TFBT: The Year in Review at Hour 25

 I think the highlights of 2015 at Hour 25  first and foremost were the incredible visiting scholars that seemed to visit us every two weeks at time.  They were all so interesting, so enthusiastic and put so much effort into their presentations.  Thank you!

On a personal note I was very flattered to provide guest blogs twice; “Helen’s Handmaiden” and “Beauteous Scarf”.  Thanks to the editorial team and Claudia in particular for helping to make this flattering opportunity happen. 

HeroesX.v4 was a big Hour 25 event for many of us.  Some great mini-essays from the board of readers and the students.

Iliad Live!   Many of us got to watch and listen.  Wow!

We have many varied working groups at Hour 25.  I spent the bulk of my available time with the Homeric Vocabulary Group. We meet twice a week for an hour, plus memorizing homework.  I came out of the study one morning and my wife   says, “That was a class?  Sure was a lot of laughter.”  Many thanks for the time and patience of my fellow Homeric Vocabularians; particularly Helene, Sarah (What kind of food do you hate, Bill?) and Janet.  Can’t forget the video contributions of Graeme, Greg and Lenny!  Check out my flashcards!   I know all these words!

When doing research for Hour 25 I often visit http://www.theoi.com. The site’s creator Aaron Atsma offers ready references on the Greek gods from the original texts.  I have always admired his well-composed, massive site.  I always wanted to express my thanks but could never find contact information.  Then I asked the club to help.  What a response!  Rob Jensen and others had him tracked down in a few hours and I finally got to communicate with one of my heroes.  I am still hoping we can convince him to do an interview or be a visiting scholar. 

Here is an interesting item marginally connected to the club.  Apparently, I use Atsma as a reference much.  Another fan unable to contact Atsma, contacted me and asked me to guide his readings in Greek mythology.  Naturally, I suggested Hour 25, but his interests were more philosophical and metaphysical in nature.  His name was Ben.  So we used Google Hangout every Tuesday for a couple of months.  His questions forced me to explain things I took for granted.  I had to arrange our conversational agendas and his readings in threads I had never thought about before.  Every session he would comment, “You are blowing me away Bill!”  My wife noted there how much fun I was having.  I noted how much I was learning.

Next to last, the Book Clubs!  The highlight of them was Argonautica, Medea and Antigone.My wife made me a crown out of cardboard and foil for the reading of the play “Creon” oh, I men “Antigone “. I think the guy gets a bum rap and I was hearken to hear the Greek students involved with the Antigone project felt the same.  

And finally, the friends I’ve met there.  We have conversations in the forums, Homeric Greek class, the book clubs, “hanging out” with fellow Hour 25ers and visiting scholars and other club activies.  I finally realized that many of the club members spend more time talking with me than my co-workers.  They are my people and Hour 25 is my virtual home.  

TFBT: Which Came First Aeschylus or the Toretoise?

 I had the pleasure of perusing “The Great Fables of All Nations”.[i]  There in the sand and sun I skipped through delightful anecdotes often of interest to the classicist in me. Here I present one from Aesop.  (b. 620 BC) This version translated by George Fyler Townsend

“The Tortoise and the Eagle A tortoise, lazily basking in the sun, complained to the sea-birds of her hard fate, that no one would teach her to fly. An Eagle, hovering near, heard her lamentation and demanded what reward she would give him if he would take her aloft and float her in the air. "I will give you," she said, "all the riches of the Red Sea." "I will teach you to fly then," said the Eagle; and taking her up in his talons he carried her almost to the clouds suddenly he let her go, and she fell on a lofty mountain, dashing her shell to pieces. The Tortoise exclaimed in the moment of death: "I have deserved my present fate; for what had I to do with wings and clouds, who can with difficulty move about on the earth?'"

An enlightening little tale, but somehow familiar.  I thought of the death of Aesop himself, but that was at the hands of the people at Delphi as Komroff pointed out.  So my curious had to wait until I crossed the border and was home again.  The death I was thinking of was the death of Aeschylus in 456 or 455 BC            

According to Ursula Hoff [ii] “According to Pliny and Valerius Maximus, Aeschylus, of whom it had been predicted that he was to meet his death on a certain days as the result of an object falling on his head, went out into the open, trusting in the clear sky, and was killed by a tortoise, dropped on to his head by an eagle.”  Both Pliny and Valerius Maximus wrote in the first century AD

So, was Aesop’s tale inspired by Aeschylus’ death or were the later writers’ anecdotes on Aeschylus’ death inspired by Aesop?

