexandra 681-738, but with the rantings of Cassandra, who can tell for sure. 

Spain

Which brings us back to Geryon. “He possessed a fabulous herd of cattle whose coats were stained red by the light of the sunset.”[x]Hesiod “Theogony 293) said that Heracles stole the cattle and “killed Orthos and the oxherd Eurytion out in the gloomy meadow beyond the fabulous Oceanus.”  However at Apollodorus Bibliotheca 2.108 we find “When he, Heracles reached Erytheaia he camped on Mount Abas.  The dog (Orthros) smelled him there and went after him, but he struck it with his club and when the cowherd Eurtyion came to help the dog, he slew him as well.  Menoites was there tending the cattle of Hades reports these events to Geryon” Which makes Geryon’s domain sound a little bit more mundane.  Finally,

 "The mountain in which the river Baetis is said to rise [in southern Iberia (Spain)] is called ‘Silver Mountain’ on account of the silver-mines that are in it . . . The ancients seem to have called the Baetis River [of Hispania] ‘Tartessos’; and to have called Gades and the adjoining islands ‘Erytheia’; and this is supposed to be the reason why Stesikhoros spoke as he did about [Eurytion] the neat-herd of Geryon, namely, that he was born ‘about opposite famous Erytheia, beside the unlimited, silver-rooted springs of the river Tartessos (Tartessus), in a cavern of a cliff.’ Since the river had two mouths, a city was planted on the intervening territory in former times, it is said,--a city which was called ‘Tartessos,’ after the name of the river . . . Further Eratosthenes says that the country adjoining Kalpe (Calpe) is called ‘Tartessis,’ and that Erytheia is called ‘Blest Island’ (Nesos Eudaimos)."  Strabo, Geography 3. 2. 11

Diodorus Siculus, [xi] seems to agree with the confounding of Hades with Tartessi.  In Summary, in Spain or upon its coast we have a pair of god-like beings with multi-headed dogs raising cattle in the same area, both of whom Hades and Geryon get shot by Heracles in a cattle raid. 

Summary,

In short what we have here is the ultimate solar myth.  The sun god spend the day herding his cattle (clouds) to the upper pastures of the sky and then brings them down to the western banks of the Great River Ocean for the night.  (Hence their changing colors; white on a sunny day, dark with moisture, scarlet at sunset.  There he defeats the Death god with a few well placed arrows and the slaughtering of his multi-headed dog and watchman. The End, until the next day.

 

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[i] (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.  See Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 17. 4 on this topic. )

[ii] (Tamra Andrews “Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea and Sky ).

[iii] VEDIC MYTHOLOGY  BY  A. A. MACDONELL. ATMOSPHERIC GODS. 22. INDRA. 59 

[iv] Chapter 38 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.

[v] Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 4.965

[vi] Homeric Hymn to Hermes  and Philostratus Eder 1.16-31

[vii] Apollodorus, The Library 2.106-108

[viii] Apollodorus Bibliotheca 2.125

[ix] Suida Isis

[x] (Aaron Atsma) 

[xi] Library of History 4. 18. 2 :

TFBT: Her Child, was also her Consort

If you are a bibliophile, I am sure you know the following experience.    On a long flight or in a remote location you get stuck reading a book that is a piece of propaganda full of lies and half-truths.  In order to save someone else from getting sucked into this mess you toss it into the garbage rather recycling or donating it to the library.   Or is it badly written and has a lame ending.  Or it is full of illogic and bad science.  Or the author makes a state of general and universal application that this is an "obvious projection of..." If it is so obvious why must the authoress point it out?    I read one of these books recently. I would have tossed it but I was on a five hour flight. In between the waves of nausea and disgust there were a few interesting if odd insights on Greek mythology.  This is the fourth in a series of blogs investigating these possible gems in the rubbish.  

“Eos, the Morning; mother of the sun.  In the classic pattern, her child was also her consort.” Walker 1983 

Okay, what the authoress is mentioning is part of Max Muller’s work on solar mythology.  Don’t say “SM” out loud!  A lightning bolt might strike you.  Initially, SM proved a great tool for analyzing stories about sun-gods, but its success and over-use proved its downfall. I am pretty sure that all the English translations of his work were burnt by an angry mob of intellectuals with torches and pitchforks.  You can read more here.  I believe what Walker hints at, is the belief that that Dawn births the sun each day only to see him sail away and die a bloody death on the western horizon.  Hence, the color of the sunset.   

The catch is there is no hint of this idea in Greek mythology.  The classical presentation of the sun-god’s day is this.   Helios wakes.  The Hours help hitch up his and his sister Eos’ horses.  Phosphorus (Morning Star) and Eos (Dawn) announce his rising.  He sails across the sky, lands on the far shore of the Great River Ocean.  The Hours greet him again and unhitch his horses.  He boards the solar barge and the gentle current of the River takes him to his eastern palace while he slumbers.  

 Eos, the goddess of the dawn is sister to Helios, the sun and Selene the moon.  Eos is also the daughter of the elder sun-titan Hyperion.  Eos also had a son Phaethon. “She engendered a son, glorious Phaethon, the strong, a man in the likeness of the immortals” [i]“Phaethon, that is, "the shining," occurs in Homer as an epithet or surname of Helios, and is used by later writers as a real proper name for Helios.) [ii]  So, with just the facts above, Eos is daughter of the sun, sister of the sun and mother of the sun.   

Also, Phaethon, son of Eos had a cousin Phaethon son of Helios.  Here’s what happen to the other Phaethon.  He was;

 

“presumptuous and ambitious enough to request of his father one day to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun across the heavens the youth being too weak to check the horses, came down with his chariot, and so near to the earth, that he almost set it on fire. Zeus, therefore, killed him with a flash of lightning.”  [iii]

 

What happen with just the confused facts above is that Phaethon, which is another name for the Sun-god, left his mother to see him sail away and die a bloody death on the western horizon.  Hence, the color of the sunset.  

