#ancient greek monsters
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
mask131 · 9 months ago
Text
Greek monster myths (1)
Various mini-articles loosely translated from the French « Dictionary of Feminine Myths », under the direction of Pierre Brunel. (You could also translate the title as “Dictionary of Female Myths” – the idea being all the myths centered around women)
Tumblr media
Article 1: Gorgô
[Note: this mini-article is distinct from the mini-article about “Gorgons”]
The appearance of Gorgô, at the end of the eleventh chant of the Odyssey, is meant to cause fright – not just to Odysseus himself who is just done with invoking the dead, but also to the audience hearing this rhapsody (the Phaeacians listening to Odysseus’ tale), and to the very listener of the Homeric poem. Gorgô forms the dominant peak of this “evocation of the dead” (nekuia), she is the “chlôron déos”, the “green fear”. Odysseus’ mother, Anticleia, just disappeared back again nto the Hades – the hero wishes to summon other shades, such as those of Theseus and of his former companion Pirithous, “but before them, here is that with hellish cries the uncountable tribes of the dead gathered”. And Odysseus adds: “I felt myself becoming green with fear at the thought that, from the depths of the Hades, the noble Persephone might sent us the head of Gorgô, this terrible monster…” (633-635). It is barely an apparition, it is the possibility of an appearance, but it is enough to terrorize the living.
Jean-Pierre Vernant, in his work “La Mort dans les yeux” (Death in the eyes), establishes the link which ties together Gorgô and Medusa. Because Gorgô is more than a singular unification of the three Gorgons: she is a superlative form of Medusa, she is what happens when her petrifying gaze survives beyond death. By studying the depictions of Gorgô in ancient statues, Vernant establishes two fundamental traits: the faciality, and the monstrosity. He explains that “interferences” take place “between the human and the bestial, associated and mixed in diverse ways”. Maybe Gorgô is, as Vernant suggests, “the dark face, the sinister reverse of the Great Goddess, of which Artemis will most notably be the heir”. But Gorgô is also placed in the function of watchful guardian of the world of the dead, a world forbidden to the living. The mask of Gorgô expresses the radical alterity of Death and the dead.
Tumblr media
Article 2: The Graeae
Daughters of Keto and Phorkys (they are thus also called “The Phorcydes”), sisters of the Gorgons, these divinities of shadows, which were born as elderly women and doomed to share one eye and one tooth for all three, appear exclusively in the tale of Perseus and Medusa.
The most ancient mention of the Graeae comes from Hesiod’s Theogony, which only counts two of them and names them Pemphredo and Enyo (Enyo was also the name of a goddess of war within Homer’s Iliad). The third of the sisters appears within a fragment of the Athenian logographer Pherecyde: Deino (“The Dreadful”), later called Persis by Hyginus (in his “Preface to fables”). Other authors, like Ovid, prefer to stick with two Graeae. Hesiod makes a quite flattering portrait of them: he makes them elegant goddesses with a “beautiful face”, even though they were ���white-haired (understand “having white hair due to old age”) since birth”. And while their very name means “old women”, the Antique iconography actually follows the Hesiodic model: the depictions of the sisters as disfigured by the effects of time are quite rare… At most the artists will just put a few wrinkles. These mysterious hybrids between youth and old age, virginal seduction and sinister ugliness, finds an echo within a few lines from Aeschylus “Prometheus bound”: “Three ancient maidens, with swan bodies, that share a single eye and a single tooth, and who never receive a look from the shinng sun or the crescent of the night.” Aeschylus had an entire tragedy written about them (Phorcydes) which was unfortunately lost – but Aristotle wrote about it in his “Poetics” and implies that the play insisted on their monstrous aspect, placing them within the legendary area known as “the gorgonian fields of Kisthene”, and closely associating them with their sisters, of which they form a reversed image. Indeed, the Gorgons have a very powerful eyesight which no mortal being can face, while the Graeae have an extreme form of blindness. This trinity of women, old by nature, can also be understood as the antithesis of the three Charites, the Graces which embodied eternal youth.
The Graeae seems to have only a role within the myth of Perseus. And, outside of a few details, this legend does not change much from Pherecyde to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, passing by Lycophron, Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca, and Hyginus’ Astronomy. In all those versions the Graeae are the jealous keeper of the secret path that leads to the Gorgons, and Perseus must steal their eye in order to obtain the knowledge needed to reach Medusa. However, Pherecyde did change an element: according to him the Graeae do not protect the path leading to the Gorgons, but rather the path leading to the nymphs that hold the magical items Perseus needs to fight Medusa.
