diff --git a/deity/aphrodite/index.html b/deity/aphrodite/index.html index 6f33011..2939143 100644 --- a/deity/aphrodite/index.html +++ b/deity/aphrodite/index.html @@ -2,13 +2,15 @@

Her name the Greeks explained as "foam-born," from aphros; the derivation is a folk etymology (her name is more likely pre-Greek, and her cult carries deep debts to the Near-Eastern goddesses Ishtar and Astarte), but it fixed her origin firmly in the myth of her sea-birth. From that birth flow her two most famous cult-titles, Kypris "the Cyprian" and Kythereia "the Cytherean," for the islands her foam-cradle drifted past and came ashore upon.

In myth she is laughter-loving and quick to charm, but also proud and dangerous when scorned: the same goddess who lends Hera the girdle that makes any wearer irresistible will drive a chaste prince to ruin, or curse a whole island of women with a stench, for the slighting of her honours. The Greeks worshipped her in two great aspects — Aphrodite Urania, the Heavenly, of pure and transcendent love, and Aphrodite Pandemos, the Common, of the whole people and of ordinary earthly desire — and knew that both, in their seasons, held sway over gods and men alike. (Her Roman name is Venus.)

Mythology

Born of the sea-foam

-

Hesiod gives Aphrodite the strangest and grandest of birth-stories. When Gaia, weary of Uranus's endless weight, armed her son Cronus with a sickle, he cut off his father's genitals and hurled them behind him into the sea. Around the immortal flesh a white foam (aphros) gathered, and in it a girl was nourished and grew. The waves bore her first past Cythera, then to Cyprus, where she came ashore at Paphos as a fully grown and awe-inspiring goddess, grass springing up beneath her feet, with Eros and Desire (Himeros) as her attendants from the first. Homer preserves an older and simpler tradition, in which Aphrodite is instead the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Dione (Iliad 5.370); the two accounts sat side by side in Greek thought, and Plato's Symposium even makes them two distinct goddesses. This page follows Hesiod's foam-birth as the primary telling.

+

Hesiod gives Aphrodite the strangest and grandest of birth-stories. When Gaia, weary of Uranus's endless weight, armed her son Cronus with a sickle, he cut off his father's genitals and hurled them behind him into the sea. Around the immortal flesh a white foam (aphros) gathered, and in it a girl was nourished and grew. The waves bore her first past Cythera, then to Cyprus, where she came ashore at Paphos as a fully grown and awe-inspiring goddess, grass springing up beneath her feet, with Eros and Desire (Himeros) as her attendants from the first. Homer preserves an older and simpler tradition, in which Aphrodite is instead the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Dione (Iliad 5.370); the two accounts sat side by side in Greek thought, and Plato's Symposium even makes them two distinct goddesses. The two sit side by side in how she is remembered: the foam-birth is by far the more striking and more often pictured — the Anadyomene, the goddess rising from the waves — while Homer's is the plainer parentage that makes her simply one more daughter of Zeus, the version many still take for granted when they name her kin. This page follows Hesiod's foam-birth as the primary telling while giving Homer's parentage its full due.

Eros, the first of the gods

It is easy to picture Eros as Aphrodite's mischievous winged son, and later poets did make him so — the archer-child born of her union with Ares. But the oldest tradition is far stranger. In Hesiod's cosmogony (Theogony 116-122), Eros is one of the very first powers to come into being, alongside Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus at the dawn of the cosmos — "fairest among the deathless gods, who loosens the limbs and overmasters the mind and wise counsel of all gods and all men." In this reckoning Desire is older than the gods it moves, a primal force woven into creation itself, not the child of any deity. This page follows Hesiod: Eros leads as a primordial first-force, with the familiar tale of Eros as Aphrodite's son and companion given as the later, secondary telling.

The judgement of Paris

When Eris, goddess of strife, threw a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest" among the wedding-guests of Peleus and Thetis, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite each claimed it. Zeus, unwilling to judge, sent them to the Trojan prince Paris on Mount Ida. Each goddess offered a bribe: Hera empire, Athena victory and wisdom, and Aphrodite the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris chose Aphrodite — and so was given Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. In carrying Helen home to Troy, Paris lit the ten-year Trojan War. Throughout the Iliad Aphrodite remains fiercely partisan for Troy, even snatching Paris from the battlefield in a mist and, when she ventures onto the field to rescue her son Aeneas, being wounded in the wrist by Diomedes so that her ichor flows; her mother Dione consoles her, and Zeus gently warns her that war is not her province (Iliad 5.311-430).

The girdle of desire

Aphrodite's chief instrument is the kestos himas, an embroidered girdle or breast-band into which are worked love, longing, and the sweet whispered persuasion that steals away the wits even of the wise. In the Iliad (14.214-223), Hera — scheming to lull Zeus to sleep and turn the war — coaxes the band from Aphrodite under a pretext, tucks it into her bosom, and so makes herself irresistible to her husband. The girdle is the perfect emblem of the goddess: her power is not force but an enchantment against which no will holds firm.

+

Ares and the net of Hephaestus

+

Though wedded to Hephaestus, the lame smith-god, Aphrodite loved Ares, the god of war, and the two met in secret. The tale is told most fully in the song the blind bard Demodocus sings at the Phaeacian court (Odyssey 8.266-366). Helios the Sun, who sees all things, catches the lovers together and reports them to Hephaestus. The wronged husband forges a snare of bronze links finer than a spider's thread and invisible even to the gods, drapes it about his bed, and announces that he is going away to Lemnos. Ares slips in at once; but as the lovers lie down the cunning net drops and binds them fast, unable to move. Hephaestus summons the other gods to witness the wrong done him, and they crowd to the doorway — the goddesses staying home for modesty — and break into unquenchable laughter at the sight, Apollo and Hermes jesting that Hermes would gladly lie so bound if it meant lying beside golden Aphrodite. At Poseidon's urging Hephaestus frees the pair; Ares flees to Thrace, and Aphrodite goes to her sanctuary at Paphos on Cyprus, where the Graces bathe and anoint her and clothe her in loveliness once more.

Anchises and the birth of Aeneas

Aphrodite delighted in bending the other gods to mortal loves, until Zeus turned her own weapon against her (Homeric Hymn 5). He cast desire into her heart for Anchises, a herdsman of noble blood tending cattle on the slopes of Mount Ida. Disguised as a mortal princess, she came to him and lay with him; from that union she bore Aeneas, who would survive the fall of Troy and, in Roman tradition, father the line of Rome. It was her one great humbling: the goddess who had laughed at gods enslaved to mortal beds now knew the same yoke, and could no longer boast of it. Anchises, who unwisely spoke of his divine lover, was struck lame or blind for the boast. (Aeneas belongs to the wider tradition and is not tracked as a node here.)

Adonis and the anemone

@@ -30,4 +32,4 @@

Where the ancients gave incense and flowers, a devotee today can offer the same: light incense (rose or myrtle are fitting), set out fresh flowers, and pour a small libation of sweet wine, or of honey-water or rosewater if wine is not wished. Sweet foods, honey, and fruit are welcome. In keeping with her ancient cult, Aphrodite's offerings are bloodless. Present each gift with a few words of praise and thanks, and afterward set aside or pour out what was given so that it is truly hers.

Prayer & epithets

Call on Aphrodite by the aspect that fits your need. Turn to Aphrodite Urania, the Heavenly, for deep, devoted, or spiritual love; to Aphrodite Pandemos for warmth and goodwill within a community or a partnership. Invoke Kypris or Kythereia, her sea-born titles, in gratitude for beauty and for safe passage, and Anadyomene, the sea-risen, for renewal and fresh beginnings. Ancient and modern practice should be kept distinct: this is living reverence offered in a modern spirit, not a reconstruction of any specific ancient ceremony. Honour her, above all, by treating love and beauty — your own and others' — with respect.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus": Aphrodite arrives on a scallop shell blown ashore by the winds, tempera on canvas, ca. 1485.
Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus": Aphrodite arrives on a scallop shell blown ashore by the winds, tempera on canvas, ca. 1485. — Sandro Botticelli, "The Birth of Venus" (ca. 1485). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Bouguereau's "The Birth of Venus": the goddess rises from the sea on a shell amid nereids, tritons, and cupids, oil on canvas, 1879.
Bouguereau's "The Birth of Venus": the goddess rises from the sea on a shell amid nereids, tritons, and cupids, oil on canvas, 1879. — William-Adolphe Bouguereau, "The Birth of Venus" (1879). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus": Aphrodite arrives on a scallop shell blown ashore by the winds, tempera on canvas, ca. 1485.
Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus": Aphrodite arrives on a scallop shell blown ashore by the winds, tempera on canvas, ca. 1485. — Sandro Botticelli, "The Birth of Venus" (ca. 1485). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Bouguereau's "The Birth of Venus": the goddess rises from the sea on a shell amid nereids, tritons, and cupids, oil on canvas, 1879.
Bouguereau's "The Birth of Venus": the goddess rises from the sea on a shell amid nereids, tritons, and cupids, oil on canvas, 1879. — William-Adolphe Bouguereau, "The Birth of Venus" (1879). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/apollo/index.html b/deity/apollo/index.html index bb2cb4f..dafc7ac 100644 --- a/deity/apollo/index.html +++ b/deity/apollo/index.html @@ -7,6 +7,8 @@

