#homeric tradition

[mask131]

I just thought of bringing back some of the Homeric versus Hesiodic differences, after a chat I had with @themousefromfantasyland . This is not exhaustive but just a few points you can bring up in discussions.

Hesiodic Aphrodite: born from Ouranos' cut-off family jewels thrown into the sea (most popular version today). Homeric Aphrodite: a more "regular" Olympian born of Zeus and Dione (poor Dione goes from prominent Homeric character to secondary Hesiodic character).

Hesiodic Eris: One of the children of Nyx the Night, born in primordial times and part of a whole host of personifications of the afflictions of humanity. Homeric Eris: Part of the Olympian family, sister of Ares, daughter of Zeus and Hera.

Hesiodic Hyperion: Definitively different from his son Helios, not the same dude. Homeric Hyperion: almost always an alternate name for Helios (except maybe for one instance...)

Hesiodic Oceanos and Tethys: just part of the regular host of Titans. Homeric Oceanos and Tethys: primordial entities considered father and mother of all the gods, and very likely creation gods that predated or equaled Gaia and Ouranos.

Hesiodic Moirai: the three spinsters we know today, a trio of specific goddesses dealing with lifespan of mortals and the greater fate to which all the gods must abide (though the Hesiodic tradition offers two different lineages for them, either Zeus' children and thus part of the Olympian family, either daughters of Night and thus primordial forces like Eris). Homeric Moirai: do not really exist, as "Moira" (singular) is more of an abstraction/figure of speech than an actual goddess - meanwhile it is Zeus, as king of the gods and master of the universe, who is the "god of fate", in charge of stuff like weighing individual destinities on a scale to check what to do next.

Metis and her legend comes from the Hesiodic tradition. There's no mention of Metis in Homeric tradition: we know Athena was born "without a mother" out of Zeus, but we don't know the how and why. In a reverse, the Hesiodic Hephaistos was born of Hera alone, without a father, while Homer (according to later commentaries and scholia) pushed forward the Zeus+ Hera parentage.

Also... Hesiod doesn't (at least from what I recall) evoke the whole "Aphrodite cheated on Hephaistos" thing? I don't recall seeing him talk about Aphrodite marrying Hephaistos anywhere. The story is present within Homer, but in the Hesiodic tradition, while we do have Aphrodite hooking up with Ares and Hephaistos marrying Aglaia, we don't have anything about a possible adultery that led to this situation... Though for this last point I am not certain, I haven't checked this part in a while.

There's much more, of course - and feel free to add more. But it's already, I think, a good reminder of how the very "basic" texts, the "foundations" of Greek mythology are born of two differing tradition, an "older" one (Homeric) and a more "recent", classical one that dominated in later texts (Hesiod) - meanwhile what we have in "common culture" today is a random mix of the two.

[hlblng]

"Never again, never again shall I look on the light of the sun" - Euripides' Hekabe (transl. Anne Carson)

When the Greeks sail to Troy to retrieve Helen, wife of Menelaos, and lay waste to the city of Troy, the greek army is prevented from sailing on in Aulis. Artemis has been angered and demands a blood sacrifice in exchange for the winds that will carry the ships to the shores of Ilium.

So Agamemnon, chief commander of the army of Hellas, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia at the altar of the goddess. Her death in exchange for eternal glory.

After the sacking of Troy, the remnants of the victorious greek army make ready to sail for home. But Achilles' vengeful ghost halts the winds, demanding proper sacrifice at his grave. Achilles demands blood in exchange for the winds that will carry the ships to the shores of Hellas.

So Odysseus and Agamemnon choose Polyxena, the youngest daughter of Priam and Hekabe, a princess of Troy. Her death in exchange for a homecoming worthy of the victors of Troy.

Though these two events are 10 years apart in the context of the story of the Trojan war, these two girls have always been connected with each other in my head. I imagine them at a similar age, looking similar even. I imagine Agamemnon thinking of Iphigenia as he watches Polyxena bleed out in front of him. Two sides of the same coin.

