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Home , Aphrodite, Athena, Hermes, Judgement of Paris

Copyright of Australia

Copyright Act 1968

The female Olympians

Chris Mackie The FeMale Olympians

The older generation The younger generation

• • • • • • (with her daughter )

Chris Mackie The Olympian Family TRee

IMAGE: http://www.buzzle.com/images/zeus-family-tree.jpg Chris Mackie Aphrodite ()

• Older than and the others by 2 generations • Birth from the genitalia of the sky god conveys her power and her aged authority • of the sexual lives of women outside of marriage Birth of Aphrodite from the sea, (including prostitutes) Ludovisi Throne, Southern Italy?, • The role of women in Greek c. 470-460 BCE. society is fundamentally linked http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/ thumb/8/83/ to their availability in a sexual Ludovisi_throne_Altemps_Inv8570.jpg/320px- Ludovisi_throne_Altemps_Inv8570.jpg sense Chris Mackie Aphrodite

• Aphrodite has a fundamental opposition to Hera and Athena ( of marriage and , see the Judgement of ) • Sexual liaison with , the brother of her husband ( 8). The : From left, Hera, They are both humiliated in Athena, Aphrodite (with ), , Paris. both Homeric poems Attic Red Figure , ca 440 BCE. (compare 5) http://www.theoi.com/image/K4.5Hera.jpg

Chris Mackie Aphrodite

• Greek society is very patriarchal, and so Aphrodite represents something that is confronting and dangerous. • On one reading the is the consequence of Aphrodite’s role in destroying the marriage of and (Judgement of Paris) • gives a different genealogy from . In the Iliad Aphrodite is daughter of Zeus and (the name Dione suggests a kind of female Zeus). Homer is very forceful in his adaptations of when he wants to do so

Chris Mackie Aphrodite

• There is a work called the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite in which Aphrodite seduces , a royal shepherd on , near . • The result of this is that Aphrodite gets pregnant and ultimately gives birth to , the Trojan (who features fairly prominently in the Iliad) • This is meant to be punishment for Aphrodite for her part in ‘infecting’ gods with , including Zeus • Aeneas survives the Trojan war, and in the Roman tradition, he guides the Trojans to Italy where they ultimately found the city of Chris Mackie Aphrodite

• So by this extended myth, the Romans can claim to be linked to the Troy of Homer. Everybody in antiquity wants a bit of Homer and Troy. • even claimed to have Venus (Aphrodite) as his original ancestor (which in turn links him to Zeus) • A half brother to Aeneas is Eros/

Chris Mackie Hera ()

• Wife and sister of Zeus • Swallowed by Cronos with her brothers and sisters (except Zeus) • Zeus’s ‘main wife’ • Goddess of marriage and the lives of women within it. • In the tradition of very powerful Hera, tricked into suckling the fertility goddesses like infant . Apulian Red Figure and Attributed to the Suckling Painter, ca 360 - 350 BCE. • Often the ‘nagging wife’ (Iliad) http://www.theoi.com/image/K4.11Hera.jpg Chris Mackie Hera

• Zeus is a philanderer who chases most females whom he sees for sex. As the sky god, Zeus usually impregnates these women (or goddesses). At the psychological level this makes live very difficult for Hera • She often responds by persecuting the girl or even the child of the ‘marriage’ (such as , whose name means ‘glory of Hera’) • is one tragic case of a girl who is turned into a cow and persecuted for a very long time Chris Mackie Hera

• In the Judgement of Paris she offers Paris kingly power, which he rejects in favour of Helen • She has a fierce hatred of Troy, and in the Iliad she can’t wait for it to be destroyed. • This hatred spills over into Roman myth, where, as Juno, she tries (and fails) to prevent the Trojans from establishing the new city. • She is actually associated with Carthage in some ways, the great enemy of Rome

Chris Mackie Hestia ()

• Sister of Hera and Demeter. Born ‘twice’ with her brothers and sisters. • There is virtually no mythology about her. • She is a virgin goddess (cf. Vestal Virgins at Rome) associated with the hearth of the house. • The house is a sacred space in ancient thought • Her virginity and the hearth are fundamentally connected because the hearth contains the phallic force of fire and is the place where the young girls spend their time (so says in Greek Religion)

Chris Mackie Demeter (Ceres)

• Demeter is born like the others twice • Her name contains the word ‘meter’=‘mother’ • Very little mythology. • Almost entirely associated with her role as mother to Persephone, the daughter that

