Transcript Chapter Eight, Lecture One

Chapter Eight, Lecture One
Female Olympians
The Female Olympians
• Mostly reducible to some aspect of
fertility
• Greek myth told by and for Greek males
• With the exception of Aphrodite and
Athena, they never do very much
Demeter
• “Wheat” mother?
• Connection with foundation myth of the
Eleusinian Mysteries
Hestia
• Goddess of the house
• Few stories (she’s
inside all the time)
• No love affairs
• Had suitors briefly:
Apollo and Poseidon
• Given honor instead
of marriage
Aphrodite
Aphrodite
• Goddess of sexuality
• Her lineage
– As Aphrodite
– Zeus and Dione
• Connections with Eastern deities
– Istarte, Ishtar, Inanna
Aphrodite
• One of her epithets is “Cytherea”
• Where she came ashore as the “foam” goddess.
• The story of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus King of
Cyprus
• Disgusted by the profligate women of Cyprus
• Aphrodite gives his statue (Galatea?) life
• Their son is Paphos, name for a city sacred to
Aphrodite
Cinyras and Myrrha
Paphos
Eponymous hero of the capital of Cyprus
Cinyras
Myrrha
Aphrodite
• Cinyras’s wife boasts that Myrrha is more
beautiful than Aphrodite herself.
• Aphrodite inflicts Myrrha with a passion
for her father, Cinyras.
• Cinyras lured into sex with her
• Chases her until she turns into the myrrh
tree
Aphrodite
• Her tears are myrrh resin, burned on
Aphrodite’s altar – an etiological myth
• From the myrrh tree, Adonis is born
• Semitic name: “lord,” cf. Adonai, another
name for YHWH in the Old Testament
Aphrodite
• Children by various male deities or
associated powers
Aphrodite
• Eros
– Original being or son of Aphrodite and Ares,
Hermes, or Zeus
– Not originally the Roman cupid, but ideal male
beauty
Aphrodite
• Priapus
– Aphrodite and Dionysus or Hermes
– Asian garden deity
– “priapism”
Aphrodite
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Anchises
Prince of Troy
Aphrodite “punished” by Zeus
Made to fall in love with a mortal man
“Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite”
His “reward” will be to have a famous
son, Aeneas
Aphrodite
• But he reveals the secret – that Aphrodite
is Aeneas’s mother – and Zeus strikes
him with a thunderbolt
• After that, he is lame
• Aeneas goes on to become the
legendary founder of the Roman people
after his escape from Troy.
Next Lecture
Artemis
Athena