You can see how the authoress and the doomed “solar mythologists” so long ago thrown into Tartarus like Hyperion could get the idea that Eos birthed the sun. 

 

There might be some hope for the authoress’ notion of Eos and “the classic pattern, her child was also her consort” if the Dawn goddess had married her brother Helios or if any other her sons; Tithonos [iv] or the brothers brazen-crested Memnon, king of the Aithiopes, and the Lord Emathion [v] had jumped in the solar chariot and crashed on the horizon, but they didn’t.   

 

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[i] (Hesiod, Theogony 986)

[ii] (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.) 

[iii] Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

[iv] ( Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.181)

[v] (Hesiod, Theogony 984)

TFBT: Pindar’s Victory Songs

I didn’t expect to like the Ancient Greek poet Pindar, but I do!  I am reading Pindar’s Victory Songs by Frank J. Nisetich. That fact that Nisetich prefaces each translation with an explanation of equal length to the ode might help those uninitiated into the mysteries of Greek mythology enjoy Pindar.  But what I really found surprising is that I enjoyed reading Nisetich.   

The book begins with a thorough and detailed discussion of the rules that pertain to victory odes (epinician).  For example, any self-reference by the poet changes the course of the ode and topic of the moment.  Nisetich ends the discussion with, “All these tendencies – to see the general behind the particular to grasp one thing by contrast with its opposites, to trace human vicissitudes to the will of the gods…or find the right response to a present situation through reference to myth or proverb – remain a dominant form of thought and style in archaic poetry.” 

Pindar was hired to write the poems in this book; to honor various victors at various of the PanHellenic games.  I’ve read half way through the book so far, which covers the victors at the Olympic Games and the Pythian Games at Delphi.  Pindar goes way out of his way not to bluntly brag about the victor.  Often studiously avoiding his name.  Nisetich explains, “For happiness, finally is the god’s prerogative.  In a world where the gods may take offense at human exultation, it is dangerous to exult.” 

For Pindar’s part he is quick to remind those he celebrates in song that;

• “Malignant pain perishes in noble Joy.”  (Olympian 2)
• “A man forgets the strain of contending when he triumphs “ (Olympian 2)
• “Care born of forethought puts success and joy within men’s reach.”  (Olympian 7)
• “The contenders, struggling for glory, breathless until they hold it.”  (Olympian   8)
• Few have won joy without effort (Olympian 10)
• Bring your life to completion in good cheer, with your sons standing beside you.  If the wealth a man tends and cares for be sound, his house ample and his name renowned as well, let him not envy the gods.  (Olympian 5)
• And finally to remind them to avoid hubris he says “And the arrows of Artemis…hunted down Titys, so that men might learn to yearn for things that are within their grasp” (Pythian 4).  Titys yearned for the embrace of the goddess Leto, mother of Artemis and died for his vanity.  

The book is full of historical figures and ancient myths, but throughout Pindar’s songs in praise of heroes, gods and Olympic athletes he is quick to remind them all that “I say (the poet) you have achieved unending glory.” (Pythian 2) 

Some interesting asides include;

• The suggestion that once her son slipped Semele into Heaven under the name of Thyone she became “beloved of Pallas” (Olympian 2) What myths would account for this friendship among the two unrelated female deities? 
• Admittedly, Thyone’s son (Dionysius) and his sister Athena both experienced unique births.  Both were brought to full term inside the body of their common father Zeus.  Athena from his head and Dionysius from his “thigh”.  But, nowhere is there a myth mentioning that this was a bond that united Athena and Dionysius, much less Athena and Thyone.
• The only myth I recall that remotely links Semele and Athena is the story of Dionysius in a previous form, then named Zagreus.  Zagreus, the epithet of the chthonic Dionysius was born of Zeus and Persephone.  The young man was torn apart and eaten by dogs, er I mean the Titans.  Athena rescued his heart and gave it to Zeus.  The shredded godlings essence and immortality presumably passed on to the son of Semele.  ( Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology).
• The Titan of the sun Helios missed the division of honors at Mecone after the defeat of the elder titans.  Sailing across the sky that day the saw the island Rhodes about to surface from beneath the sea.  In recompense, Zeus promised the island as part of his time.  In Olympian 7 Pindar says Helios asked the Fate Lachesis to guarantee Zeus’ promise.  Sort of an odd request by Helios, but maybe typical of Pindar who asks the Fates to turn their backs on feuding family members (Pythian 4) and recalls Clotho lifting the butchered Pelops out of the stew pot, complete with renewed life and a gleaming ivory shoulder (Olympian 1)
• Nisetich  says “We may suppose that a man who makes a promise and then does not keep it lied, when he made it.  But in Greek the connection is more immediate; if truth is memory, forgetfulness is a kind of lying.”  This rather makes sense because we’ve all dealt with people who were clearly not paying attention to us and would forget the commitments they made that day and even the conversation.
• Nisetich  also explains that the wheel on which Ixion was bound is an iunx, a love charm which he tried on Hera.  Of course Zeus substituted a cloud for his wife, forming it to look like Hera.  Ixion’s son by the cloud goddess Nephele is named “Centaurus”  from the verb kentein meaning to stab and aura meaning air, in remembrance of his conception. 

Let me end with some typical beautiful writing by Pindar on a Sicilian oread; “white-capped Aetna, nursing all year long her brood of stinging snow, within her secret depths pure springs of unapproachable fire erupt -  her rivers in daytime pour forth billows of glaring smoke, while at night the blood-red , rolling blaze whirls boulders crashing onto the flat plain of the sea”  Pythian 1