The oracle at Delphi was not always Apollon's. In the oldest tradition it belonged first to Gaia, the Earth herself, the first prophetess; from her it passed to her daughter Themis, and from Themis to the Titaness Phoebe, who at last gave it as a birth-gift to her grandson — from whom, the poets said, he took the name Phoebus (Aeschylus preserves this fourfold succession, Gaia to Themis to Phoebe to Phoebus, at the opening of the Eumenides). But the place was guarded by Python, a monstrous serpent, offspring of the Earth. The young Apollon came and killed the great snake with his arrows, claiming the sanctuary as his own; in expiation of the killing — for even a god's blood-guilt must be purged — he was said to have gone into exile and servitude, and he founded the Pythian Games in the serpent's memory. He seated his prophetess, the Pythia, on a tripod over the sacred cleft, and through her the god spoke to the whole Greek world. At the centre of the sanctuary stood the omphalos, the "navel-stone" that marked the middle point of the earth — the very stone, one tradition held, that Rhea had wrapped in swaddling-clothes and given to Cronus to swallow in place of the infant Zeus, later set down at Delphi as the world's centre. Pausanias, walking the site centuries later, still saw the stone and recorded the temple's legendary succession of forms.

The loves that ended in grief

Apollon's loves are among the most beautiful and the saddest stories told of any god, and nearly all of them end in death or transformation. (Content note: these myths turn on grief, unwanted pursuit, and the deaths of the beloved.) His first love was the nymph Daphne, who wanted nothing of him; she fled his pursuit and, at the edge of her strength, prayed to be delivered — and was changed into the laurel tree, whose leaves Apollon took ever after as his sacred wreath, so that he wears the sign of the one who refused him. He loved the youth Hyacinthus, and while the two were throwing the discus together the bronze disk struck the boy and killed him; from the blood of Hyacinthus Apollon raised the flower that bears his name, marked (the poets said) with the letters of a cry of grief. He loved Coronis, who was unfaithful to him; in his anger — or by the hand of Artemis — she was killed, but as her body burned on the pyre Apollon snatched their unborn son from the flames and gave him to the centaur Cheiron to raise. That son was Asclepius, who became so great a healer that he could raise the dead — until Zeus, fearing the order of mortality itself was threatened, struck him down with a thunderbolt. And he gave the Trojan princess Cassandra the gift of true prophecy to win her love; when she refused him, he could not take the gift back, but he laid a curse upon it, so that she would always foresee the truth and never be believed — a torment that runs through the whole fall of Troy.

+

Hyacinthus, the west wind, and the flower

+

Of all Apollon's loves the dearest was Hyacinthus, a beautiful youth of Amyclae in the vale of Sparta, whom the god loved above every other and for whose sake he was said to have laid aside his lyre and his bow to follow the boy through the hunt and the games. But Apollon was not the only immortal to love him: Zephyrus, the West Wind, loved Hyacinthus too, and when the youth gave his heart to Apollon and turned from the wind, Zephyrus was consumed with jealousy. One day the god and the boy stripped to throw the discus together, and as Apollon hurled the bronze disk, Zephyrus — in his jealous rage that the boy should be another's — caught it on his breath and drove it off its course, so that it struck Hyacinthus full on the head and laid him dead upon the ground. Apollon, for all his healing arts, could not call him back; but that his beloved should not pass wholly into the dark, he raised from the spilled blood the flower that bears the boy's name, the hyacinth, upon whose petals the Greeks read the letters AI AI — the sound of the cry "alas," so that the god's grief is written on the flower for ever. The tradition of the wind's jealousy is old and Greek: Lucian tells it in the Dialogues of the Gods, where Apollon names Zephyrus the cause of the death, and Philostratus paints the same scene. At Amyclae, where Hyacinthus was buried beneath the great throne-statue of Apollon that Pausanias saw and described (Description of Greece 3.19.3–5), the Spartans kept the Hyacinthia each year — three days that opened in mourning for the dead youth, with no garlands and no paeans, and then broke into the joyful worship of the god (the three-day structure is preserved by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.139d–f), grief and gladness bound together as they are in the whole story of the boy and the flower.

Marsyas and the god's harder edge

The gentleness of the singer sits beside a capacity for merciless justice. The satyr Marsyas found the flute that Athena had thrown away and grew so skilled that he dared to challenge Apollon and his lyre to a contest, the winner to do as he wished with the loser. The Muses judged, Apollon won — in some tellings by turning his lyre upside down and singing at the same time, which the flute could not match — and he took his victor's right to the utmost: he had Marsyas flayed alive for his presumption. It is the cruellest of Apollon's punishments and the clearest window onto his darker aspect, the same god who kills Python and sends plague, the reminder that the god of measure and clarity does not suffer a mortal or a satyr to rival him.

Servitude, the Muses, and the far northern winters

@@ -23,4 +25,4 @@

Where the ancients gave burnt sacrifice, a devotee today most fittingly offers libations and shared food together with things sacred to the god. Pour a libation of wine — or of spring water, milk, or honey — into a bowl set aside for him. Laurel is his plant above all: a wreath, a few leaves, or laurel burned as a fragrant offering is traditional. Olive oil, honey, barley cakes, and frankincense are all suitable, as are first-fruits of a garden. Most characteristic of all, an offering of music or poetry — a song sung, a piece played, a poem written or read aloud — is welcome to the god of the Muses in a way it is to no other.

Prayer & epithets

Call on Apollon by the title that suits your need. Invoke Apollon Paian, the Healer, in sickness or when praying for the health of another. Turn to Apollon Musagetes, leader of the Muses, when beginning any work of music, poetry, or art, that he may lend inspiration. Seek Apollon Pythios or Loxias when you long for guidance or clarity, remembering that his truths come slant and ask to be pondered. Honour Phoebus, the Bright and Pure, in daily reverence as the god of light and order — and, if you keep his festivals, remember his twin Artemis alongside him, for the two archer-children of Leto are rarely honoured wholly apart.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

The youthful Apollo with laurel branch, a quiver of arrows at his shoulder, and his lyre; oil by Simone Cantarini, early 17th century.
The youthful Apollo with laurel branch, a quiver of arrows at his shoulder, and his lyre; oil by Simone Cantarini, early 17th century. — Simone Cantarini, "Apollo" (first half of the 17th century). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

The youthful Apollo with laurel branch, a quiver of arrows at his shoulder, and his lyre; oil by Simone Cantarini, early 17th century.
The youthful Apollo with laurel branch, a quiver of arrows at his shoulder, and his lyre; oil by Simone Cantarini, early 17th century. — Simone Cantarini, "Apollo" (first half of the 17th century). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/ares/index.html b/deity/ares/index.html index 1bfbfe2..e63ff1e 100644 --- a/deity/ares/index.html +++ b/deity/ares/index.html @@ -11,6 +11,8 @@

An older tale of the war-god's helplessness is told by the goddess Dione (Iliad 5.385–391). The giant twins Otus and Ephialtes, the Aloadae, sons of Poseidon, once overpowered Ares and shut him up in a bronze jar, where he lay bound for thirteen months. He would have wasted away and perished there — even the god of war — had not the giants' stepmother Eriboea told Hermes what they had done. Hermes stole him out of the jar in secret, already worn down by his cruel imprisonment. It is a strange, telling story: the immortal embodiment of battle, undone not in open war but by cunning and confinement.