Due to their limited presence in Greek mythology, the Graeae have quite a poor cultural posterity. In the 19th century Goethe will remember them: in his “Second Faust”, Mephistopheles appears under the guise of “Phorkyas”, a monster with only one eye and one tooth. In the world of paintings, Edward Burne-Jones, who created a true “Perseus cycle”, had a strong interest for them: he worked for a very long time on a painting of the Graeae. Their face is barely visible, but the cloth that wraps itself around their body is menacing ; they are within an arid desert, under a dark sky heavy with clouds – they perform a sinister dance, in a mockery of the Graces. Perseus comes to steal their eyes, and the grey color that invades all the nuances of the picture symbolizes the unique presence of those strange crones, both disquieting and pitiable.
Tumblr media
Article 3: Echidna
Echidna, “the viper”, is according to Hesiod the daughter of Phorkys and Keto, themselves born of Pontos, the Sea, and Gaia, the Earth. Echidna’s sisters are female monsters like her: the Graeae, and the Gorgons. Hesiod describes her as having half of the body of a “fair-cheeked nymph”, while the rest of her body is the one of an enormous, big, cruel, spotted and terrible snake which “lies within the secret depths of the divine earth”. Echidna as such belongs to this large mythological family of snake-women, of which the most famous case in France is the fairy Mélusine. But unlike Mélusine, Echidna can never leave the snake-half of her body, and thus a better French heir would be Marcel Aymé’s depiction of the vouivre with her cohort of vipers.
Theodore de Banville, when he imagines Hesiod scolding him for sanitizing Classical mythology, makes of Echidna the symbol of the archaic mythology: he tells him that he is “making a toy out of the history of the gods” by depicting Love as “a sweet child, free of carnivorous appetites, ignored by the Furies and by bloody Echidna”.
Echidna precisely appears as a being led by an amorous desire within Herodotus’ tales, that he claims to have collected among the Greeks of Pontus Euxinus: as Herakles was sleeping, Echidna steals his horses away. She only agrees to give them back if he sleeps with her. When Herakles leaves her, she tells him that she will bear three sons from their union. He advises them to only keep with her one that would be able to bend a bow just like him, and to force the others to leave. She does that, and this favorite son is supposed to be the one that created the Scythian people. This meeting between Herakles and Echidna might be derived from the famous encounters between Herakles and three of Echidna’s other children: the Nemean Lion, the Hydra of Lerna, and Cerberus.
In Aeschylus, Orestes compares his mother, Clytemnestra, to “a horrible viper”. Sophocles has Creon call Ismene, which he believes to have helped Antigone, “a viper that slid in my house against my will to drink my blood”. These examples show a link between the Ancient metaphorical speech, and the mythological allusions. Indeed, only the context can allow us to determine if these authors meant “viper” as a common name, or as a proper name: as “Viper”, “Echidna”. But it confirms the idea that, in Ancient Greece, Echidna is a monster born of an archaic fear of the women, and embodying their supposed perfidy.
85 notes · View notes
pink-noah · 21 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
Sketch of Poseidon and Charybdis
while I finish coloring other things
4K notes · View notes
illustratus · 9 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Andromeda by Arthur Rackham
3K notes · View notes
allseeingmurph · 5 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Ariadne, the Minotaur, and Phaedra—probably didn’t have the best sibling relationship, all things considered.
730 notes · View notes
sarafangirlart · 3 months ago
Text
“Even if Perseus only killed Medusa to save Danaë he still values the life of one woman over another” fucking yes??? That’s his mom??? And Medusa is not only a monster but a stranger??? Danaë sacrificed so much and been through hell and if Perseus wasn’t willing to conquer the world for her there’d be something wrong with him.
484 notes · View notes
champion-of-love · 8 months ago
Text
Cupid, giving advice to people in Ever After: Awww, it's okay if you chickened out of your confession. It's your choice when to do it, and if you think that the timing wasn't right, then follow your heart. Love is like-
Cupid, giving advice to people in Monster High: Kieran, you gràson. What do you mean you were afraid of Spelldon rejecting your confession? He's been dropping hints that he likes you all year long and Hades-forbid if I see another text from him about being obsessed with your accent in the Greek Freaks groupchat we have, I'm locking you both in a coffin til the next millennia-
858 notes · View notes
chimeride · 10 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Hecatoncheir (artiodactylamorphe), the 240th Known One.