[smokey07]

Achilles and Briseis doodle

Idk I have no motivation these days

[lyculuscaelus]

Thinking again about the oral tradition nature of epics. Thinking again about the musicality lost over time, leaving only written words in the books and remaining fragments collected by scholars. Thinking again about the performance of epics, if they were sung in a certain scale—if the mode for each book would be different, if the delivery could change how we view certain lines—gosh, to feel all the emotions in the delivery, perhaps different bards having different opinions on how to perform those lines, creating different effects…

Just imagine Homer singing “ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι ἥνδανε νύμφη” in such a grievous tone, all the pain and the unjust in “no longer did the nymph bring any joy to him, either with food or shelter, or with words of comfort—then why was she still keeping him???” Imagine him raising his voice in a comedic tone when singing Odysseus’s Cretan tales, stressing on words like “Thesprotia” “Aeolia”, almost mocking the invalidity of other traditions—“all part of a lie!” Imagine all the emotions he mustered to sing of the death of Patroclus (with all the apostrophae hitting you, gosh), the sorrow of Achilles, the lament of Andromache, the reunion of Odysseus with his family after so many rhapsodies of wandering—the tender moment just between a father and his son, a husband and his wife, a son and his father—imagine the bittersweet tone he used, the tears in his eyes, the passion and softness of whispers he put into these words—all the things, only for the audience of his time to listen, to feel, to remember—till it all becomes just a secret of time.

[lightningthunderstorm]

“ The face that launched a thousand ships”

A doodle of Helen. I’m not trying to be historically accurate here but rather trying to make her as beautiful as I possibly could.

Iliad book 3 kinda made me laugh for how she and Menelaus bullied Paris physically and mentally. Like even when separated they acted as a team.

It’d be funny if her dress low key resembles armor tho. Cuz she’s a Spartan girl. Idk

[laerwenmith]

[specialagentartemis]

The Odyssey stands the test of time as a story because it latches into the deep storytelling desire within us to go “and then some MORE weird random shit happened”

[sandphr0g]

He's been on my mind

(I've been annotating the iliad)

[katerinaaqu]

Remembering this traditional Greek song made me think of Penelope:

Sea,oh sea the seamen, my beloved sea don't strike them with your waves, my beloved sea and bring back my little bird * Rose water, become rose water, my beloved sea and sprinkle their course, my beloved sea my beloved sea you are my love and pain * Sea and salty water I can't forget about you * Sea, oh sea, you have drowned, oh, no oh no the maiden's husband my beloved sea you are my love and pain * And the maiden, and the maiden is young, oh no oh no and black clothes don't suit her, my beloved sea blow my beloved Northwest Wind * Sea, I embark, for you I stay awake at night Sea and salty water I can't forget about you

Now this song probably originated from the Aegean sea, possibly in Kalymnos, an island with tradition of fishing sponges. The men that were doing this job oftentimes left in the summer for a long time traveling often all the way till North Africa. They would freedive often even 50 meters below the surface to catch sponges and their job was expremely difficult and dangerous. Often they died either from nitrogen narcosis effects or attacked by sealife or even dying in sea. Thus the song speaks on a woman singing for the sea to bring back her husband, brother, fiance etc back. The traditional song has many variations to the lyrics depending on the singer, the area etc.

Now the term "little bird" (πουλάκι) is a nickname used in greek to show a tender relationship with someone. It indicates your beloved one; family or lover etc

The term I translate as "my beloved sea" is the nickname of the word "sea" (θάλασσα -> thalassa) which is θαλασσάκι (thalassaki). As a term and nickname it also means "little sea" but is also used tenderly to speak more on something you love so I thought it would be more fitting to say "beloved sea" than "little sea"

Likewise the word μεράκι (meraki) is not translatable exactly. It means something you do from your heart or with love and care. It also means love and care for something. However when spoken more sadly it also means some love that causes you sadness and pain this is why I translated it as "my love and pain" in here.

The song speaks on a woman being young and "black clothes do not suit her" aka it is a pity for a young man to die and a woman wear mourning clothes at young age (plus in small villages it kinda was a tradition for a woman once widowed never to marry again although the tradition is not followed to its totality by every person)

The clips are from an old dramatic movie called "The girl with the black clothes" starring Elli Lambeti and Dimitris Horn

[arttsuka]

I need you to stick with me here but Jedtavius as Patroclus and Achilles

Sorry I’ve been reading The Song of Achilles and it’s getting to me

Oh... so who's who? In my drawing Achilles is Octavius and Patroclus is Jedediah

I basically redrew that one statue (I know it's not both of them but I liked the pose ok? Forgive me). Also I took my chance to draw Jed's funny underpants to lighten up the mood a bit.

Sorry if this doesn't meet your vision :(

That was a weird amalgamation of 2 different photos in an attempt to fix the original (I literally cropped it, fixed some mistakes digitally and then took another picture of a blank paper to use as background. The things I do as a traditional artist). Here's the picture before I fixed the mistakes .