The first murder trial — the Areopagus

Ares's defining myth is the defence of his daughter. (Content note: this story turns on an attempted sexual assault.) By Agraulos he had a daughter, Alcippe. Halirrhothius, a son of Poseidon, tried to rape her; Ares caught him in the act and killed him (Apollodorus 3.14.2). Poseidon, enraged at his son's death, hauled Ares before a tribunal of the twelve gods on a hill in Athens. There Ares was tried — and acquitted — in what the Greeks remembered as the very first trial for bloodshed, the founding of justice over vendetta. The hill kept his name ever after: the Areopagus, the "Hill of Ares," where Athens's most solemn homicide court would sit for centuries. It is the myth that most complicates the one-note war-god: here Ares is a father and an avenger, a killer in defence of his child rather than for slaughter's sake.

+

A father to his own

+

The defence of Alcippe is the sharpest instance of a wider pattern: for all his cruelty on the field, Ares is fierce in the protection of his children. When his son Cycnus was slain, the war-god did not go to a tribunal but turned his fury on the killer himself — to avenge Cycnus he rushed against Heracles in single combat, and was wounded in the thigh and carried up to Olympus by his own sons (Hesiod, Shield of Heracles 416–466). His blood ran, too, in children set at the wild edges of the Greek world: Harmonia, his daughter by Aphrodite, whom he gave in marriage to Cadmus; the warrior-queens of the Amazons — Hippolyta and Penthesilea among them — whom tradition counted his daughters; and hard sons such as Diomedes of Thrace, keeper of the man-eating mares, and his dread attendants Phobos and Deimos. Grim as his brood could be, one thread runs unbroken through the myths: to wrong a child of Ares was to answer to Ares, and above all it was his daughters he rose to avenge.

The dragon of Thebes

Ares's shadow also falls across the founding of Thebes (Apollodorus 3.4.1). When Cadmus sought water to found his city, he sent his men to a spring guarded by a great serpent — the offspring of Ares — which devoured them. Cadmus slew the dragon, and on Athena's advice sowed its teeth in the earth; from the furrows sprang up armed men, the Spartoi ("Sown Men"), who fell at once to fighting and killed all but five of their own number. Because the serpent had been sacred to Ares, Cadmus had to atone for the killing by serving the war-god as a bondsman for what Apollodorus calls an "everlasting year" — reckoned in antiquity as eight of ours (Apollodorus 3.4.2). From Cadmus and Harmonia — the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite — the royal line of Thebes descended, so that the war-god's blood ran in the city he had cursed.

Worship — Ancient

Ares and the women of Tegea

@@ -19,10 +21,12 @@

At Athens, Ares's chief association was with the rocky hill beside the Acropolis that bore his name — the Areopagus, the "Hill of Ares," where the god had stood trial for the killing of Halirrhothius (Apollodorus 3.14.2). The ancient homicide council that met there was felt to descend from that first divine tribunal, tying the raw war-god, however loosely, to the origins of Athenian justice and the replacement of blood-vengeance by law.

Ares Theritas at Sparta

Where Athens kept him at arm's length, warlike Sparta gave Ares a place more fitting his nature. On the road to Therapne outside Sparta stood a very old sanctuary of Ares Theritas, "the Brutal" (Pausanias 3.19.7–8), holding an archaic cult-image the Spartans believed the Dioscuri had carried home from Colchis. The surname, Pausanias suggests, was given because a man facing an enemy in battle must cast aside all gentleness — a fitting creed for the city that made war its whole way of life. Elsewhere his offerings befitted his domain: a share of the spoils of victory, the blood of sacrifice, and burnt meat shared among fighting men.

+

Ares in Thrace

+

Beyond the Greek mainland, Ares was most at home among the Thracians of the wild north, whom Homer names as especially dear to him and to whose land the god withdrew after his humiliations on Olympus (Odyssey 8.361). Herodotus records that the Thracians worshipped only three gods — Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis (Herodotus 5.7) — so that the Greeks came to imagine Thrace as the true homeland of the lord of battle, and Ares himself was often called a Thracian god.

Worship — Modern

Honouring Ares today

A modern Hellenic devotee can honour Ares while setting aside the caricature of the mindless war-god. He is called upon today not for aggression but for courage — the steadiness to face what must be faced, the strength to defend oneself and those in one's care. A simple shrine bearing a spear, a helmet, or a plain image of the god, with a lamp or candle, gives him a place in the home. Approach him with honesty and firmness rather than fear; he is a god who respects directness. Many modern worshippers are drawn especially to his aspect as protector and avenger of the wronged — the father who defended Alcippe, the god the women of Tegea claimed as their own.

Offerings

Where the ancients gave the blood of sacrifice and a share of the spoils, a household devotee today offers what stands in for them: a libation of wine (or of water), and a portion of a shared meal, especially of meat — for Ares was a god honoured among comrades who feasted together. Present the offering plainly, with a few words of respect for his courage and his protection, and set it aside afterward so that it is truly the god's.

Prayer & epithets

Call on Ares by the aspect that fits your need. Invoke him as Enyalios, the warlike, when you must summon courage for a hard confrontation. Turn to Ares Gynaikothoinas, the god the women claimed, in honouring the strength and defence of women. Call on him as the avenger of the Areopagus when seeking justice against those who have done harm. And in daily reverence, honour the fierce, maligned, but faithful protector who stands between his own and the enemy at the gate.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Velázquez's brooding "Mars" (Ares): the war-god seated in a plumed helmet with his armour and weapons set aside, oil on canvas, ca. 1638.
Velázquez's brooding "Mars" (Ares): the war-god seated in a plumed helmet with his armour and weapons set aside, oil on canvas, ca. 1638. — Diego Velázquez, "Mars, God of War" (ca. 1638). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Velázquez's brooding "Mars" (Ares): the war-god seated in a plumed helmet with his armour and weapons set aside, oil on canvas, ca. 1638.
Velázquez's brooding "Mars" (Ares): the war-god seated in a plumed helmet with his armour and weapons set aside, oil on canvas, ca. 1638. — Diego Velázquez, "Mars, God of War" (ca. 1638). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/artemis/index.html b/deity/artemis/index.html index 4411d9d..9e79168 100644 --- a/deity/artemis/index.html +++ b/deity/artemis/index.html @@ -16,7 +16,10 @@

Iphigenia at Aulis

(Content note: threatened human sacrifice of a young woman.) When the Greek fleet gathered at Aulis to sail for Troy, the winds died — sent still, it was said, by an Artemis angered at Agamemnon. The seer declared that only the sacrifice of the king's own daughter, Iphigenia, would free the fleet. Here the tradition splits, and both endings deserve to stand. In the older and darker version, the knife falls: Iphigenia is truly killed at the altar to buy the wind for Troy. In the version Euripides made famous (Iphigenia in Tauris), Artemis herself takes pity at the last instant, snatches the girl away in a cloud, and leaves a deer dying on the altar in her place — carrying Iphigenia off to distant Tauris to serve as her priestess. Two irreconcilable memories of the same goddess: the one who demands a daughter's blood, and the one who reaches out to save her.

Worship — Ancient

A goddess of thresholds and the wild

-

Artemis was worshipped everywhere in the Greek world, but her sanctuaries cluster at the edges — in mountains, marshes, and coastal groves, at the boundary between the settled land and the wilderness she ruled. Her cult was above all a cult of transitions: she watched over children as Kourotrophos, over women in the mortal danger of childbirth as Lochia, and over girls as they left childhood behind. At Brauron in Attica, young girls served the goddess as arktoi, "little bears," in the rite of the Arkteia: dressed in saffron-yellow robes, they "played the bear" for Artemis before they were permitted to marry. The myth behind it told of a tame bear sacred to the goddess that was killed after it scratched a girl, bringing a plague that could only be lifted if Athenian girls thereafter served the bear-goddess. Women who came safely through childbirth dedicated their clothing at Brauron in thanks; those who died in labour were remembered there too.

+

Artemis was worshipped everywhere in the Greek world, but her sanctuaries cluster at the edges — in mountains, marshes, and coastal groves, at the boundary between the settled land and the wilderness she ruled. Her cult was above all a cult of transitions: she watched over children as Kourotrophos, over women in the mortal danger of childbirth as Lochia, and over girls as they left childhood behind. At Brauron in Attica — and at Mounichia near the Piraeus — girls on the threshold of marriage served her as arktoi, "little bears," in the rite of the Arkteia. Women who came safely through childbirth dedicated their clothing at Brauron in thanks; those who died in labour were remembered there too.