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[i] Ed. Manual Komroff, Tudor Publ. NYC

[ii] Meditation in Solitude, Ursula Hoff, Journal of the Warburg Institute , Vol. 1, No. 4 (Apr., 1938), pp. 292-294Published by: Warburg Institute , DOI: 10.2307/749994, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/749994

TFBT: Conclusion to Lineage vs the Man

I have done a lot of reach on the favor and love of the gods for various mortal families.  I have traced a number of the lineages up and down the vast genealogy tree of mortals in Greek mythology.  My hope was to understand the gods' affection for various families; generation after generations.   Here's what I came up with;

The love of the gods for the Trojans might simply be based on their manly beauty.  It is simply a fulfillment of “Maya’s Law” which states that the Olympians have a marked preference for mating with Ionians and barbarians. There seems to be no lingering affection for other family members of Endymion (immortaized lover of Selene) or Cephalus (mortal lover of Selene's sister and grandfather of Odysseus.)

The gods short lived affection for Tantalus (and his descendants) could be contrasted with their short lived affection for Ixion.  After murdering his intended father-in-law Ixion could find no eartly king or minor deity willing to purify him.  Zeus to him up to Olympus to perform the ritual.  In gratitude Ixion violated the Laws of Hospitality by attempting to rape Hera.  The parentage of Thessalian Ixion  is disputed and vague but none of his potential parents were beloved of or dear to the gods and certainly none of his children were.  The only cause I can suggest for the Olympians love of the Tantalides is that Tantalus was Zeus son.  

Few men and their descendants seem as dear to the gods as do the Aeacides.  They too were Thessalian. For three generations they were given unheard of honors by the gods.   They too are descended from Zeus.

Melampus on the other hand was not the son of Zeus nor was his father a favorite of the gods.  Many of his children received divine favor.  His abilities as a seer and piety seem equal to the Theban seer Tiresias but the former's family received no such benefits.

So I found no clear proof the gods can't tell individuals apart from a their fathers.  Rather the gods' favor seems to fall upon handsome men, pious men, great warriors and wise seers.  To honor their father's the gods sometimes confer favors onto the  children.  The children inherit the favors owed their fathers and maybe their reputations.  

 But in the end each bread-eating man stands alone before the gods.

TFBT: Lamberton's Hesiod

TFBT: Lamberton’s Hesiod

I had a few free minutes at the Downtown Seattle public library.  I skipped through all the scholarly tomes available on Greek Mythology.  One book I spent a few moments with was "Hesiod" by Robert Lamberton in the Hermes Series.  He acknowledged his indebtedness "everywhere" to West and Nagy.  That bodes well, so I put it on my birthday list and my wife got it for me in time for our trip to Sayulita.

The first 54 page are primarily analysis of Hesiod's works sans context.  Strictly literary analysis kind of stuff; comparison to other works, possible insertions, dates, the genre's standards, etc etc.  All good stuff unless you are used to the sort of close-reading I learned from Prof. Nagy. As a result I feel like I now know more about Hesiod, than the characters in his works.

For a slim volume it surprises me how much I found to disagree with;

• "But what do I have to do with this business of an oak or a rock" This line made me thinks of a spear being bronze and ash like the Giants and Meliae born of Uranus's blood. Or Achilles born of hard cliff and gray sea. Lamberton says, "it seems clear that oak and rock aare traitional places of discovered babies...foundling- and that to trace one's ancestry to an oak or rock is to invoke a colorful euphemism to account for one's lack of a pedigree."  Lamberton's work is virtually un-referenced and offers few examples.  I recall no one claiming a Oread or Dryad as an ancestress.  Most eponymous nymphs are Oceanides.  Many lineage claim autochtonic ancestry, but no specific “rocks” that I recall.  
• "The myth of the five ages of man an account that emphasizes...an inherent tendency in human history towards deterioration". What?  Aren't we better than the silver and bronze ages?  Aren't we more successful as a species than the four prior?
• "In a peculiar way, Hesiod’s Muses are less the daughters of mere memory than Homers". I don’t understand this at all.  Homer doesn’t mention the Muses at all in the Iliad and I don’t recall Homer calling them by individual names in the Odyssey.  Further, "the function of the Muse of heroic epic is limited to the retrospective recall of information about the heroic past". This is Calliope.  Then at the bottom of the following page he adds that singers and kings are under her protection.  He fails to mention that she is also the Leader of the Muses.  He uses Blake as a reference here.  What? 
• "Genesis is of course the monotheistic redaction of much disparate material, largely pre-monotheistic."   Really?  "Of course"?  Once again no reference.  I have seen references to this topic, but no detailed studies.  Is this the universal opinion of Biblical scholars?
• Lamberton says of as Hesiod's brother "Perses", home "Acra" and sacred Hippocrene "we should be perfectly clear that these identifications themselves are largely matters of conventions."  If you have to tell your readers that something is perfectly clear, than it isn't.
• Lamberton refers to the primordial gods as "anthropomorphic entities". I always find similar phrases ironic when the discussing Greek Mythology (and religion in general).  Intertextuality would require Lamberton to acknowledge that people are "theomorphic" rather than gods being anthropomorphic.