Persephone and Demeter, Attic she has by Zeus Red Figure (White ground) Lekythos, ca 450 - 425 BCE. Chris Mackie http://www.theoi.com/image/K3.2Demeter.jpg Demeter and Persephone

• In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter Zeus accedes to a request from to take Persephone as his wife • As she is plucking a flower the earth opens and Hades emerges on his , grabs the girl and takes her to the to be his wife • Demeter’s menis (wrath, anger)

The Return of Persephone, by includes a famine above the earth (1891). http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ • The gods need mortals commons/thumb/f/f5/FredericLeighton- TheReturnofPerspephone%281891%29.jpg/ Chris Mackie 435px-FredericLeighton- TheReturnofPerspephone%281891%29.jpg

Demeter

• Zeus is brought to heel and has to negotiate a solution. He sends Hermes down to Hades to bring the girl back. • But she has eaten a pomegranite seed which means that she has to stay part of the year under the earth with Hades • The whole story reveals the power of Demeter and the other goddesses in Zeus’s violent and arrogant treatment of his daughter, whom he effectively abandons Chris Mackie What is the Demeter hymn saying?

• It is connected with the cycles of nature and the growing of grain, the spring and the autumn (‘fall’). There is death in life and life in death. They are not mutually exclusive or unconnected • Establishes the (a historical religion based at ) which seems to have made death less frightening • Persephone’s presence makes the Underworld less ‘masculine’ and less forbidding. There is a new element of the feminine, a new of compassion. • It is also a mythological rite of passage (ie the bride experiences a violent rupture from the world of women to the world of men). The rites of passage are usually associated (mythologically) with death to the previous phase of life. Persephone (literally) ‘marries death’

Chris Mackie Athena ( )

• Zeus decides to eat the pregnant goddess after learning that she will bear a child greater than the father • Eating Metis signifies the taking of into himself. This distinguishes his act from (say) the eating by Cronos of his children. • When the time comes Athena is born from Zeus’s head. What does this signify? Athena is born from the head of Zeus. Hephaistos (right) acts as midwife. Black Figure kylix, 550-520 BCE. ARTSTOR Slide Library. Chris Mackie Athena

• Virgin goddess, who can, therefore, move in the male sphere of warfare as an equal (or a superior) of Ares. Victory () • War, strategy, heroism. The ‘noble’ side of war. The in the Iliad and Odyssey • Connected to heroic triumph (cf. Being Disgorged by in Iliad 22) the Guarding the , and Athena. • Cunning intelligence, wisdom (esp. ). Hates . Attic red figure kylix by , c.480-470 BCE. Chris Mackie ARTSTOR Digital Library. Athena

Also the goddess of: • Craft and weaving (an idealised female virtue, as with and ). Cf • Ships and shipbuilding • The controlling force that harnesses the energy of nature (eg. the bit in the horse’s mouth) • Cities (like ). Athena is a ‘culture god’. • She is actually a god worshipped at Troy, but she helps in the destruction of the place (Judgement of Paris, where she offers victory in war as a bribe)

Chris Mackie Athena and Ares ()

Athena Ares Goddess of the God of the nasty, ‘noble’ side of war, brutal side of war, the strategy, the the blood and the heroism and guts. courage, the Reviled and victory. A revered humiliated in both goddess in Homer Homeric poems.

Chris Mackie Artemis ()

• Daughter of and Zeus. The twin of . She is born first and then helps with her brother’s birth as midwife • Virgin goddess • Associated with girls at the age of puberty and the transition rites into womnhood • Archer and huntress () Artemis draws her bow as Actaeon is torn apart by his hounds. Attic • Supporter of Troy, but not Red Figure bell krater, the Painter, ca 470 BCE. much use in battle (Iliad) http://www.theoi.com/image/K6.1BArtemis.jpg Chris Mackie ARtemis

• Artemis doesn’t have a particularly extensive mythology • She often works in tandem with her brother, including the killing of the children of who boasted that was a better mother than Leto

Apollo and Artemis slay the children of Niobe. Cw. Homer, Iliad 24.602-617. Attic Red Figure calyx Krater, Niobid Painter, c. 475 - 425 BCE. Chris Mackie http://www.theoi.com/image/K5.4Apollon.jpg

Conclusions

• Aphrodite is two generations older than Hera, Demeter and Hestia, who are in turn older than Athena and Artemis • Aphrodite has her ‘wings clipped’ in the Greek sources because of the threat that she represents to patriarchal order. • Notice the part that the sexual lives of divinities play (virginity, married sexual life, promiscuity) • This is linked to their spatial roles (the bedroom, the weaving room, the woods, the fields etc.)

Chris Mackie