+

The little bears of Brauron

+

Artemis's most famous rite of passage was the arkteia, "the playing of the bear," performed at her sanctuaries at Brauron on the east coast of Attica and at Mounichia by the harbour of the Piraeus. Before an Athenian girl of good family could marry, she was expected at some point in her childhood to have "been a bear" for the goddess — to have served, dressed in a saffron-yellow robe (the krokotos), as one of the arktoi, the little she-bears of Artemis, dancing and running in her honour. The comic poet Aristophanes has his chorus of Athenian women count it among the sacred stages of a well-born girl's upbringing: at seven she carried the secret things, at ten she ground the grain for the goddess, "and then, in the saffron robe, I was a bear at the Brauronia" (Lysistrata 641–647) — and the ancient commentators on the passage preserved the story behind the rite.

+

That story told of a tame she-bear kept at the sanctuary, so gentle it lived among the people — until it scratched a girl who provoked it, and her brothers killed the beast in revenge. Artemis, angered at the death of her creature, sent a plague upon the Athenians, and the oracle declared it would lift only if their daughters "played the bear" for the goddess in atonement before they married. So in the rite the wildness taken from the bear was briefly given back: the girls became she-bears themselves, and shed that wildness when they set the saffron robe aside and crossed into womanhood. Much of what we know of the ceremony comes not from the poets but from the ground — the krateriskoi, small votive mixing-bowls found at Brauron and Mounichia, painted with girls, some robed and some running naked, circling an altar, at times with a figure in a bear's mask among them.

Sparta, Ephesus, and the many faces of Artemis

At Sparta she was worshipped as Artemis Orthia, in one of the oldest and strangest of her cults. Pausanias (3.16.7–11) records that her altar once demanded human blood by lot, until Lycurgus replaced the killing with a scourging of the young men — the ordeal in which Spartan boys endured whipping at the altar as a test of endurance, the priestess standing by with the little wooden image, which was said to grow heavy if the beating was too soft. Far to the east, at Ephesus, stood the goddess the Greeks called Artemis but who was really something else: the Lady of Ephesus, a many-breasted (or many-gourded) mother-goddess descended from an ancient Anatolian Great Mother akin to Cybele. Greek settlers gave her Artemis's name, but her image, rites, and fertile, maternal character remained her own — a distinct, syncretic deity best understood as Greek Artemis and Anatolian mother fused into one. Her temple was among the Seven Wonders of the world.

Rites and offerings

@@ -27,4 +30,4 @@

Where the ancients burnt offerings, a household devotee today most naturally gives a libation and a share of food. Pour out clean spring water, wine, or milk into a bowl set aside for the goddess, or leave a cake, a little honey, or fresh fruit; incense is welcome. Present it with a few words of praise — to Artemis the huntress, the maiden, the light-bringer — and afterward set the offering aside or pour it onto the earth so that it is truly hers. Prayers to Artemis often ask for protection: for children and the young, for women through pregnancy and birth, for animals, and for safe passage through the changes and thresholds of a life.

By her many names

Call on the goddess by the aspect that fits the need. Invoke Artemis Agrotera in the wild, or before any pursuit that asks focus and a steady aim. Turn to Artemis Lochia and Kourotrophos for the protection of women in childbirth and of children as they grow. Honour Artemis Parthenos, the Maiden, in reverence for independence and self-possession, and for the right to belong to oneself. And under the night sky, many modern worshippers greet her as Phosphoros, the light-bringer — mindful that the ancient Artemis was distinct from Selene the Moon and Hecate of the crossroads, and that the blending of the three into one lunar goddess was a later development, honoured but understood as such.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Diana (Artemis) the huntress striding with her bow, quiver, and hound while raising a hunting horn; oil by Orazio Gentileschi, early 17th century.
Diana (Artemis) the huntress striding with her bow, quiver, and hound while raising a hunting horn; oil by Orazio Gentileschi, early 17th century. — Orazio Gentileschi, "Diana the Huntress" (first half of the 17th century). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Diana (Artemis) the huntress striding with her bow, quiver, and hound while raising a hunting horn; oil by Orazio Gentileschi, early 17th century.
Diana (Artemis) the huntress striding with her bow, quiver, and hound while raising a hunting horn; oil by Orazio Gentileschi, early 17th century. — Orazio Gentileschi, "Diana the Huntress" (first half of the 17th century). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/demeter/index.html b/deity/demeter/index.html index 7cd6830..5c7ae44 100644 --- a/deity/demeter/index.html +++ b/deity/demeter/index.html @@ -6,6 +6,8 @@

For nine days Demeter roamed the earth with blazing torches in her hands, searching, tasting neither ambrosia nor the sweet draught of nectar, nor bathing, in her grief (Hymn 2.40–50). On the tenth Hecate and then Helios told her the truth — that Hades had taken Persephone with Zeus's leave. In wrath and sorrow she withdrew from Olympus and from the company of the gods, and turned her power against the earth: she made it a most dreadful year, so that the seed lay hidden in the ground and gave no shoot, and famine threatened to destroy the whole race of men and to rob the gods of their sacrifices (Hymn 2.305–313). At last Zeus relented and sent Hermes down to bring Persephone back. But Hades, before releasing her, gave her the seed of a pomegranate to eat; and because she had tasted the food of the dead, she was bound to return to him for a portion of each year — a third part below with Hades, and two parts above with her mother and the gods (Hymn 2.393–403, 445–447). So the seasons were born: when Persephone descends, Demeter mourns and the earth lies barren in winter; when she returns, the goddess rejoices and the world breaks into the green of spring. (A later Sicilian tradition set the abduction not at Nysa but in the flowery meadows of Enna in the heart of Sicily — the version favoured by Diodorus, Cicero, and Ovid — but the older Homeric Hymn leads with Nysa.)

Eleusis and the founding of the Mysteries

In her wandering, disguised as an aged woman past childbearing, Demeter came to Eleusis and sat grieving by the Maiden Well. There the daughters of King Keleos found her and brought her to the palace of their mother, Queen Metaneira, who took the stranger in and gave her the infant prince Demophoon to nurse (Hymn 2.90–168). The goddess, minded to make the child deathless, anointed him with ambrosia by day and by night laid him secretly in the heart of the fire like a brand, burning away his mortality. He grew like a god — until Metaneira spied on the rite and shrieked in terror to see her son in the flames. The spell was broken; Demeter snatched the child from the fire, rebuked the folly of mortals, and cast off her disguise, revealing herself in her true beauty and radiance (Hymn 2.231–280). She commanded the people of Eleusis to build her a great temple and altar beneath the town, and there, once Persephone was restored to her, she taught her rites and Mysteries — holy things that may not be spoken, for deep awe checks the tongue — and blessed is the mortal who has seen them (Hymn 2.270–274, 480–482).

+

The mission of Triptolemus

+

Among the lords of Eleusis to whom Demeter taught her rites was Triptolemus, in the usual account the elder son of King Keleos and Metaneira and brother of the infant Demophoon. To him above all the goddess entrusted her greatest boon to mortals — the knowledge of agriculture itself. In the Homeric Hymn he is named among the Eleusinian princes to whom Demeter revealed the conduct of her holy Mysteries (Hymn 2.153, 474–476); but it was in later tradition, gathered by Apollodorus and dramatised in Sophocles' lost tragedy Triptolemus, that his mission took its famous form. Demeter gave him seed-corn and a wondrous chariot drawn by winged serpents, and borne through the sky he crossed the whole inhabited earth, scattering the grain and teaching humankind to plough, to sow, and to reap (Apollodorus 1.5.2). Where Demeter's own story tells how the gift of the corn was won, Triptolemus is the hero who carries it out to all the world — the first sower and the founder of the settled, bread-eating life. It is this moment that is shown on the great fifth-century Eleusinian relief, where Demeter places the ears of wheat into the boy's hand as Persephone lays hers upon his head in blessing.

The dark goddess of Arcadia

A darker strand of the myth was told in the highlands of Arcadia. There it was said that while Demeter wandered grieving for Persephone, Poseidon pursued her with desire. To escape him she turned herself into a mare and mingled with the grazing horses of the region; but the god saw through the disguise, took the form of a stallion, and forced her. From this violent union the goddess bore a daughter — whose true name might not be uttered to the uninitiated, and who was known only as Despoina, "the Mistress" — and the swift immortal horse Areion. In her rage and defilement Demeter withdrew into a cave, and the earth again went unfruitful. At Thelpusa she was worshipped in this angry aspect as Demeter Erinys, "the Fury"; at Phigalia she was honoured as Demeter Melaina, "the Black," her cult image mare-headed and robed in dark, dwelling in a mountain cave (Pausanias 8.25.4–7 and 8.42.1–4). This grim Arcadian tale preserves an ancient face of the goddess — the corn-mother as a chthonic power of the black earth, whose grief can starve the world.

