#facts about greek mythology

[daancienttime]

Greek Mythology

Myths in Greek culture served multiple purposes, explaining natural phenomena, origins of the world, and the relationship between gods and mortals. They also explored moral and philosophical concepts, reflecting the complexities of human nature and the consequences of pride and hubris.

[liquidstar]

Yes, Greece still exists, we didn't all die 2000 years ago. Yes, people speak Greek. You people are so fucking stupid for real. So many of you claim to love ancient shit but can't even acknowledge the actual living culture of the people whose mythology and classics you romanticize. You keep leaving annoying comments about how you just forget Greek people still exist, thinking you're being quirky because you love ancient stuff soooo much that you forgot about the people it came from. You think about it so little you don't even realize that an actual Greek person has to read this shit, making it clear how little you actually care about the culture beyond the romanticized (and westernized) mythology. Don't claim you love Greece, don't use our mythology anymore if you can't acknowledge that we're still around without making it about how little you think about us. It's mind boggling that you'd think a Greek person would read this and think you're anything but obnoxious. Explode.

[starlitvick]

Antimachus core

[gingermintpepper]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.

I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.

Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.

What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.

Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.

And that, while beautiful, is also tragic.

[bugwolfsstuff]

I really wish we knew more about Laufey in Norse myth

Because like

HOW DOES SHE FEEL ABOUT WHATS HAPPENING TO HER SON? WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Like does she mourn him for what has been done? Scorn and pretend he doesnt exist because of what he will do?

WHAT DOES SHE FEEL?

The fact that Loki uses her name instead of Farbauti's interests the fuck out of me

[m0rninglatte]

Take the art frames and do with it as you please

[Clarifications and lil fun bits:

- Fables background starts in a more lime green hue and then switches to a duller greyed out gold to symbolise his end - I've done this before in my Ozymandias art but in a much brighter dull gold hue

- Fables beginning one starts with a green background and a gold figure to show the change in his murals and then the end one has him ending in all duller greyed out hues to once again to show his end

- Fables' background loses the inner squares, but the inner corner ones become cracked

- Icarus' trident on their jacket and shoes has been switched out to a 'Q'

- The white and grey color bits on Icarus head is not an eye it's the 'Q' symbol and the mantel

- Icarus' figure colors r their auras, and I put them in the order that they are to show their new temporary position as 'Quixis'

- The explosion looking thing on Icarus back is their wing shattering scar]

[sarnai4]

Athena: Heracles, want to mess with our brother?😈

Heracles: Oh my gosh, YES😆. Let's go!

(The next day)

Ares: (In the middle of a fight with Heracles. Punches and nothing happens) What the😶

Heracles (trying to not laugh): Something wrong, Bro?

Ares: No! Just thought that...nevermind. (Punches again. Same thing happens) What is going on🤬?!

Heracles: (Stabs and it lands)😄

Ares: (Yells curses in an unknown language)

(Heracles winks at Athena who is chuckling while behind a tree)

[sarafangirlart]

Even if Agamemnon didn’t rape Cassandra, he still killed her friends and family (or helped kill her friends and family) and destroyed her home.

[captainyaps]

How am I going to write essays on Odysseus when Tumblr won’t let me forget his wet cat allegations

[redglassbird]

All my haters become stone satyrs when they see me cast snakes of success

[just-an-enby-lemon]

If you are an "Odysseus deserves to be crying every day in Calypsos island for seven years." fuck you. No he didn't. Yes, Odysseus is a fucked up guy. No he didn't deserve that. Even if he wasn't my babygirl, pet liar, he would not have deserved that. I wouldn't have said that even to Theseus and I hate that bitch so fucking much. No one, no one, deserves to be a victim!

[pelideswhore]

i found odysseus’ and telemachus’ dogs’ breeds. i am literally a genius. the descriptions fit and everything and THEYRE ORIGINALLY GREEK

[finisnihil]

I feel like one of the reasons "feminist" Greek mythos retellings suffer so much from being made into modern retellings is because these stories were originally kinda feminist for the times they originated from. Making these already woman-based stories feminist by modern standards only make them reductive.

Authors make some of the men involved worse than they were (Perseus, Odysseus, Ares, Apollo) and will often use the female characters to bash on other female characters (Penelope and Helen, Persephone and Demeter, etc).

You also have to take into account who wrote down these stories. If this version of it is from actual Greek records/can be corroborated by other sources or if it's just from Ovid's versions, who retold these stories from a Roman perspective and with intention to depict certain aspects a certain way because he had bias against authority. Sure, his versions fleshed out the female characters more, such as Medusa and Arachne, but was it truly out of care for the women in the stories or just to use them for his personal desire to villainize the gods and those in power? Ovid's Medusa doesn't feel anymore feminist than the original because I don't think he actually cared about the character as a woman in pain but as another knife to stab into Athena and Poseidon.

How are some modern retellings any different? Margaret Atwood uses Penelope of Ithica to beat down Helen of Troy more than anything. Lore Olympus makes Persephone a sword for her mother to fall on. How are these authors any different than Ovid?