484 notes · View notes
medusaspeach · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media
Classicstober Day 3: Asterion ✨ I did two sketches, so up both of them go.
771 notes · View notes
theoihalioistuff · 7 months ago
Text
"He refers to the sea monster as Triton's dog. [...] When the gods wanted to bind Zeus, he (knowing this from Thetis) honored the other gods, but sent Poseidon and Apollo to serve Laomedon. Laomedon honored Apollo with sacrifices, supposedly as a reward for his service, but he did not honor Poseidon, who had served him and fortified Ilium.
When Poseidon did not receive his due after the appointed time of service, he, being angry with Laomedon, sent a most terrible sea monster which flooded the land by spitting out the sea. Compelled by an oracle, Laomedon dressed his daughter Hesione in royal attire and exposed her to the monster. Herakles, passing by and having been promised immortal horses from Laomedon (which were given to him as a ransom by Zeus for having abducted his brother Ganymede), built a high wall and stood armed by the mouth of the monster. When the monster opened its mouth, he jumped into it all at once. After cutting it up from the inside for three days, he came out, having lost all his hair." ~ Tzetzes ad Lycophron. 34
Interesting to find a version of Apollo and Poseidon's servitude that accounts for Apollo's support of Troy and Poseidon's (usual) opposition. Also the detail of the sea monster being Triton's dog is adorable (and sad) and Herakles coming out hairless is hilarious.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
110 notes · View notes
knoxrobbins · 2 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
With nothing else to lose out on her own with her sisters, Medusa passes the time building marble statues of the things that remind her of when she was once human... however on this day, a boy has wandered into her sanctuary.
A follow up to that Medusa piece I did years ago, it was really fun doing the Anton Bogaty style and felt like exploring it again.
49 notes · View notes
batcavescolony · 5 months ago
Text
I just explained this to someone and I thought I'd make a post for it on here too.
Shrouds in Percy Jackson are like this right?
Tumblr media
But their siblings decorate and make them out of silks with decorative embellishments on them?
The empty ones are burned after a quest to symbolise that the person they were made for came back from a quest ALIVE.
The lack of cemetery at chb shows that when they burn Silena, Charlie, Luke, Lee, Castor, everyone's shrouds, they have their bodies in them. They're being cremated.
60 notes · View notes
b-theshittyhuman · 5 months ago
Text
Holy fucking shit!!
I just realised in all the books in the PJO series Percy goes through the same trials as Greek heroes.
Lightning Theif: Perseus, Percy is named after him for one, he defeates Medusa. I don't know much else about Perseus.
Sea of monsters: Odysseus ofc. They're on a ship, Polyphemous the Cyclops, the sirens, Circe's island
Titans Curse: Heracles. For one he holds up the sky, two the Nemian lion the Percy defeats.
Battle of the labyrinth: Theseus. Labyrinth, King Minos. Honestly this one feels the most obvious.
Last Olympian: I am not sure of, my guess is Achilles due to Percy obtaining his curse, but also the war.
57 notes · View notes
illustratus · 1 month ago
Text
Tumblr media
Theseus and the Minotaur by Edward Burne-Jones
817 notes · View notes
sarafangirlart · 4 months ago
Text
There’s a lot of things I hate about Medusa retellings but the one I hate the most (aside from demonizing Perseus ofc) is where she is isolated and lonely, that’s just adding unnecessary suffering when it’s an infinitely more compelling story if she had Stheno and Euryale with her.
232 notes · View notes
rs-hawk · 2 months ago
Text
How I’m looking rn plotting out the next 11 parts of Nobleman Minotaur and trying to incorporate all of my favorite people from the original Minotaur/Labyrinth myth and trying to see if I can incorporate my Apollo x Icarus obsession into this or if I should just go back to writing their fluff
Tumblr media
25 notes · View notes
champion-of-love · 7 months ago
Text
Cupid, swirling around her sparkly pink drink as she talks: It took me fur-ever to learn all the fairy tales that my classmates had. And I'm sure there's boo-sands more I don't know!
Deuce, sitting on the same table as her and eating ambrosia-dipped treats: At least they only have one ending? That they're trying to break free from, I mean. I still can't wrap my mind around all the possible versions that my story could end up.
Manny, eating a spread of meat, cheese and fruit while occasionally sneaking a treat from Deuce's plate: Why'd your old man even decide to send you there? We're myths, not fairy tales.
Cupid, slamming her hands on the table to dramatize her point: Haven't you guys been listening to me? Like half of their stories end in tragedies. What's more Greek mythology than that?
135 notes · View notes