Worship — Ancient

Cult centres

@@ -20,4 +22,4 @@

Demeter's offerings are those of the field and the kitchen, and contemporary practice keeps them bloodless. Offer bread — a loaf you have baked, or the first slice of it — together with barley, wheat, or a bowl of cooked grain; honey; fruit, and above all the pomegranate that marks her daughter's story; olive oil; and libations of wine, or of pure water or milk. First-fruits are the most fitting gift of all: the earliest tomato of the garden, the first bread of new flour, a share of the harvest set aside for her. Present the offering with words of thanks and afterward pour it out or return it to the earth, so that it is truly given.

Prayer and epithets

Call on Demeter by the name that suits your need. Invoke her as Demeter Sito, she of the grain, in thanks for food and a full table; as Demeter Chloe, of the green shoot, at the turn of spring and for new beginnings and growth; as Karpophoros, the fruit-bearer, for the ripening of any work you have sown. Honour her as Thesmophoros, the law-bringer, as the giver of the settled and civilised life. And in grief, or when seeking hope in the face of death, turn to Demeter Eleusinia, mistress of the Mysteries, the mother who lost her daughter to the dark and won her back to the light — whose story is itself the promise that what is buried may rise again.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Oil painting of Ceres (Demeter) crowned with wheat and flowers amid the summer harvest, putti bearing a sickle, by Antoine Watteau, ca. 1717–1718.
Oil painting of Ceres (Demeter) crowned with wheat and flowers amid the summer harvest, putti bearing a sickle, by Antoine Watteau, ca. 1717–1718. — Antoine Watteau, "Ceres (Summer)" (ca. 1717–1718). National Gallery of Art, Washington — CC0. Via Wikimedia Commons
Oil painting of Demeter, wheat-crowned and scattered with poppies, mourning her lost daughter Persephone, by Evelyn De Morgan, 1906.
Oil painting of Demeter, wheat-crowned and scattered with poppies, mourning her lost daughter Persephone, by Evelyn De Morgan, 1906. — Evelyn De Morgan, "Demeter Mourning for Persephone" (1906). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Oil painting of Ceres (Demeter) crowned with wheat and flowers amid the summer harvest, putti bearing a sickle, by Antoine Watteau, ca. 1717–1718.
Oil painting of Ceres (Demeter) crowned with wheat and flowers amid the summer harvest, putti bearing a sickle, by Antoine Watteau, ca. 1717–1718. — Antoine Watteau, "Ceres (Summer)" (ca. 1717–1718). National Gallery of Art, Washington — CC0. Via Wikimedia Commons
Oil painting of Demeter, wheat-crowned and scattered with poppies, mourning her lost daughter Persephone, by Evelyn De Morgan, 1906.
Oil painting of Demeter, wheat-crowned and scattered with poppies, mourning her lost daughter Persephone, by Evelyn De Morgan, 1906. — Evelyn De Morgan, "Demeter Mourning for Persephone" (1906). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/hades/index.html b/deity/hades/index.html index f09727d..a1f90e4 100644 --- a/deity/hades/index.html +++ b/deity/hades/index.html @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@

Only behind that gentler mask stands the grim king we more often picture: the "receiver of many" (Polydegmon), host to every mortal who ever lived, from whose realm almost no one returns. He is not evil — the Greeks did not imagine him as a devil, and he keeps his bargains and his boundaries with severe honesty — but he is inexorable. Homer calls him "the most hateful of gods to mortals," not because he is cruel but because he cannot be moved: he takes no bribes, hears few prayers, and lets no one go once they are his. He wears the Cyclopes' helm that makes its bearer invisible, an emblem of a god who is himself unseen, ruling a country no living eye surveys.

Yet his kingdom is not his alone. Beside him reigns Persephone, whose story on this page is told as an arc — carried off as an unwilling bride, she becomes over time the true and dreaded Queen of the Dead, who judges, commands the powers of the deep, and grants or refuses the petitions of those bold enough to descend. Around the pair lie the shadowed rivers, the ferryman and his fee, and the great hound at the gate; and behind them, always, the strange doubleness of a god who is at once the end of every life and the buried source of the wealth that sustains it.

Mythology

The division of the cosmos

-

When Zeus and his siblings had overthrown Cronus and defeated the Titans, the three brothers divided the universe between them by lot. Homer gives Poseidon the telling of it (Iliad 15.187–193): "when the lots were shaken I drew the grey sea to dwell in forever; Hades drew the misty darkness, and Zeus the wide sky; but the earth and high Olympus remain common to all three." So the underworld fell to Hades not as a punishment or a defeat but as his rightful portion, sovereign and equal in dignity to sky and sea — which is why Homer can name him "the Zeus below" (Zeus Katachthonios, Iliad 9.457). From the Cyclopes, who at the same war forged Zeus's thunderbolt and Poseidon's trident, Hades received the kunee, the cap or helm of darkness (Aïdos kyneē) that turns its wearer invisible — a fitting gift for the Unseen One, later borrowed by Athena and by Perseus.

+

When Zeus and his siblings had overthrown Cronus and defeated the Titans, the three brothers divided the universe between them by lot. Homer gives Poseidon the telling of it (Iliad 15.187–193): "when the lots were shaken I drew the grey sea to dwell in forever; Hades drew the misty darkness, and Zeus the wide sky; but the earth and high Olympus remain common to all three." So the underworld fell to Hades not as a punishment or a defeat but as his rightful portion, sovereign and equal in dignity to sky and sea — which is why Homer can name him "the Zeus below" (Zeus Katachthonios, Iliad 9.457). From the Cyclopes, who at the same war forged Zeus's thunderbolt and Poseidon's trident, Hades received the kunee, the cap or helm of darkness (Aïdos kyneē) that turns its wearer invisible — the "cap of Hades," made and given to him by the Cyclopes alongside his brothers' weapons (Apollodorus 1.2.1). It is a fitting emblem for the Unseen One, and it passes from hand to hand across the myths: on the battlefield of Troy Athena dons "the cap of Hades" so that not even the war-god Ares can see her (Iliad 5.844–845), and the nymphs lend it to Perseus for his hunt of the Gorgon (Apollodorus 2.4.2). That the god's own helmet is invisibility itself says everything about him — he is the lord no living eye beholds.

The abduction of Persephone — captive bride to reigning Queen

(A content note: this is the abduction myth, told here without dwelling on its violence.) The fullest telling is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Hymn 2). Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was gathering flowers when she reached for a wondrous narcissus that Earth had grown as a snare; the ground yawned open and Hades, with Zeus's secret consent, carried her down to his realm to be his bride (so too Apollodorus 1.5.1). Demeter's grief blighted the earth until Zeus was forced to relent — but Hades had given Persephone a pomegranate seed to eat, and because she had tasted the food of the dead she was bound to him: she must spend a third of every year below with her husband, and two-thirds above with her mother. So the seasons were explained, and the underworld gained a queen.

But the Greek imagination did not leave her a victim. Across the wider tradition Persephone rises from stolen girl to genuine sovereign — the arc from captive to Queen. Already in Homer she is "dread Persephone" who, alongside Hades, carries out the curses mortals lay upon the dead (Iliad 9.457, 9.569). In cult and later myth she is the one who commands the powers of the deep and decides who may pass: it is Persephone, as much as Hades, whom Orpheus must move with his song; and in some tellings it is she who grants Heracles leave to take the hound, and she who each year presides over the mysteries of return. The maiden carried off against her will becomes the throned and unbending mistress of the shades — the true Queen of the Underworld the Greeks came to fear and revere.

@@ -16,8 +16,10 @@

Hades is the great exception among the major Greek gods: he was worshipped almost nowhere. Where every city had its temples of Zeus, Athena or Apollo, shrines to Hades were vanishingly rare, and Pausanias singles out the reason as remarkable — the Eleans, he says, are the only Greeks he knows to honour Hades with a temple and precinct at all, opened just one day a year and entered by none but the priest (Description of Greece 6.25.2). The cause was the same name-dread that produced his euphemisms: men did not wish to build houses for death or to call its lord by name. When they did approach him it was often under the softened figure of Plouton, the wealth-giver — as at the Ploutonion at Eleusis, where he was received beside Demeter and Persephone in the Mysteries as a power of hope rather than horror.