Finally, why do the more evil female characters have to be justified? There is the aspect that if a woman is not adhering to the cultural expectation she is to be made evil, but women like that do exist. Women like Medea exist. Women like Calypso exist. Women like the goddesses exist. Why do these retellings insist on making women morally upright and entirely justified to validate being "feminist"? Doesn't it just insist on a requirement to meet a different cultural standard for how a woman should act to be considered valid?

Is your retelling truly feminist if it justifies its existence by pretending the original wasn't?

[gingermintpepper]

As usual I read your tags always and so you said Apollo did not ask for resurrection of Asclepius and Hyacinthus so i just wanted to share this. About Asclepius death I read it on theoi.com, that earlier authors don't make him resurrect as a god but that's a later development mentioned only by Roman authors like Cicero, Hyginus and Ovid. But still Apollo has a role in Ovid's version

Ovid, Fasti 6. 735 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : Clymenus [Haides] and Clotho resent the threads of life respun and death's royal rights diminished. Jove [Zeus] feared the precedent and aimed his thunderbolt at the man who employed excessive art. Phoebus [Apollon], you whined. He is a god; smile at your father, who, for your sake, undoes his prohibitions [i.e. when he obtains immortality for Asklepios].

So here it is actually because of Apollo the decision was taken to resurrect him as god. And with Hyacinthus, I don't think I've read about Artemis playing the primary role. I know in Sparta there was a picture of Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite carrying Hyacinthus and his sister to heaven.

This is not on theoi.com but I saw on Tumblr it's from Dionysiaca by Nonnus

Second, my lord Oiagros wove a winding lay, as the father of Orpheus who has the Muse his boon companion. Only a couple of verses he sang, a ditty of Phoibos, clearspoken in few words after some Amyclaian style: Apollo brought to life again his longhaired Hyacinthos: Staphylos will be made to live for aye by Dionysos.

So since he is singing inspired by amyclean stories it probably means in that place it was believed Apollo was the one to bring back his lover to life.

Apollo as god of order was very important so i think it shows how special these people (and admetus too) were to him that he decided to go against the order for them 🥺

ANON!! Shakes you like a bottle of ramune!! BELOVED ANON!!!!! I'm littering your face with kisses, I'm anointing you with olive oil and honey - you absolutely made my night with this because, not only did I get the pure serotonin shot of having someone interact with my tags (yippee, wahoo!!) I also got to have that wonderful feeling of "oh wow, have I misunderstood something that was integral to my understanding of this myth/figure this whole time or is this a case of interpretational differences?" which is imo vital for my aims and interests as someone who enjoys mythological content and literature.

I'll preface my response with this: Hyacinthus is by far the hardest of these to get accounts for because his revival itself, as you very astutely point out, is generally accounted for in painting/ritual format which muddies the waters on who interceded for what. I wasn't actually familiar with that passage from the Argonautica - and certainly didn't remember it so thank you very much for bringing it to my attention!

That said, what I've come to understand, both about Hyacinthus and about Asclepius is that in the accounts of their deaths, Apollo's position is startlingly clear.

For Hyacinthus, it is established time and again that Apollo would have sacrificed everything for him - his status, his power, his very own immortality and divinity. Ovid writes that Apollo would have installed him as a god if only he had the time:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses. Book X. trans. Johnston)

Many other writers too speak of how Apollo abandoned his lyre and his seat at Delphi to spend his days with Hyacinthus, but they also all agree that when it came to his death - he was powerless. Ovid gives that graphic account of Apollo's desperation as he tries all his healing arts to save him to no avail:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book X. Apollo me boy, methinks him dead. trans Johnston)

Bion, in one of his fragments, writes that Apollo was "dumb" upon seeing Hyacinthus' agony:

(Bion, The Bucolic Poets. Fragment XI. trans Edmonds)

Even Nonnus in the Dionysiaca speaks constantly of Apollo's helplessness in the face of Hyacinthus' fate where he writes that the god still shivers if a westward wind blows upon an iris:

and when Zephyros breathed through the flowery garden, Apollo turned a quick eye upon his young darling, his yearning never satisfied; if he saw the plant beaten by the breezes, he remembered the quoit, and trembled for fear the wind, so jealous once about the boy, might hate him even in a leaf...

(Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 3. trans Rouse)

And the point here is just that - Apollo, at least as far as I've read, cannot avert someone's death. He simply can't. Once they're already dead - once Fate has cut their string - all Apollo's power is gone and he can do nothing no matter how much he wants to. And this is, as far as I know, supported with the accounts of Asclepius as well!

Since you specifically brought up Ovid's account, I'll also stick only to Ovid's account but in Metamorphoses when we get Ovid's version of Coronis' demise, he writes that Apollo intensely and immediately regrets slaughtering Coronis. He regrets it so intensely that he, like he does with Hyacinthus, does his best to resuscitate her:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo's regret)

And like Hyacinthus, when it becomes clear that what has happened cannot be undone, Apollo wails:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo wept.)

Unlike his mother, Asclepius in her womb had not yet died and so, with the last of Apollo's strength, he does manage, at least, to save him.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo puts the 'tearing out' in Asclepius.)