Usually I am more careful and don't make that many mistakes. But also, I work on bigger drawings like this for at least a week, so yeah...

I wanted to draw the iconic red figure pottery art of them but I felt like that would take me way too long :/

[reggiejworkshop]

Inktober 2024 (Days 29 through 31)

Well, we are finally done!

I started off this month with Inktober pretty strong, so I had to do something big for the last days of October even stronger!

Thanks, everyone, for tuning in for these spooky drawings. Happy Halloween, guys!

[mask131]

I already made a post about it before, but since a lot of people are coming around for more Greek mythology content, I thought "Why not take off the dust from old talks?", and thus here is my redo-post about the Homeric vs Hesiodic tradition.

I am summarizing here greatly but... We all know that Homer's epics (The Odyssey and the Iliad), and Hesiod's works (The Theogony, Of Works and Days) form the "basis" of Greek mythology as we know it today, as they are the oldest literary records of Greek mythology we have, and the Ancient Greeks themselves shared the same opinion, even going as far as using them and analyzing them to understand their own religion.

And yet, despite this set of works being considered together as a "whole", Hesiod and Homer actually presented two different visions of the Greek mythology and the Greek pantheon, often contradicting - and many of the "There's thousands versions of a same myth" trend about Greek mythology comes from the fact that these two fundamental set of works were already in conflict.

Why? Long story short it is agreed that Homer was the oldest of the two, and that in his works he reflected an older, more primitive state of the Greek religion and Greek gods. Meanwhile Hesiod, the "youngest", collected a more modern and recent set of beliefs that would become the dominant Greek theology of Ancient Greece. There's a lot of interesting debate and scholarly study about this, but in this post I just want to collect and highlight a few key differences between the "Homeric" and "Hesiodic" traditions, to again remind people that you are not always forced to stick to one version, since already at the beginning of all there were TWO recorded versions, from which many many more different spawned afterward...

KEY DIFFERENCE 1: Everybody knows Hesiod's Theogony, and how from Chaos came Gaia and Ouranos, and from them came the Titans, and then the Olympians. One long genealogy dating back from the Earth and the Sky out of the primordial void... And yet Homer hints heavily at another cosmogony, where Oceanus/Okeanos and Tethys are not actually part of the Titan siblings (as Hesiod claims)... But the origin of all things. The parents of all the gods, and the source of all life, as many divine beings (from Hera to Hypnos) explain repeatedly. The clues scattered throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey point out to the fact the "cosmic couple" might have been originally the water deities of the sea and ocean, before being replaced by the sky-and-earth one ; and this puts under a very different light why the two stayed "neutral" during the conflict, and why Oceanos and Tethys would end up sheltering Hera during Zeus' attack against Kronos...

Key difference 2: Everybody knows the story of Aphrodite being born from Ouranos' sexual organs being cut off by Kronos and thrown into the sea... And yet Homer tells a very different story about Aphrodite being actually a daughter of Zeus. Her mother is a mysterious goddess named Dione - I say mysterious because outside of Homer, and a handful of other things, we know barely anything about her. Most of what we know is that she had an actual worship in the old Greek religion (the grove of Dodona was dedicated to her), and that all analysis and studies point out to her being a female version/counterpart of Zeus. If I recall well, from Homer making her a secondary character in his epics (with a famous scene of her comforting her wounded daughter), Hesiod made her a mere name dropped among the Oceanids.

Key difference 3: In a continuation of the previous difference, Eris, the goddess of discord, also has different parentages in both tradition. According to Homer, Eris was Ares' sister (and thus the daughter of Zeus and Hera) ; Hesiod rather described her as one of the many children of Nyx, the primordial goddess of the night. (In fact, in the Hesiodic tradition Eris took example on her mother and gave birth in turn to many malevolent and destruction personifications ; this was not the case in the Homeric works).

Key difference 4: The story of Hephaestus/Hephaistos being born of Zeus and Hera the... let's say "regular" way comes from the Homeric tradition. Hesiod actually depicts a very different birth-story ; and in quite a twist, most people today remember Homer's genealogy than Hesiod's one. For you see, in Hesiod, Hephaistos was actually conceived by Hera alone, without any male intervention. She had grown jealous of Zeus having a daughter of his own (with Athena coming out of his head). She basically interpreted this as her husband "showing off" and somehow trying to prove he did not need women to have children (I am extrapolating here but that's the core idea) ; so in return Hera decided to have a child all on her own too, and she managed to fall pregnant and have a son with her own power, no Zeus or other god involved... But the result was Hephaistos, ugly and lame.