Chthonic rites

What worship he did receive followed the aversive pattern of the chthonic (underworld) powers, sharply distinct from Olympian sacrifice. Where the sky-gods were given light-coloured victims on raised altars with the worshipper's face turned up and hands raised, Hades and the powers below received black victims — a black ram or ewe — slaughtered over a low pit or trench so the blood ran down into the earth, at night, with the sacrificer's face turned away and the whole offering burnt entire and given wholly to the god, never shared in a feast. Libations were poured directly into the ground: honey, milk, water, sometimes wine. To make contact with the dead themselves, Greeks might visit an oracle of the dead, a nekromanteion — the most famous stood on the river Acheron in Epirus, near where Acheron and Cocytus meet, where petitioners sought to summon and question the shades in the domain of Hades and Persephone.

+

Dread Persephone — the more feared of the pair

+

It is one of the quiet surprises of Greek religion that, of the two who ruled below, it was often Persephone rather than Hades whom the living more actively dreaded and invoked. Where Hades was so shunned that men would scarcely speak his name, Homer names his queen without flinching and with a fixed epithet of terror — epainē Persephoneia, "dread Persephone" — and it is she, at least as much as her husband, who is called upon to fulfil the curses mortals lay upon one another (Iliad 9.457, 9.569). Her name recurs among the powers of the deep summoned on the lead curse-tablets (defixiones) by which Greeks consigned their enemies to the underworld: to bind a foe, one wrote his name and gave it over to the chthonic queen. Hades kept his terrible silence and his few and shunned shrines; Persephone, throned beside him, was the more present and more dreadful figure in the imagination of the living — the sovereign who was actually addressed, feared, and asked to act.

Worship — Modern

Honouring Hades today

Modern Hellenic practice approaches Hades with reverence and without fear, and — importantly — without any literal blood sacrifice; the aversive rites of antiquity are studied, not re-enacted. Many devotees prefer his kindlier names, addressing him as Plouton, the giver of the earth's wealth, or invoking him and Persephone together as the royal couple of the underworld. A simple household shrine might hold a dark cloth, a sprig of cypress or a few grains, a pomegranate, and an unlit or steadily burning lamp. Because he is a god of the earth, his rites are naturally quieter and more inward than those of the bright Olympians — fitting for the lord of endings, memory, and the dead we carry with us.

Offerings and prayer

In place of the old black victims, a modern offering is a libation poured onto the earth — water, milk, honey, or wine — set down and left to the god rather than consumed. Cypress, narcissus, pomegranate, barley, and incense are all fitting gifts, as is a candle lit in memory of the dead. Address him with respect and calm rather than pleading, for he was always the god who could not be flattered. Call on Plouton in gratitude for the sustenance and wealth that come up out of the ground; on Eubouleus, "of good counsel," when seeking wisdom or peace with what cannot be changed; and remember Persephone beside him as Queen, honouring the two together. Prayers for the dead — a name spoken, a libation poured, a light kindled — are perhaps the most natural devotion of all to the Host of Many, into whose keeping every life at last is given.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Roman tomb fresco of Hades (Pluto) carrying off Persephone in his galloping four-horse chariot; 2nd–3rd century CE.
Roman tomb fresco of Hades (Pluto) carrying off Persephone in his galloping four-horse chariot; 2nd–3rd century CE. — Roman wall painting, 2nd–3rd century CE. The British Museum, London — Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Roman tomb fresco of Hades (Pluto) carrying off Persephone in his galloping four-horse chariot; 2nd–3rd century CE.
Roman tomb fresco of Hades (Pluto) carrying off Persephone in his galloping four-horse chariot; 2nd–3rd century CE. — Roman wall painting, 2nd–3rd century CE. The British Museum, London — Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/hephaestus/index.html b/deity/hephaestus/index.html index 7c1f545..ec4591c 100644 --- a/deity/hephaestus/index.html +++ b/deity/hephaestus/index.html @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@

The golden throne and the Return of Hephaestus

Hephaestus did not forget being thrown from heaven, and his revenge was a craftsman's revenge. He forged a golden throne of exquisite beauty and sent it to Hera as a gift; but when she sat in it, invisible bonds sprang shut and held her fast, and no god could free her — only the maker knew the trick of the chains. The gods sent for him, and he refused to come. Ares tried to drag him back by force and was driven off by his firebrands. In the end it was Dionysus who succeeded: he made Hephaestus drunk on wine and led him back up to Olympus, slumped on the back of a mule, in a reeling, laughing procession of satyrs. This "Return of Hephaestus," with the tipsy smith on his donkey, was a favourite scene of archaic vase-painters (it fills a whole frieze of the François Vase). Restored to heaven, he freed his mother — reconciliation bought with wit and wine.

The works of the forge

-

Hephaestus is defined above all by what he makes. The greatest set-piece is the arming of Achilles: at Thetis's plea he abandons his other labours and in a single night hammers out a new panoply, above all the great Shield of Achilles, its five layers worked with the whole cosmos — earth, sky and sea, cities at peace and at war, ploughland and vineyard and dancing-floor — the most famous description of a made thing in all of Greek literature (Iliad 18.368–617). His forge is served by marvels of his own making: golden handmaidens shaped like living girls, with sense and speech and strength in them, who move to support their limping master, and twenty self-moving tripods on golden wheels that roll of themselves into the gathering of the gods and back again (Iliad 18.372–379 and 417–421). At Zeus's command he moulded the first woman, Pandora, shaping her from earth and water into the likeness of a modest maiden for Athena to dress and adorn (Theogony 570–589). To him tradition also credits the necklace of Harmonia, and, in some tellings, the bronze giant Talos who guarded the shores of Crete, circling the island and hurling rocks at intruders.

+

Hephaestus is defined above all by what he makes. The greatest set-piece is the arming of Achilles: at Thetis's plea he abandons his other labours and in a single night hammers out a new panoply, above all the great Shield of Achilles, its five layers worked with the whole cosmos — earth, sky and sea, cities at peace and at war, ploughland and vineyard and dancing-floor — the most famous description of a made thing in all of Greek literature (Iliad 18.368–617). His forge is served by marvels of his own making: golden handmaidens shaped like living girls, with sense and speech and strength in them, who move to support their limping master, and twenty self-moving tripods on golden wheels that roll of themselves into the gathering of the gods and back again (Iliad 18.372–379 and 417–421). At Zeus's command he moulded the first woman, Pandora, shaping her from earth and water into the likeness of a modest maiden for Athena to dress and adorn (Theogony 570–589). The same living craft runs through his other works: for the palace of King Alcinous he wrought watchdogs of gold and silver, immortal and unageing, to stand guard at the doorway for ever (Odyssey 7.91–94), and on Olympus it was he who built the bronze-floored houses of the gods themselves, raising a dwelling for each immortal (Iliad 1.607–608). To him tradition also credits the necklace of Harmonia, and, in some tellings, the bronze giant Talos who guarded the shores of Crete, circling the island and hurling rocks at intruders.

The net, and the war of the giants

Two further stories show his two sides. When the Sun told Hephaestus that his wife Aphrodite lay with Ares, he forged a net of chains finer than spiderweb and invisible, hung it over his own bed, and caught the lovers fast in the act; then he called the gods to come and see, and the immortals stood in the doorway laughing an unquenchable laugh at the trapped pair (Odyssey 8.266–366) — the outsider's revenge, again, worked through craft rather than strength. And in the Gigantomachy, the war of the Olympians against the earthborn Giants, Hephaestus fought with the only weapon truly his: he killed the giant Mimas by pelting him with missiles of red-hot molten metal straight from the forge (Apollodorus 1.6.2).

Worship — Ancient

Lemnos, the smith's island

@@ -23,4 +23,4 @@

Where the ancients gave burnt sacrifice, a household devotee today most naturally offers fire, drink, and the work itself. Light a candle or lamp for him as the simplest and most fitting gift. Pour a libation of wine — or of water, milk, or honey — and set out barley, olive oil, or incense (frankincense is traditional). Most in his spirit of all is to offer something you have made: the first or best product of your own craft, given with thanks. Present the offering with a few words, and afterward pour out or set aside what was given so that it is truly the god's.

