TFBT; September Quotes

“Woman like the goddesses, at that point, after mounting your bed, I would be content to enter the house of Hades”. (HH to Aphrodite 153-154). Wish I’d known this line when I was a bachelor. Really similar to Moonstruck.

“The basic issue in these episodes involving mortals behaving like gods is that gods and mortals are not, as Apollo said to Diomedes, of the same class.  The traditional role of Apollo in making just this distinction and reinforcing it” Muellner in Menis page 23

“Victory or Vahalla!”

When Aphrodite saw Cypris at Cnidus, "Alas!" said she; "where did Praxiteles see me naked?"  Plato, Epigram XVII

“The hardest part is the beginning.” - carpet layer 

"The herald of the prowess of heroes and the interpreter of the immortals, a second sun on the life of Greece, Homer, the light of the Muses, the ageless mouth of all the world, lies hid, O stranger, under the sea-washed sand."  Antipater of Sidon

TFBT: Plato's Ion

This month at the Kosmos Society we will be reading and discussing Plato’s dialogue Ion.

I will say that I am no fan of Socrates.  He went around with his great genius abusing his listeners and bragging that he was the smartest man in the world.  If I had been on the jury… 

Early on Socrates says, “Homer speak of the same themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument?”  Really? Wasn’t the anger of Achilles the major theme of the Iliad and return the theme of Odyssey.  Hmm, where’s that lot I   wanted to cast?

“The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration…”   That threw me off.  I forgot he had a daemon who told him things. Hmm.  “…the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed.”  He explains that Ion’s spectators are the last in this chain of inspiration.  “the greater number are possessed and held by Homer. Of whom, Ion, you are one, and are possessed by Homer.” 

It occurs to me that the English word rhapsody means “an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling.”

“Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired… this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of song”  I like this line of logic and apparently does Ion, who says  “I feel that you are; for your words touch my soul”  

Why does Socrates keep avoiding listening to Ion recite Homer?   

That great line about “twenty thousand friendly faces”!  Nestor’s advice on chariot racing!  Didn’t expect that!  And now Hecamede’ drink! 

And then at the end, here it comes; every Socratic question is made in ill-faith, a trap for his listener, he is not dueling but rather toying with an unarmed man, reaching the “logical” conclusion that rather “you are only a deceiver” and forcing Ion to allow Socrates to attribute his “praises of Homer,  inspiration, and not art.”  A notion Ion did not seem adverse to in the first place. 

Where’s that lot I was looking for?

See the discussion here;  https://kosmossociety.chs.harvard.edu/?p=40729 

TFBT: Gods in our Midst

The full title is “Gods in our Midst, Mythological Images of the Masculine: a Woman’s View” by Christine Downing.

I am enjoying Professor Downing’s book. Her approach is more psychological than mythological. Her sources are often secondary (or tertiary) and obscure. She does a good job of summarizing the Homeric Hymns, without specific reference. She gives the well-read reader much to think about, but not necessarily to agree with.

Her discussion of Persephone’s Abduction got me wondering. I wonder if Hades chariot and Persephone’s abduction is the prototype of wedding rituals where  fathers chasing after in their own chariots; Icarus, Oeonamus, or Idas, trying to save their daughters from death?

A few quotes and occasional comments;

• “In all of Greek mythology none of the gods ever denies another’s existence – though they may fiercely dispute a particular claim to authority.” “Fiercely” being like ripping off the other’s wings or skinning them alive.

• “The whole exerts pressure on each of the individual gods...so that each of these powers becomes distinct not in itself as an isolated object but by virtue of its relative position in the aggregate of forces.”

• “The clearly ordered Olympian pantheon with Zeus at its head is a creation of Homer….Only in Homer…are the Olympians, the Olympians, dwelling together on the mountain top.” I wonder what Hesiod would have to say about that comment?

• “Even after Homer, Zeus still does not have a supreme position in cult, only in myth”

• “I must begin with Hades, because he got me into all this…” I don’t know if this is insightful to most folks, but it is a great opening line.

• “In both myth and rite, (Hades) is little more than Persephone’s shadowy consort.” I would suppose his “shadowiness” is due to the avoidance of his name and himself as a taboo topic, but it is a good observation by Downing.

