Transcript Unit01Mod4_5Female Olympians

The Olympians
The Divine Family of Greek and
Roman Myth, part II
Hera (Juno)
•Zeus’s sister, wife, and queen
•Zeus and Hera’s marriage
was portrayed as rocky and
contentious in myth
•In cult and art it represented
the ultimate divine marriage
as a model for humans.
•Hera was a beautiful,
desirable bride, Zeus a manly,
welcoming husband.
•Often wearing a crown
•Portrayed as bitter and
angry
Demeter (Ceres),
Persephone (Proserpina),
and Hades
•Demeter, goddess of grain and fertility had
only one daughter, Persephone
•Hades abducted her and brought her to the
underworld, where she ate six pomagranate
seeds
•Demeter was devasted that she could not find
her daughter and would not allow the crops to
grow
•She finally found Persephone in the
underworld and tried to take her back to
Olympus
•Hades fought this decision
•Zeus decided that since Persephone had eaten
six pomegranate seeds, she must stay in the
underworld for six months of the year
•The six months she is in the underworld
represent winter, the six on Olympus represent
summer
Hestia (Vesta)
•She gave up her
position as an
Olympian. But she
was important in
each home, and in
Rome (as Vesta)
had a crucial civic
cult. These are
Vestal Virgins with
the chief priest.
The first-born of the gods, she is the goddess of
the hearth, the center of family life. She is
represented by an eternal flame.
Athena (Minerva)
• Zeus had a terrible head-ache
and convinced Hephaestus to
crack open his head
•
Athena sprang from the head
of Zeus, fully grown and in
battle armor
•
Athena is the virgin goddess of
wisdom and war and
sometimes Justice
•
She can easily be identified by
her armor, the owl, and the
“aegis.”
Artemis (Diana)
•Artemis, the huntress,
remained forever a virgin,
roaming the wilderness, a
liminal and often
threatening, vengeful
figure
•Yet another aspect of this
goddess was to promote
the fertility of animals, aid
in childbirth, and oversee
the transition of virgins
into brides
•She protected the
nymphs, playful female
deities who lived in the
woods
•She can be easily
recognized by her hunting
outfit and bow
Aphrodite (Venus)
•
Aphrodite was the goddess of love, symbolizing intoxicating sexuality and
beauty.
•
In myth she is often portrayed as a willful “girly-girl,” but she is elsewhere
portrayed as a powerful, personally-accessible goddess.
•
One story of her birth is that after Zeus castrated his father Cronos and
tossed the remains into the sea, Aphrodite arose out of the foamy waves.
Iris - The Rainbow Goddess
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Female equivalent of Hermes
Messenger with golden wings
Traveled on the rainbow
Most prominent in Homer’s Iliad, the story of the Trojan war
In this painting she is telling King Priam to flee the city of Troy