Key difference 5: Homer placed a lot more focus on Helios than Hesiod. In fact, Helios is so present and so involved in the Homeric epics that he is basically the unofficial "thirteenth Olympian". And, while in Hesiod's Theogony the name "Hyperion" designates one of the Titans born of Gaia and Ouranos, and the father of Helios, Selene and Eos ; in the Homeric epics, instead "Hyperion" is a qualificative/synonym/alternate name of Helios himself, and not at all a distinct entity.

Key difference 6: In Hesiod's cosmogony, the Moirai are a trinity of goddesses, each with their specific name and function - the goddesses we know today. Hesiod even gives two CONTRADICTING birth-stories to explain the origin of the Moirai (if having two conflicting "founding fathers" wasn't enough, we now have a guy who contradicts HIMSELF). Hesiod alternatively describes the Moirai as either daughters of Nyx (and so part of these primordial deities of darkness and doom born somewhere in the mysterious beginnings of time) ; either as daughters of Zeus and Themis (and in this version they explicitely received their powers over fate from Zeus himself).

In Homer, the Moirai are much less defined and personified - in fact, many times - almost all the time - he refers to Fate/Destiny as a singular entity. Not only is the fate goddess singular (except for some parts of his epics that evoke a group of "weavers"), but she is as I said not very personified, not given any attribute, genealogy or description, to the point that... it seems that she was just a poetic metaphor, a rhetorical allegory, a personification more than a goddess. Instead, in the Homeric world it is Zeus that fills the role of the god of fate and destiny - changing fates and weighing destinities on his own ; a far cry from the future image of a Zeus that must bow to the laws of fate.

There are many, many more differences to point out between Homer and Hesiod - but I think those selected fews are enough to show that, even in its "foundations", Greek mythology kept offering alternative and variations ; and that by putting the ancient works back in a correct chronology order, we get fascinating evolutions (Oceanos and Tethys replaced by Gaia and Ouranos ; Zeus losing the paternity of many important goddesses ; Zeus losing his place as a god of fate ; Helios losing importance as time went on, entire deities disappearing such as Dione...)

[hlblng]

"We are the same, you and I"

Commission piece of Scylla, a monster of antiquity that appears in Homer's Odyssey attacking his ship and killing some of his men.

She is described as a monster with the upper body of a woman, six dogheads and twelve dog legs for a lower body and tentacles to grab and kill with.

There is a version in Ovid's Metarmorphoses telling the story of Scylla as a pretty nymph that the newly turned god Glaucus has fallen in love with. Scylla cannot replicate these feelings and a heartbroken Glaucos goes to the witch Circe to be healed of his unlucky infatuation. Circe, herself unhappily in love with Glaucus, instead poisons Scylla and turns her into the monster she later is shown as in the Odyssey.

[smokey07]

Neoptolemus as character is quite fascinating. And I’ll die on the hill that he is the personification of Achilles’ rage.

He is what his father missed in life: a son, and in a larger extent a family, a future (children are tied to the concept of future and a better tomorrow after all)

And he is doomed to be his father’s son, becomes the same thing his father was molded and chose to be: a child soldier, a war machine.

A personification of wrong choices ( according to Achilles later when he’s in the Underworld) and regrets. No wonder he turned out the way he was.

some doodles of him to end the late night thought.

[lyculuscaelus]

We’re in one of the oldest fandoms where the canon itself is long lost and the source materials for us to draw inspiration from are those of the earliest fanfics themselves—two of which being commonly accepted as beta canon due to their top quality. Sometimes these fanfics contradict each other due to all sorts of OOCs and inconsistencies which is forcing us to choose our own sources to rely on to draw fanart and write fanfics. Each generation of fanfic writers are introducing more headcanons in their works and sometimes their fanfics of fanfics become so popular that they are prompting new sub-fandoms to emerge, inspiring more people to draw fanart and write fanfics for these fanfics of fanfics. It’s almost as if there is a family tree of fanfics and we’re now reaching the third generation and beyond

[cjbolan]

Another Epic:The Musical/E.W. crossover. Neptune as…well, himself.

Neptune is Poseidon in the Greek translation of Emily Windsnap, which means Poseidon is a canon character in both E.W. and Epic

[Image description: A giant merman wearing a military suit and sunglasses and a laurel wreath, carries a trident in one hand and a tiny ship in the other. He angrily stares at the tiny ship in his hand and says "Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves!" End description.]