• “A variant version relates that Cronus, rather than swallowing his newborn sons, threw the infant Hades into Tartarus...as he threw newborn Poseidon into the sea.” Interesting thought, but her source here is Carl Kerenyi

• “The story of the overthrow of the Titans is clearly at one level the story of the overthrow of a more ancient race of gods, that is of the displacement of an earlier cult by a later one.” This seems obvious, but there is no evidence the Titans were worshipped by the Mycenaean and the few titanic cults outside Cronus at Olympia are clearly coincidence of name.

• “The aniconic origin testifies to Hermes being a very early divinity. He is the herm. He is also the crossroad itself. Every threshold is Hermes. When silence falls in a conversation that, too, marks Hermes’ presence. He is there, at all transitions, marking them as sacred, as eventful, as epiphany. Our awareness of Hermes’ presence opens us to the sacredness of such moments, of those in-between times that are strangely frightening and that we so often try to hurry past. We never really know what may lie on the other side of any threshold. I think particularly of the moment of silence that may fall in the midst of a conversation with a beloved friend, when eye is locked into eye and one suddenly realizes how all the words have been evasion for this moment when soul gazes directly into soul.” Wow!

• “Hermes is also the only son of a nymph among the Olympians…all of the other Olympian gods except Dionysus are sons of goddesses.” Except Athena, we might add. “Where Hermes tries to hide his origin outside of the Olympian world, Dionysus flaunts his.” Well, according  to Graves, Dionysus rescues his mom Semele from Hades and sneaks her up the backstairs of Olympus under the divine name of Thyone. Heracles, to hide his mortal heritage,  is ritually adopted by Hera.

• “The difference between gods and men, the divine immortality of the gods as contrasted with the finite mortality of humankind so important to Apollo, is of little import to Hermes.” “Apollo focuses on the importance of clearly defined boundaries, the gulf between the divine and the human…When Apollo says, “Know yourself.” he means, “Know you are not a god”.”

• Apollo, “a god whom the higher imagination of the Greek so exalted and purified that death and blood shed became unclean things in his sight…scholars want to separate the “real” Apollo from this original more fearful side is…the beginning of such idealization in the late classical world.”

• “The children of the major gods serve to bring into focused view some particular aspect of their divine parent.” Students of Greg Nagy have heard this a lot. I thought I would just document and another scholar’s support for the notion.

• “Hephaestus is the only Olympian god who works.” That’s an interesting observation. Although Hera’s daughter Eileithyia serves as needed as mid-wife to the gods and Apollo Paean serves occasionally as doctor. But it is a good insight. Hephaestus has a heavy daily work load like his buddy Helios.

• “Among the Olympians, only Hephaestus was not imagined as physically perfect, divinely beautiful.”

• “Ares was involved in many other liaisons and (sired) many sons, most of whom were violent. But surprisingly there are no accounts of his forcing himself upon women”

• “I may know Zeus too well or rather may see him in a more forgiving light than many other women will. For I am a father’s daughter.” Reminding us of Athena’s statement in the Eumenides that, “I am for the male and entirely on the father's side.”

• “(Zeus) is represented as endowed with seemingly inexhaustible sexual potency. (Walter Burkett) has counted them up and calculated that Zeus had at least 115 mistresses.”

• “The Greeks understood Zeus as a god secure in rule, a god who maintains order without suppressing diversity, vitality, life…Zeus as embodying Greek polytheism, an order that includes without suppressing difference…the god ready to honor the sanctity of the guest, the stranger, the alien.”

TFBT: Who is the goddess of Menis?

My friend Maya asked about the lameness of Hephaestus.  I am going to ramble a bit answering.   The myths of Hephaestus lameness are over the place.

• ·      He was lame at birth due to his parthenogenesis. (Homer, Odyssey 8.267) 
• ·      His was lame because he was lame at birth and his mom threw him off Olympus.  (Homer, Iliad 18.140)
• ·      He was lame because he got between his bickering parents and got tossed. (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.19)

All this is sort of beside the point; Hephaestus was the prototype for Typhon.  There are several accounts of Typhon’s conception, but the one including Hera involves a male deity this time

Hephaestus was not as scary as his brother, but there was a tale of his menis;

"[In the temple of Dionysus at Athens :] There are paintings here--Dionysus bringing Hephaistos up to heaven. One of the Greek legends is that Hephaistos, when he was born, was thrown down by Hera. In revenge he sent as a gift a golden chair with invisible fetters. When Hera sat down she was held fast, and Hephaistos refused to listen to any other of the gods save Dionysus--in him he reposed the fullest trust--and after making him drunk Dionysus brought him to heaven."

Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 20. 3

Being rejected by your parents and tossed out of Olympus could generate a lot of anger and the separation from his people as in the case of Demeter and Achilles indicates the menis kind of anger. Like those two he sat sulking in his tent or more accurately retired to his foster mother’s grotto where he “wrought many intricate things; pins that bend back, curved clasps, cups, necklaces” until the king sends a  messenger begging him to come back.  Which he does, the cosmic crisis is resolved, Hera freed and balance restored.

Maya, I tried to address your question about Hephaestus’ fall from grace and consequently triumphant return.  Now for another question that came up during the book club the other day.  Who is the goddess of Menis?

In the 18 Book of the Iliad Hephaistos tells his wife, that Thetis saved him when his “brazen-faced mother” tossed him from Olympus for him being lame. He says his soul would have known great sorrow had not Thetis and another nymph “caught me and held me”.  He lived there nine years before returning to Olympus No other among the gods or among mortal men knew about him except Thetis and the other nymph.  They know of course since, “they saved me."  Nine years is a long time for one’s menis to fester and rage. But rather than spending that time forging “a weapon in his hand more powerful than the thunderbolt or the irresistible trident,” (Isthmian 8) under Thetis’ guidance he turned his skills (and menis) to delicate jewelry and fine furniture. 

Towards the beginning of the Iliad (Book 1) we hear of a time when the gods revolted against Zeus and bound him in his throne. There had to be some menis there!   Would the perfectly balanced and ordered universe topple into the abyss?  No,   Thetis freed Zeus with opposition from none and restored the Olympic order.

In the last book of the Iliad the gods stand around Olympus wringing their hands and lamenting that they are helpless in the face of Achilles menis.  His wrath won’t abate until Hector’s body is returned to Priam.  So they invite Thetis to Olympus, give her the best seat in the house (Athena’s at Zeus’ right hand) a fancy goblet full of nectar and beg her to convince Achilles to give up the body (and consequently his menis).

So we have seen several time in the Iliad where when there was menis, there was Thetis.  So I would propose that in some positive sense that Thetis is the goddess of Menis

Dear Maya, if you have followed my argument back and forth through the Iliad and find some hint of truth in it, please follow me back to the opening lines;

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκεν·

Sing, O goddess, the anger [mênis] of Achilles son of Peleus,

that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. (Iliad 1.1-2)

If we think that Thetis might be the goddess of Menis.  We need to revisit Emily Schurr’s theory that the “goddess” addressed in the opening of the Iliad is not the unnamed Muse we presume.[i]  She suggests, “a previously undiscovered, and highly meaningful, subtext.” Namely that the Muse of the Iliad is indeed Thetis.   

“(A) hint is made even more resonant by the fact that Achilles' mother was, indeed, a goddess (Thetis) - and that the reluctance to name the singing goddess explicitly allows for this alternative interpretation to rise up in the audience's consciousness.”

The subtext and alternative interpretation in the audience's consciousness, strengthens if we accept Menis as an alternative name for Thetis, then sub-consciously we hear;

“Sing, O Goddess Menis of Achilles son of Peleus,

who brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.” 

---

[i] Emily Schurr, "Recreating the Creation: Reading between the Lines in the Proem of the Iliad," July 25, 2011.

TFBT: Christine Downing

I religiously attend the monthly used book sale at the local library.  Not too many scholarly tomes on Greek Mythology, but occasionally...  More commonly I pick up books in some way related to my favorite obsession.  Recently I found The Book of the Goddess; Past and Present, Editor Carl Olson.  Many of the articles in the middle of the book I found interesting.  The article that sang to me to me the most was The Mother Goddess among the Greeks by Christine R. Downing.

The focus of Downing’s work is on Gaia, of course, and her grand-daughters and great grand-daughters.  Downing’s resume is not the norm for my reading and she presses her argument too hard sometimes.  The piece is little referenced and, like me, assumes the reader is well read.  All that said, I find some of her insight concise and clearer than other authors.  I intend to read, “Gods in Our Midst”

A few quotes to consider;

“Tartarus is Gaia’s within-ness, Gaia is Tartarus’ self-externalization.”