Prayer & epithets

Call on Hephaestus by the epithet that fits the moment. Invoke Hephaestus Klytotechnes, the famed craftsman, at the start of any work of the hands, that the making go well and true. Turn to Hephaestus Chalkeus, the smith, as patron of every trade that shapes metal, wood, stone, or clay. Honour him as Amphigyeeis, the lame god, remembering that skill and worth are not undone by a broken body — his is the quiet patron-godhood of everyone the world has counted less and who answers with what they can make. And light his flame in reverence to Hephaestus the fire-giver, whose tamed fire first raised humankind from the caves.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Oil painting of the forge of Vulcan (Hephaestus) at his anvil as Apollo arrives, by Diego Velázquez, 1630.
Oil painting of the forge of Vulcan (Hephaestus) at his anvil as Apollo arrives, by Diego Velázquez, 1630. — Diego Velázquez, "The Forge of Vulcan" (1630), Museo del Prado. Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Oil painting of the forge of Vulcan (Hephaestus) at his anvil as Apollo arrives, by Diego Velázquez, 1630.
Oil painting of the forge of Vulcan (Hephaestus) at his anvil as Apollo arrives, by Diego Velázquez, 1630. — Diego Velázquez, "The Forge of Vulcan" (1630), Museo del Prado. Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/hera/index.html b/deity/hera/index.html index 4e5581b..15493b8 100644 --- a/deity/hera/index.html +++ b/deity/hera/index.html @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@

Mythology

Fostered at the world's edge and won by a cuckoo

Two strands account for Hera's beginning. In Hesiod she is swallowed at birth by Cronus with her siblings and later disgorged; but Homer preserves an older tale in which Rhea, as Zeus was overthrowing Cronus, carried the infant Hera to the ends of the earth and gave her to Oceanus and Tethys, who raised her kindly in their house (Iliad 14.200–204). Her courtship with Zeus is set in the Argolid: as Hera walked alone on Mount Thornax, Zeus raised a storm and turned himself into a bedraggled, shivering cuckoo; the goddess, taking pity, caught the bird and warmed it against her breast beneath her cloak — whereupon Zeus resumed his form. From this the cuckoo perched on Hera's sceptre, and the mountain was renamed Kokkygion, from kokkyx, "cuckoo" (Pausanias 2.17.4, 2.36.1–2). Their union became the divine model of the wedding, the sacred marriage (hieros gamos) claimed and re-enacted by rival sanctuaries — Argos, Samos, and Euboea each insisting the marriage of the god and goddess was theirs.

The jealous queen: Io, Leto, and the persecutions

-

Hera's wrath is the engine of many of the greatest myths. When Zeus loved the Argive priestess Io, Hera's suspicion drove him to hide his mistress by turning her into a white heifer; Hera demanded the heifer as a gift and set the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes, whose eyes never all slept at once, to guard her — until Hermes lulled and slew him, and Hera sent a maddening gadfly to chase Io in torment across the world, from Greece to Egypt (Apollodorus 2.1.3). When Zeus's lover Leto came to term, Hera forbade any land under sun to receive her in her labour and detained Eileithyia, goddess of birth-pangs, so that Leto wandered in agony until the floating island of Delos at last dared to take her. Above all she hated Heracles, son of Zeus by Alcmene: she sent two serpents into his cradle, which the infant strangled; she afterward struck him with the madness in which he killed his own children; and it was through her contrivance that he was bound to serve Eurystheus and perform the Twelve Labours. His name itself — "the glory of Hera" — binds the greatest hero of the Greeks to the goddess who tormented him.

+

Hera's wrath is the engine of many of the greatest myths. When Zeus loved the Argive priestess Io, Hera's suspicion drove him to hide his mistress by turning her into a white heifer; Hera demanded the heifer as a gift and set the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes, whose eyes never all slept at once, to guard her — until Hermes lulled and slew him — and Hera, in memory of her faithful watchman, set his hundred unsleeping eyes in the tail of the peacock, her sacred bird (a tradition told fully by the Roman poet Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.720–723). She then sent a maddening gadfly to chase Io in torment across the world, from Greece to Egypt (Apollodorus 2.1.3). When Zeus's lover Leto came to term, Hera forbade any land under sun to receive her in her labour and detained Eileithyia, goddess of birth-pangs, so that Leto wandered in agony until the floating island of Delos at last dared to take her. Above all she hated Heracles, son of Zeus by Alcmene: she sent two serpents into his cradle, which the infant strangled; she afterward struck him with the madness in which he killed his own children; and it was through her contrivance that he was bound to serve Eurystheus and perform the Twelve Labours. His name itself — "the glory of Hera" — binds the greatest hero of the Greeks to the goddess who tormented him.

Births without a father: Hephaestus and Typhaon

Twice Hera answered Zeus's own solo act of creation — his birth of Athena from his head — with a defiant parthenogenesis of her own. Enraged that her husband had brought forth a child without her, "without union with Zeus," she conceived and bore Hephaestus alone, the master-craftsman of the gods, greatest in skill of all the sons of heaven (Hesiod, Theogony 927–929). A darker mirror of the same wound appears in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (305–355): furious at Zeus for the birth of Athena, Hera prayed to Earth and the Titans and struck the ground, and bore by herself the monster Typhaon — a scourge to mortals, "like neither the gods nor men" — which she gave to the she-dragon at Delphi to nurse, until Apollo slew the serpent beside the spring at Pytho. In these paired births Hera is not the passive queen but a primordial mother-power, capable of creating life and monstrosity alike in answer to a husband who would make gods without her.

The Judgement of Paris and the wrath against Troy

diff --git a/deity/poseidon/index.html b/deity/poseidon/index.html index 2a1c90e..014d5bc 100644 --- a/deity/poseidon/index.html +++ b/deity/poseidon/index.html @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@

Like his elder brothers and sisters, Poseidon was swallowed at birth by his father Cronus, who feared a prophecy that his own child would overthrow him (Hesiod, Theogony 453–467). He remained imprisoned within Cronus until Zeus, grown to strength, forced the Titan to disgorge the swallowed children full-grown. This is the version that leads. The Arcadians, however, told a local variant that made Poseidon's escape a twin of Zeus's own: Rhea, when she had borne Poseidon, hid the infant among a flock of lambs at a spring near Mantinea and told Cronus she had given birth to a foal, giving him a young horse to swallow in the child's place — just as she would later give him a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes in place of Zeus (Pausanias 8.8.2). The spring there was called Arne, "the Lamb."

The contest for Athens

The most famous of Poseidon's myths is his contest with Athena for the patronage of Athens. Each god offered the city a gift. Poseidon struck the rock of the Acropolis with his trident and brought forth a spring of sea-water — the "Erechthean sea," a well of salt water whose token, along with the mark of the trident, was still shown in Herodotus's day and later within the Erechtheion (Herodotus 8.55). Athena, appearing after him, planted the first olive tree and called King Cecrops to witness her claim. The gods (or in another telling Cecrops and the citizens) judged Athena's gift the greater, and she won the city and gave it her name (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.1). Poseidon in his anger flooded the Thriasian plain of Attica, and was only checked from further destruction.

-

This was not his only such quarrel. At Corinth he disputed the land with Helios the Sun; the Hundred-Hander Briareus arbitrated and gave the heights of Acrocorinth to Helios but the Isthmus and its shores to Poseidon, whose great sanctuary stood there ever after (Pausanias 2.1.6). At Argos he contended with Hera; the river-gods Inachus, Cephisus, and Asterion judged the land to be Hera's, and Poseidon in spite dried up their streams, so that to this day, Pausanias says, the Argive rivers run only after rain (Pausanias 2.15.5).

+

This was not his only such quarrel. At Corinth he disputed the land with Helios the Sun; the Hundred-Hander Briareus arbitrated and gave the heights of Acrocorinth to Helios but the Isthmus and its shores to Poseidon, whose great sanctuary stood there ever after (Pausanias 2.1.6). At Argos he contended with Hera; the river-gods Inachus, Cephisus, and Asterion judged the land to be Hera's, and Poseidon in spite dried up their streams, so that to this day, Pausanias says, the Argive rivers run only after rain (Pausanias 2.15.5). At Troezen the outcome was gentler: his dispute with Athena was settled by Zeus, who bade the two gods hold the land in common, and the Troezenians honoured both together ever after — Athena Polias and Poseidon Basileus, "the King" (Pausanias 2.30.6). Even Delphi was reckoned Poseidon's in the oldest days, when he shared the great oracle with Earth herself; in time he gave up his portion to Apollo and took in exchange the island of Calauria off the Argolid coast, where his temple stood and the league of cities that met there kept his cult (Pausanias 2.33.2; 10.5.6). So the pattern ran through the myths of half the Greek world: again and again Poseidon laid claim to a city, and where the judgment went against him he answered with flood or drought, the salt sea and the shaking earth made the instruments of his displeasure.

