Divine Might - Goddesses in Greek Myth

by Natalie Haynes

It can be rather bracing for twenty-first-century readers to discover just how badly behaved ancient gods were: raping, murdering, demanding child sacrifice, and more. I’m often asked to explain why and how people would worship such immoral (or even amoral) deities. Why – if we create gods in our own image – didn’t the Greeks design nicer ones?

Calliope, Muse of epic poetry; Clio, Muse of history; Thalia, Muse of comedy; Terpsichore, Muse of dance; Melpomene, Muse of tragedy. Clio holds a scroll to represent history, and Melpomene carries a tragedy mask.

Perhaps it’s a little reminder that the word museum means ‘home of the Muses’.

So memory was a crucial skill for a poet like Hesiod or Homer, who would perform his work rather than publish it. The ability to remember was recognized as crucial in the fourth century BCE by no less a writer than Plato, in his dialogue Phaedrus.7 Socrates attributes the invention of writing to an Egyptian god, named Theuth

Actually, he says, the opposite is true. People will come to depend on writing, which is external, and stop using memory, which is internal. In fact, writing will make us forgetful. It is typical of Plato – using the character of his tricksy mentor, Socrates – to construct a written argument dismissing the value of writing.

But I can’t even begin to think how a sculpture like this is created – where Bernini must have started, how he proceeded to capture these bodies in motion. I almost find it easier to believe he used real people and somehow turned them to stone.

It’s not even that he is a serial rapist that makes me hate him so much here, although that certainly contributes the largest part of my contempt. But the finishing touch is the way he is so needy for the approval of a young woman he’s kidnapped and then assaulted. He has all the power in this relationship – he is literally king of the whole netherworld – and yet he is still wheedling and whining for approval. He’s the real victim here, don’t you see? Give me strength.

The word lathrēi – secretly – is extremely important in this telling of the Persephone story. We tend to know this myth rather differently, thanks to the way children’s books often make Persephone responsible for her own imprisonment. She chooses to eat the pomegranate seeds, and often does so knowing that she must stay in Hades for a month for each seed consumed. This is a modern cleansing of the story. In most ancient versions of her myth, Hades force-feeds her the pomegranate seed. In this version, he does so in secret. The upshot is the same, either way: having robbed her of consent when he brought her to the Underworld, he continues to do so now. He will always do so.

the trope of the jealous husband is less pervasive in Greek myth than that of the jealous wife.

goddess who is barely mentioned in any ancient source, who makes no dent on the Renaissance, who has inspired virtually no classical composers, no modern artists, nor even any philhellenic sci-fi writers to create work inspired by her?

Among other attendees is Priapus, a minor fertility god with an enormous erection. Ovid can’t tell us much about the gods’ banquet. It’s not allowed, he says. They spent the whole night drinking.24 This is another reason I love Ovid: bored by poets bleating on about divine banquets? Just tell the audience that you’re not allowed to say much, but everyone drank a lot, and move on.

Look at any picture of Priapus from antiquity, and you will see why he might have had trouble focusing on anything beyond his own anatomy. One fresco in Pompeii shows him fully occupied with the task of weighing his gigantic erection on scales.25 He raises his filthy hopes, Ovid continues, and tries to sneak up on her, heart racing, on tiptoe (I find myself wondering how he doesn’t tip up,

It’s fascinating that fully half of these six major goddesses have sworn off sex and marriage, given that they were worshipped during times when ordinary women had little choice about marriage, and almost no opportunity to reject it as a way of life. Perhaps the only thing we can read into this mismatch is that gods occupy a different plane from mortals and so would live unimaginable lives, and that being unmarried is as natural for a goddess (and unnatural for a mortal)

But I can’t help wondering if there is some sort of recognition for the idea that female gods – who held power and autonomy that female humans were not permitted to have – might well not want a male partner.

Ancient societies have some constants which horrify us, like the total acceptance of slavery. Very few ancient writers or thinkers questioned it; most assumed it was the natural order of things. And yet – though in the abstract slavery was considered natural for some people – no one wanted to be a slave, and even slaves might cling to a status that marks them out as essentially unslavish. So in the Odyssey, we see a distinction being made between those who were born into slavery and those who were just unlucky – on the losing side in a war, say – who were enslaved after an early life of freedom. Eumaeus the swineherd wants Odysseus to know that he was the son of a king until he was kidnapped by his nanny (herself a woman of high status enslaved by pirates) when she ran away with sailors.58 In other words, he is not a slave by disposition, just by ill fortune. So where are the slaves who were just born for that life and no other? It seems that while ancient writers and thinkers could believe in an abstract sense that such people existed, there aren’t many of the enslaved – historical or imagined – jumping up to claim that status.

But even if his sympathies are not with Arachne in this moment, he can still imagine that from her perspective these gods are nothing but rapists. She has been described to us as excessively arrogant about her own skills, even if her confidence is well-founded. And she has been shown to be short-tempered with an interfering old woman. But these aren’t the characteristics of a fantasist or a fool. She isn’t out of her mind, like poor Ajax. We can’t simply dismiss her opinions as those coming from a disordered mind. Whether Ovid shares her views is unimportant. What matters is that he is perfectly aware of her feelings about the pain inflicted by these gods in their cruelty, and his version of Arachne is given the space to express it. Look at the great gifts the gods have given you, Athene’s tapestry proclaims. Arachne’s response is very detailed in its execution, but very simple in its message: the price is too high.