“The others (primordial gods) are supplanted  Ouranos by Zeus, Pontus by Poseidon. She is not; indeed, she participates in the supplantation.”

In these goddesses (Metis, Leto, Artemis, Athena, Hestia, Aphrodite, Hera, Hebe, Eileithyia Demeter)  the Greeks represented in divine proportions the mother who abandons her children or holds them too tight, the mother who uses her children as agents to her marital struggles or to fulfill her own frustrated ambitions.” For example;

• “Of the major Olympian goddesses only Artemis had a mother – a mother; who she seems to have mothered from almost the moment  of her own birth.  The new-born daughter immediately sets about assisting with the delivery of her twin brother Apollo and on many other occasions rescues Leto from insult or danger.”
• Demeter’s boundless love for her daughter, Persephone seems at first glance to represent an idealized version of maternal devotion-yet a closer reading suggests it may be her overinvestment in her child that makes Persephone’s adduction by Hades a necessary denouement.”  As proven by Gaia’s involvement in the abduction as mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

All and all a good short read if you are well read and know discretion.  

 

VftSW: PVFD

Years ago I was a member of the Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department.  I remember some big fires downtown where everyone in the department was on the fireline for days.  Here the community jumped out to help move hoses when asked and then stepped back from the scene until their help was asked for again.  (The new police chief from down south was shocked that there was no need for crowd control.)

 I remember stopping at the fire hall during those events to change out of my soaked bunker gear into something drier.  On the tables were enormous bowls of finger food and civilians feverishly refilling air tanks so we could stay on scene.

I remember working with Search and Rescue.  I was hiking home from Hammer Slough.  At that moment many people in the department and many in the community were doing the same.  My bibs and boots were covered in that slick brown mud.  My wife met me at the front door with the biggest beaming smile. She’d heard the news: we’d found the toddler.

And I worked with the Emergency Medical Technicians in so many capacities over the years: flying them out to patients too close to death to move, hoisting them over our heads to get them into the back seat of the helicopter with their patient and send them into town; holding the fire hose on the EMTs while they stabilized a patient in a wrecked car reeking of electrical fire; of them working on a fellow firefighter who had collapsed during one of those big downtown fires. But, the EMTs weren’t on their own the doctors and nurses in the community along with a dentist, as I recall, came to help those nights too.

We had, still have and are part of a great emergency services team.  I couldn’t be prouder or feel luckier to live here and be part of it.

TFBT: Quotes for August

"For the gods are stronger than men." iliad 21.264

"The twin sons of Thracian Boreas came darting from the sky." Argonautica of AR

"People for whom written records play a small part or no part at all and with whom the scientific study of history is undeveloped...delight in factual information for its own sake." M L West

"Echecratides of Larisa dedicated the small Apollo, said by the Delphians to have been the very first offering to be set up." Pausanias 10.17.8

"Achilles is constrained by the social superiority of Agamemnon in offering no physical resistance to the taking of the young woman Briseis, his war prize, by the inferior hero."

Peleus in the Argonautica “For it is not I who will flinch, since the bitterest pain will be but death.”

Argonautica; “stood at the entrance, marvelling at the king's courts...“silently they crossed the threshold.”  “And quickly beneath the lintel in the porch he (Eros)strung his bow and took from the quiver an arrow unshot before, messenger of pain. And with swift feet unmarked he passed the threshold an” “645-673) She spake, and rising from her bed opened the door of her chamber, bare-footed, clad in one robe; and verily she desired to go to her sister, and crossed the threshold. And for long she stayed there at the entrance of her chamber,”

MLWest see a correlation between The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and the parade of women Odysseus sees in Hades.  (Page 33)

One of them, (the ten lepers) when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.  Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”  Luke 17:15-19. In my life it is more like one in six.  

“ the narrative continues until the catastrophe that ended the Heroic Age” mlw

undocumented feature; a glitch in the new software. Ktina Hill

ML West translates “maia” as Nana

Demophron, isn’t that the male version of Demeter’s name ?

CARMEN NAUPACTIUM T ESTIMONIUM. #7  flee from the Hall swift thru the dark night

“Romans and other ancient nations pretended that they were the children of the gods, to draw a veil over their actual ancestors who were doubtless robbers” Giacomo Casanova

“Beware of the man of one book.” Casanova

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