Lamberton offers great insights in Hesiod in contrast to Homer.   "the overriding and fundamental distinction between the Hesiodic and Homeric perspective is one of class.  Homer views the world from the perspective of the managerial class, constantly affirming both explicitly and implicitly the legitimacy of authority. Hesiod’s most characteristic perspective is refreshingly antithetical to Homer’s and is that of the victims rather than the wielders of power."  He emphasizes the last point with enthusiasm several times. "the Hesiodic voice expresses itself in the composite epic diction of the Homeric poems with the same preponderance of Ionic dialect...the language the meter, the dialect and even the store of formulaes of the Theogony and the Works & Days are not strikingly different from those of the Iliad and the Odyssey."  And finally;  "rhyme and the especially the weak echoing of similar endings called "homoioteleuton" is reasonably frequent even in Homer...in the ten verses of the prooimion (of Works &Days) we find not only three rhymed couplets but pervasive internal rhymes as well. "  My Homeric Greek class has not noticed this.  I will have to point it out next we work on translating the Iliad.


Lamberton discusses the epithet, "Gaia pelore" saying that "the available English translations regularly misrepresent it, dulling its pejorative force."  According to Lamberton the proper translation is "monstrous Earth".   He argues very convincingly about the viciousness of Mother Earth.

Lamberton observes that after the Titanomachy Hesiod locates the children of the Night in the underworld, "they are specifically and explicity distanced from our world” He also points out that Nyx and her daughter Eris parthenogenetically produced "the female destructive entities, such as Battle Carnage and the Furies, that rend and tear." He contrasts them with gentle Death, Sleep and Dreams all sons of Nyx and Erebus.  Then "the poem makes another radical transition, turning this time to to populate the world with monsters, all sprung from Pontos, one of the pathogenetic children of (Monstrous) Gaia"  Is Lamberton suggesting that those of maternal pathogenetic-birth produced  monsters?  Pathogenetic Gaea and Uranus produced the monstrous 100-Handers, Cyclops, Giants and Eumenides.  In some accounts pathogenetic Gaea bore, the ultimate monster, Typhon.   Oddly enough, those borne pathogenetically of male gods are far from monstrous.  Nereus was born of Pontus without the assistance of Doris and he and his daughters have a reputation for gentleness.  Zeus without feminine assists birthed Athena from his head and Dionysus from his "thigh"; both gods considered friends of mankind.

In summary I would suggest “Hesiod’s Cosmos” by Jenny Strauss Clay,.

TFBT: Lineage versus the Man IV

Tritonia come, and was bringing immortal lustre to the unhappy hero (the dying Tydeus) when lo! she sees him befouled with the shattered brains’ corruption and his jaws polluted with living blood...averted face she flees from him where he lies, nor enters heaven ere that the mystic lamp and Elisos with plenteous water has purged her vision”. Thebaid 8. 

In Pindar's Nemean 10 it appears that his son Diomedes inherited his cup of immortality

The last lineage I offer as an example of the gods confounding individual heroes with their relatives is a short branch of the House of Pelops.  We start with his father Tantalus.  Zeus confided his plans to Tantalus and welcomed him to the banquets of the gods.( Hyginus Fabulae 82). And was " a very especial friend of the gods." (Diodorus siculus 4.74.1). Familiarity breeds contempt as Aesop points out and Tantalus fell from favor straight into far Tartarus.  His crime was either relaying the mysteries to his fellow mortals, or sharing nectar with men or for dicing up his son and tossing him into a boiling cauldron for the piece d'resistence at a dinner party he threw for the gods.  

As he fell to the land far below where the Titans go, the divine affection for him shifted to the pot roast he left behind and as a group the gods brought Pelops back together and back to life. Poseidon escorted him personally to heaven.  Of course Pelops grew up killed his prospective father-in-law and his conspirator which got most of his sons cursed.  