But it goes further than even that because Ocyrhoe, Chiron's daughter, a prophetess who unduly gained the ability to directly proclaim the secrets of the Fates, upon seeing the baby Asclepius, immediately prophesies his glory, his inevitable death and then his fated ascension:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book Two. Ocyrhoe's prophecy. trans Johnston)

Before she too succumbs to her hubris and is transformed by the Fates into a horse so she can no longer speak secrets that aren't hers to share.

These things ultimately are important because it establishes two very important things: 1) Apollo can't do anything in the face of the ultimate Fate of mortals, which is, of course, death and 2) even when Apollo is Actively Devastated, regretful, yearning, mournful, guilty or some unholy combination of all of the above, when someone is dead, he accepts that they are gone. Even if he is devastated by it, even if he'll cry all the rest of his days about it - if they're dead? Apollo lets them go. In Fasti, when Zeus brings Asclepius back, he does not say Apollo asked him to - Zeus, or well, in this case Jove, brings Asclepius back because he wants Apollo to stop being mad at him.

(Ovid, Fasti VI. Apollo please come home your father misses you. trans. A.S Kline)

Even Boyle's translation which you used above in your findings hints that Zeus made Asclepius a god because he wanted Apollo to stop grieving. (i.e 'smile at your father', 'for your sake [he] undoes his prohibitions')

And like, Apollo was deeply upset by Asclepius' death - apart from killing the Cyclops in anger, in book 4 of the Argonautica, Apollonius writes that the Celts believe the stream of Eridanus to be the tears Apollo shed over the death of Asclepius when he left for Hyperborea after being chastised by Zeus for killing his Cyclops:

But the Celts have attached this story to them, that these are the tears of Leto's son, Apollo, that are borne along by the eddies, the countless tears that he shed aforetime when he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans and left shining heaven at the chiding of his father, being in wrath concerning his son whom divine Coronis bare in bright Lacereia at the mouth of Amyrus.

It all paints a very clear picture to me. Apollo did not ask for either of them to be brought back. Though bringing them back certainly pleased and delighted him, they are actions of other gods who are moved by Apollo's grief and mourning and seek to mollify him. Him not asking doesn't mean he didn't want them back which I think is a very important distinction by the by, but it simply means that Apollo knows the natural order of things and, even if it hurts, he isn't going to press his luck about it.

Which, of course, brings us to Admetus. And I'm really not going to overcomplicate this, Admetus is different because, very vitally, Admetus is not dead. Apollo can't do a thing once Fate has been carried out and Death has claimed a mortal but you know what he absolutely can do? Bargain like hell with the Fates before that point of inevitability. And that's what he does, ultimately for Admetus and Alcestis. He sought to prolong Admetus' life, not revive him from death or absolve him from death altogether and even after getting the Fates drunk, he's still only able to organise a sacrifice - a life for a life - something completely contingent on whether some other mortal would be willing to die in Admetus' place and not at all controllable by Apollo's own power.

All of these things, I think come back to that point you made - that Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore these people are very special to him if it means he's willing to go against that order but, I also wish to challenge that opinion if you'd let me. Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore, I would argue, that it is even more important that it is shown that he does not break the divine order, especially for the people that mean the most to him. The original context of my comments which started this conversation were on this lovely, lovely post by @hyacinthusmemorial which contemplated upon Asclepius from the perspective of an Emergency Medical personnel and included, in their tags, the very poignant lines "there's something about Apollo letting go when Asclepius couldn't that eats my heart away" and "you do what you can, you do your best, but you don't ever reach too far" and I think that's perfectly embodied with the Apollo-Asclepius dichotomy. Apollo grieves. He wails, he cries, he does his best each and every time to save that which is precious to him but he does not curse their nature, he does not resent that they are human and ultimately, he accepts that that which is mortal must inevitably die. There is nothing that so saliently proves that those who uphold rules are also their most staunch followers - if Apollo wants to delight in his place as Fate's mouthpiece, he cannot undo Fate. And, if even the god of healing and order himself cannot undo death, what right does Asclepius, mortal as he is, talented as he is, have to disrespect it?

The beauty of these stories isn't that Apollo loved them enough to bring them back. The beauty is that Apollo loved them enough to let them go.

[nikoisme]

Hey y'all ever think about the fact that Scamandrius is a baby during The Iliad? Meaning that he was born during the war?? And what if Hector fought so he could give his baby son a safe world to live in??

[jules-ln]

Listen, not liking the song of Achilles it's ok, but acting like Patroclus would be weak/worse if he was feminine, that's a whole separate thing.

There's nothing wrong with Patroclus being feminine. Stop acting like a man being feminine suddenly means that he is weak.

Patroclus has been characterized as the feminine/innocent one long before TSoA (Troilus and Cressida, Troy 2004) because his main characteristic is being kind and kindness is commonly associated with femininity and/or naiveness (at least in a more modern society).

(Also, I just wanted to say that kindness is also associated with boyhood because boys are "less man" and that's why I think Troy (2004) portrayed him as the younger one, to avoid portraying him as feminine while still not making him a "man man". Because we all know that is illegal for men to be kind)