The horse and the wooing of Amphitrite

Poseidon Hippios was honoured as the god who first brought the horse into the world, and the Greeks saw his creatures in the surf's white manes and in the earthquake's shudder alike. When he sought the sea-nymph Amphitrite, one of the daughters of Nereus, to be his queen, she fled from him to the farthest edge of the world, to Atlas by the stream of Ocean. Poseidon sent searchers after her, and a dolphin found her and won her over with persuading words, bringing her back to be his bride. In gratitude the god set the image of the dolphin among the stars as the constellation Delphinus (Eratosthenes, Catasterismi; Hyginus, Astronomica 2.17).

Medusa, Pegasus, and Chrysaor

@@ -24,4 +24,4 @@

Where the ancients gave the bull, a household devotee today most naturally offers libations and shared food. Pour a libation of wine — or of fresh water, or of sea-water returned to the sea — onto the earth, into flowing water, or into a bowl set aside for the god. Barley or a barley cake, olive oil, honey, and frankincense are all fitting, as is anything of the sea offered in gratitude. A traveller by ship, boat, or ferry may pour a small libation and ask for safe passage. Present the offering with a few words of praise, and afterward pour out or set aside what was given so that it is truly the god's.

Prayer & epithets

Call on Poseidon by the epithet that fits your need. Invoke Poseidon Asphaleios, the Securer, for steadfast ground and safety from what shakes a life or a house; Poseidon Pelagios, of the open sea, and the Earth-shaker Enosichthon for a safe voyage and calm waters when you travel by sea; Poseidon Hippios, of horses, for those who work with or love horses, or for strength and spirited endurance; and Poseidon Phytalmios, the Nurturing, in thanks for the waters that give life. Approach him honestly and do not boast before him, mindful of what pride cost Odysseus.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Neptune (Poseidon) rising from the waves gripping his trident beside a sea-horse, oil on panel by Werner van den Valckert, 1619.
Neptune (Poseidon) rising from the waves gripping his trident beside a sea-horse, oil on panel by Werner van den Valckert, 1619. — Werner van den Valckert, "Neptune" (1619). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Neptune (Poseidon) holding a tall trident and standing with Amphitrite in a temple, oil on panel by Jan Gossaert, 1516.
Neptune (Poseidon) holding a tall trident and standing with Amphitrite in a temple, oil on panel by Jan Gossaert, 1516. — Jan Gossaert (Mabuse), "Neptune and Amphitrite" (1516). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Neptune (Poseidon) rising from the waves gripping his trident beside a sea-horse, oil on panel by Werner van den Valckert, 1619.
Neptune (Poseidon) rising from the waves gripping his trident beside a sea-horse, oil on panel by Werner van den Valckert, 1619. — Werner van den Valckert, "Neptune" (1619). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Neptune (Poseidon) holding a tall trident and standing with Amphitrite in a temple, oil on panel by Jan Gossaert, 1516.
Neptune (Poseidon) holding a tall trident and standing with Amphitrite in a temple, oil on panel by Jan Gossaert, 1516. — Jan Gossaert (Mabuse), "Neptune and Amphitrite" (1516). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/deity/zeus/index.html b/deity/zeus/index.html index 104d041..3a01360 100644 --- a/deity/zeus/index.html +++ b/deity/zeus/index.html @@ -7,6 +7,8 @@

Zeus's first wife was Metis, wisest of gods and mortals. When she was pregnant, Gaia and Uranus warned him of a fate that mirrored his own rise: Metis was destined to bear first a daughter, and then a son who would seize the kingship of heaven from his father. To break the succession of usurpers at its root, Zeus coaxed Metis with cunning words and swallowed her whole, taking her wisdom into himself so that she might counsel him from within for good and ill. In time the child she had conceived came to term inside him; his head was split — by Hephaestus's axe, some say — and out sprang Athena, full-grown and clad in gleaming armour, with a war-cry that shook Olympus. By devouring wisdom itself, Zeus made his rule the last, and no son was ever born to overthrow him.

Typhon

The final challenge to Zeus's order came from Typhon (Typhoeus), the monstrous youngest child of Gaia and Tartarus — a creature of colossal size with a hundred serpent-heads flickering fire from their eyes and voicing every dreadful sound. Had he come to power, Hesiod says, he would have ruled gods and men. But Zeus saw the danger, and thunder answered thunder: he struck Typhon with an unceasing storm of bolts until the monster's heads were scorched and the very earth melted around him. Blasted and crippled, Typhon was hurled down into Tartarus with the Titans — though from him still blow the wild and destructive storm-winds that trouble the sailor's sea. With this last victory the cosmos was secured, and Zeus's sovereignty over it made complete.

+

The thunderbolt, the eagle, and the oak

+

Zeus is known by the objects that surround him, and each one speaks of a part of his power. Foremost is the thunderbolt (keraunos), forged for him by the three Cyclopes in gratitude for their release (Hesiod, Theogony 139–141, 501–506): it is at once his weapon, with which he overthrew the Titans and crushed Typhon, and the visible sign of a justice that falls from above, so that the Greeks called him Keraunios, "of the thunderbolt." The eagle is his bird — the highest-flying of birds, closest to the heavens — and above all his messenger and omen: in Homer an eagle sent from the right is Zeus's answer to prayer and a portent of what is to come (Iliad 8.247, 24.310–321). The oak, the tree most often struck by lightning, was held sacred to him and became the medium of his oldest voice, for at Dodona his will was read in the rustling of its leaves. Two further emblems mark his kingship: the aegis, his terrible storm-shield, tasselled and crowned with the head of Gorgo, which he shakes to rout armies and sometimes lends to Athena or Apollo (Iliad 17.593–596), so that he is Aegis-bearer, aigiochos; and the sceptre, the staff of rule that Hephaestus wrought and that passed from Zeus down the line of kings as the token of a sovereignty granted from heaven (Iliad 2.101–108). Together they portray him whole: the storm-king who strikes, the watcher who sends signs, and the enthroned lord from whom all lawful rule descends.

Worship — Ancient

Cult centres

Zeus was worshipped across the whole Greek world, but two sanctuaries stood above the rest. At Olympia in the western Peloponnese lay his greatest cult site, home to the vast Temple of Zeus and to the gold-and-ivory (chryselephantine) enthroned statue made by Pheidias around the 430s BCE — some twelve metres high, holding a Nike in one hand and an eagle-topped sceptre in the other, and counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world (described in detail by Pausanias, Book 5). Before the temple rose the great Altar of Zeus, a mound built up over centuries from the ash of burnt thighbones. It was in Zeus's honour that the Olympic Games were held every four years. Far to the northwest, at Dodona in Epirus, stood his oldest oracle: here Zeus Naios was consulted through the rustling leaves of a sacred oak, read by the barefoot Selloi priests who slept on the bare ground, and later by three priestesses called the Peleiades, "Doves"; his consort there was Dione.

Rites

@@ -17,4 +19,4 @@

Where the ancients gave burnt sacrifice, a household devotee today most naturally offers libations and shared food. Pour a libation of wine — or of spring water, milk, or honey if wine is not wished — onto the earth or into a bowl set aside for the god. Barley or a barley cake, a little olive oil, honey, and incense (frankincense is traditional) are all fitting. Present the offering with a few words of praise and thanks, and afterward pour out or set aside what was given so that it is truly the god's and not taken back.

Prayer & epithets

Call on Zeus by the epithet that fits your need. Invoke Zeus Xenios when welcoming a guest or travelling as one, that the bond of hospitality be kept. Swear or seal a promise before Zeus Horkios, the guardian of oaths, mindful that he does not forget. Give thanks to Zeus Soter, the Saviour, after deliverance from danger or illness. In grief or when seeking calm and reconciliation, turn to the gentle Zeus Meilichios, the Gracious, who can be soothed. And in daily reverence honour Zeus Olympios, king of the bright heavens, whose order upholds the world.

-

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Oil painting of Zeus enthroned on Olympus with scepter and eagle as Thetis pleads at his knee, J.-A.-D. Ingres, 1811.
Oil painting of Zeus enthroned on Olympus with scepter and eagle as Thetis pleads at his knee, J.-A.-D. Ingres, 1811. — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, "Jupiter and Thetis" (1811). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file +

Epithets & Cult Titles

Sources & Variants

Gallery

Oil painting of Zeus enthroned on Olympus with scepter and eagle as Thetis pleads at his knee, J.-A.-D. Ingres, 1811.
Oil painting of Zeus enthroned on Olympus with scepter and eagle as Thetis pleads at his knee, J.-A.-D. Ingres, 1811. — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, "Jupiter and Thetis" (1811). Via Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Explore Related Figures

\ No newline at end of file