But he had one son Pittheus, whom Medea of all people called "The son of Pelops and a man most pious". (Euripides, Medea 683).   Piety is a sure way the gods' hearts as we've seen better though nowhere specifically stated.  Incidentally he is the earthly father of Theseus"

The previous blogs containing my research are; 

Part I; Looking at the Lineage versus the Man

Part II: The Trojans Princes

Part III;The Gods Love of the Line of Melampus

Although not in the same category  of "dear" or "pious" we might consider; 

The Divine Descendants of Gorgophone

The Divine Descendants of Telephassa.  

So ends my research.  Maybe another family or two should be included, but they don't seem to met the above criteria.Next post should be analysis of all this mess  

TFBT: The Gods' Love of the Line of Melampus

This blog continues my research into whether the gods really view heroes as individuals or simply "links in a chain".  I am indebted to Memnon @Hour 25 for the analogy above and  the notion of a lineage suffering Or benefiting from the actions of their forefather.

"Melampus was a man of exceptional piety and became a friend of Apollo."   

                                                                    (Const.Exc 2(1) p.211)

Melampus begot Antiphates and Mantius.  Antiphas sired great-hearted Ocicles, in turn the father of  Amphiaraus "whom Zeus...and Apollo heartily loved in all manners of ways."(Od 15.238). Amphiaraus was dear to the gods and did not die but was enfolded in Gaea's bosom as he fled the defeat of the seven against Thebes (Statius, Thebiad 8.329). 

Amphiaraus left behind two sons Alcmaeon and Amphilocus.  Amphilocus becomes a god according to Lucian (DD 10.). Meanwhile his cousin Cleitus, son of Mantius, son of Melampus "golden-throned Dawn snatched away by reason of his beauty that he might dwell with the immortals." od 15.238

So here is the lineage of Melampus, a man of exceptional piety.  We have no record of his descendants' piety, but several were dear to the gods or made immortal.  Though not meeting these specific criteria, other Melampides were obviously favored by the gods.  So was it good genes, good upbringing or good reputation for their family that made so many of them dear to the gods?

Previous segments of this discussion include; 

Part I:  Looking at the Lineage versus the Man

Part II: The Trojans Princes

TFBT: Trojan Princes

This is Part II on my research into situations where the gods seem to confuse an ancient Greek hero with his lineage and vice versa.  Part I was TFBT Looking at His Lineage Rather than the Man

Homer tells us that;  "Tros, who was lord of the Trojans, and to Tros in turn there were born godlike Ganymedes who was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus' wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals” ^[i]  This is the first instant  of the Olympians’ love of  Trojan princes, apparently due to their beauty.    Ganymede consequently became immortal and unaging.  He never had any children.  However his brother unfaulted Ilus fathered Capys and his other brother Assaracus fathered the universally hated Laomedon.   

Laomedon in turn sired Priam and Tithonus.  Of Tithonus we hear that  golden-throned Eos (Dawn) snatched up Tithonus presumeable because he was as beautiful as the deathless gods and brought him to Ethiopia, and there consorting with him she bore two sons, Emathion and Memnon.[ii]  At some point the rosy fingered goddess went to ask the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that he should be deathless and live eternally; and Zeus bowed his head to her prayer and fulfilled her desire.”[iii]  When Memnon died as men do, the gods so loved him that once again the granted immortality to a descendant of Tros.[iv]  Memnon’s cousin Hector too is  “dear to the gods.” [v]  

Meanwhile the descendants of Capys though not made immortal seemed to be dear to the gods also because of their great beauty.  Hence we hear;  

"Anchises, (son of Capys) most glorious of mortal men, take courage and be not too fearful in your heart. You need fear no harm from me nor from the other blessed ones, for you are dear to the gods: and you shall have a dear son who shall reign among the Trojans, and children's children after him, springing up continually. His name shall be Aeneas, because I felt awful grief in that I laid me in the bed of mortal man: yet are those of your race always the most like to gods of all mortal men in beauty and in stature.” (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 191)  

Of Aeneas’ son Ascanius supposedly Virgil says in the Aeneid “Blessings on your fresh courage, boy, scion of gods and ancestor of gods yet to be, so it is man rises to the stars." 

Ascanius was ancestor of the Emperor August of Rome.  He as also the ancestor of Queen Victoria who ruled a quarter of the planet and upon whose empire the sun never set.  These two other descendants of Tros seem pretty favored by the gods too!

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[i] ( Iliad 20. 232)  

[ii] (APOLLODORUS, LIBRARY  3.12.4)

[iii] HOMERIC HYMNS 5. [218] 

[iv] (Arctinus of Miletus, The Aethiopis Frag 1 (from Proclus, Chrestomathia 2) 

[v] (Homer, Iliad 24:[746)