Classical Myth Barry B. Powell Seventh Edition Classical Myth Pow

$&86720(',7,21 Classical Myth Powell Seventh Edition

Classical Myth

ISBN 978-1-29202-161-4 Barry B. Powell Seventh Edition

9 781292 021614 ISBN 10: 1-292-02161-6 ISBN 13: 978-1-292-02161-4

Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow Essex CM20 2JE England and Associated Companies throughout the world

Visit us on the World Wide Web at: www.pearsoned.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. The use of any trademark in this text does not vest in the author or publisher any trademark ownership rights in such trademarks, nor does the use of such trademarks imply any afﬁ liation with or endorsement of this book by such owners.

ISBN 10: 1-292-02161-6 ISBN 13: 978-1-292-02161-4

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States of America Myths of Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena

DEMETER, MISTRESS OF WHEAT

Whereas Gaea/Earth was the female power who presided over the birth of the world, Demeter (de@me៮@ter) was the mother-goddess who oversaw the fruitfulness of agri- culture, especially wheat. The -meter part of her name means “mother,” but the De - has eluded convincing explanation. We wish it could mean “wheat” so that Demeter is the “wheat-mother,” but the etymology seems impossible. Surely wherever wheat was grown, her religion was strong, especially at the town of Eleusis near Athens and in Sicily. Both in myth and in cult Demeter was closely linked to her daughter Persephonê; the two were called simply “the goddesses.”

HESTIA, THE HEARTH

Hestia was the eldest child of Cronus and Rhea, the first swallowed and the last regur- gitated. Her name means “hearth.” She is the Roman Vesta and the most colorless of the Olympians, being nothing more than the fireplace in every house: There was her shrine and her presence, protectress of the home. She defined the internal space of the female world, for it was the duty of the women in the family to tend the domestic fire. By extension Hestia was also protectress of the city, the enlarged family, which sometimes kept a central hearth. In Athens, she was associated with a special building where the magistrates of the city dined together as members of the civic family. Few stories are told about her, and according to many accounts, Dionysus took her place among the twelve Olympians. She was always virgin and never left Olympus, as did the other gods. There she was the center of the divine household, even as the hearth was the center of the human family. Her Roman counterpart, Vesta, was treated as the chief symbol of the city of Rome. Vesta’s shrine, tended by six virgins, contained an undying flame.

APHRODITE, GODDESS OF SEXUAL LOVE

Aphrodite (later identified with the Roman Venus) embodies the overwhelming power of human sexual attraction. Her constant companion, or child by Ares, is Eros, “sexual desire” (the Roman Cupid). In art he is a winged boy with bow and arrows or a flaming torch (a figure still familiar on Valentine’s Day), a mischievous, irresponsible child, showering his arrows randomly and without regard for the harm born from the sexual passion he arouses. Hesiod derives Aphrodite by a false folk etymology from aphros, “foam,” but the goddess is certainly not Greek in origin, nor is her name. Most scholars think that the name must somehow be a distortion of that of the Eastern goddess of fertility var- iously known as Inanna, Ishtar, or Astartê (which themselves appear to be distortions of a single name). The goddess evidently came to Greece through Cyprus, a frequent point of transmission of Eastern culture to the West. At Paphos, in southwestern

218 Myths of Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena

Cyprus, she was worshiped as early as the twelfth century bc in the form of a polished conical stone (which has survived, displayed today in the museum at Paphos on Cyprus). There the Greeks may first have learned about her. Her cult was also important on the island of Cythera, south of the Peloponnesus, where Phoenicians had a settlement. Other important temples were built to her in Sicily, where there were also Phoenician colonies, and in Corinth, a gathering place for seafarers of vari- ous nationalities. Greek myth preserves a clear sense of Aphrodite’s connection with Cyprus and Cythera, both places said to be where the goddess first came to land after rising from the sea foam, and she was often referred to in literature as Cypris ( si -pris) or Cytherea (si@ther@e៮@a). A striking feature of the worship of Aphrodite and Inanna/Ishtar/Astartê was temple prostitution. Women, often of good birth, voluntarily served in her temples, where they had intercourse with men who paid in the form of offerings to the goddess. Such service was a kind of ransom paid to the fecundating power of the goddess and ensured large families to the woman, once she married. Actual prehistoric maiden sacrifice may stand behind the practice: Rather than giving up her life, the girl surrendered her virginity “in honor of the goddess.” The sometimes prudish Greeks had no taste for the practice, but temple prostitution did occur in temples to Aphrodite at Corinth and Cythera. Sappho, who lived in the late seventh or early sixth century bc on the island of Lesbos and who was celebrated as “the tenth Muse,” wrote one of the prettiest poems about Aphrodite. Nothing certain is known about Sappho’s life or about the audience for her poetry. She is famous for her erotic celebration of women, but the social environment in which such poetry was performed has been the topic of controversy since ancient times. Not until after classical times was her poetry considered to be homoerotic (hence our word lesbian ). We have no information how or where her poetry was first performed, except we can be sure that it was in a public context. Some of her poetry must have been performed at weddings, the one occasion in which it was possible to celebrate publicly a young woman’s erotic appeal. In her “Hymn to Aphrodite,” she declares the love-goddess’s power to sway the hearts even of the unwilling, while, ironically, leaving no doubt that the present situation has occurred many times before:

Fancy-throned deathless Aphrodite, deceitful child of Zeus, I entreat you, do not overwhelm my heart with pains and anguish, O lady,

come to me, if ever in the past you heard my voice and came acquiescing, leaving your father’s golden house,

yoking your car. Beautiful swift sparrows, with wings whirring brought you over the dark earth down from heaven, through

219 Myths of Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena

the middle air, and soon they arrived. You, with a smile on your immortal face asked what was it now and why did I call,

and what, especially, in my mad heart did I want to happen this time. “Whom do I persuade to return again to your love? Who, O Sappho,

brings you harm? If she runs soon she will pursue. If she will not take your gifts, soon she shall give. If she does not love,

soon she shall love against her will.” Come to me, set me free from anguish. Give me my desire. Be yourself my companion in arms. Sappho, fragment 1 (Diehl)

Hermaphroditus and Priapus

In addition to her affair with Ares, Aphrodite had an affair with the @messenger-god Hermes, by whom she gave birth to Hermaphroditus (her@ma@fro@dı@tus), a boy of remarkable beauty. Ovid tells a famous story about him: One day a nymph, Salmacis (sal -ma-sis), noticed him wandering in the woods, fell hopelessly in love, and urged that they sleep together. Innocent Hermaphroditus ran away in confusion. Later, when Hermaphroditus dipped into a spring for a bath, Salmacis leaped in and clung to him tightly, praying that they never be separated. They were fused into one being with a woman’s breasts but a man’s genitals. The slightly titillating bisexual Hermaphroditus was a common subject of art in late antiquity. Another child of Aphrodite, whose father was reputedly Dionysus or Hermes, was Priapus (prı@a៮pus), an amusing Asiatic garden-deity and fertility fetish with an enormous erect phallus, who warded off the evil eye (as did the phallus on a herm). His name is not Greek, and he does not appear until late Hellenistic times. He was especially popular among the Romans, who suspended little tablets with clever, highly obscene poetry from the god’s phallus, warning the most unpleasant sexual consequences to unwelcome intruders (Figure 1 ).

Pygmalion

Except for the affair between Aphrodite and Ares, all important stories about Aphrodite are set outside Greece, reflecting her Eastern origins. Her strong con- nections with Cyprus and with Eastern myth appear in traditions about the Cypriote

220 Myths of Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena

FIGURE 1 Priapus, the garden-god, weighs his phallus against a bag of gold (it seems an even contest!), c. AD 70. Priapus wears a Phrygian cap (Phrygia is home to fertility cults). His association with Dionysus is indi- cated by the wand (thyrsus) to his left, his power over gardens by the bowl of fruit at his feet. (Pompeii, House of the Vettii; Scala/Art Resource, New York)

royal house, best known through Ovid’s story of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, who had become disgusted with the profligate and immoral behavior of Cypriote women. In many respects, the story is a recasting of Hesiod’s story of Pandora, set not in the early days of the world, but now in the age of heroes:

[243] Pygmalion observed these women leading their shameful lives. Horrified by the vices of which nature has planted such plenty 245 in the mind of their sex, he started by living a celibate life, sharing his bed with no one. He presently carved himself a statue with delicate skill, of ivory, pure white, possessing a beauty greater than any mortal woman could ever hope to attain— and promptly conceived a passion for the product of his own hand. 250 The figure was that of a maiden so real you might think it alive [Figure 2 ]. Perhaps she wanted to move, and only decorum restrained her; the skillful sculptor employed his skill in concealing his skill. Pygmalion gazed at his work, his heart inflamed with love for the counterfeit girl he had made. Again and again his hands 255 uncertainly fondled the work—is it ivory, or is it real flesh? At last he persuaded himself that the statue was ivory no longer. Pressing his kisses upon it, he was sure each kiss was returned.

221 Myths of Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena

FIGURE 2 The Capitoline Aphrodite, a Ro- man copy, c. 100 AD, that goes back to a celebrated statue by Praxiteles, fourth century BC, made as the cult statue of Aphrodite for her temple at Cnidus in southwest Asia Minor. Such statues stand behind Ovid’s story. The earliest Greek sculpture, from the eighth century BC , represented males naked, but women were almost always represented clothed. About the original statue (known only from such Roman copies), Aphrodite was said to have asked, “When did Praxiteles see me nude?” The soft, lan- guorous, sensuous style of Praxiteles, with the S-curve of the body, continued to influ- ence sculptural styles for hundreds of years. The nudity of the goddess is explained by her having just arisen from a bath, taken in antiquity by pouring water over the body from a jug, here shown at her side, par- tially draped. The gesture of the left hand, covering the pelvis, is taken from ancient Eastern sculpture. (Museo Capitolino, Rome; author’s photo)

Whispering, he hugged closer—did his fingers sink in the flesh? Has he been so rough that bruises appeared wherever he touched? 260 He kissed the hurt places. He gave her presents girls all adore— sea shells and well-polished stones, little birds in their cages, bouquets of a thousand colors, lilies, bright painted balls, tears of the Heliad nymphs.° He clothed her in elegant dresses, gems sparkled on her fingers, long looping chains on her neck.

263. tears of the Heliad nymphs: Amber. The Heliades were the sisters of Phaëthon, turned into poplar trees with tears of amber as they grieved for their dead brother.

222