Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth

by Natalie Haynes

Reading might open our minds, but it doesn’t do much for our memories.

A second point to note is that the Muses – for all their focus on the arts – are also involved in scientific endeavours. If you want to be a successful astronomer, it will be Ourania to whom you must appeal. The Muses have chosen to inspire scientists as well as artists.

These Muses always remind me that scientists and artists should disregard the idiotic attempts to separate us. We are all nerds, in the end.

Hera’s animus is so comprehensive that she doesn’t even have to perform this transformation herself; she has hench-deities).

In one of my favourite lines in this entire fifteen-book poem, Ovid adds, ‘Bos quoque formosa est’8 – she was cute as a cow too.

Hera arrives at the peak of Mount Ida, near Troy, wearing all her finery, primped for action. Her efforts pay off instantly. I have never wanted anyone more, says Zeus. Not a goddess, nor a woman.27 So far, so charming. Not the wife of Ixion, he continues, who gave birth to my son Perithoös. Not Danaë, who bore Perseus. Nor the daughter of Phoenix, who gave me a couple more sons. Not Semele (mother of Dionysus) or Alcmene (mother of Heracles). Not Demeter (mother of Persephone), nor Leto (mother of Artemis and Apollo). I didn’t want any of them as much as I want you. I would hesitate to offer anyone relationship advice, but just in case you need it: this is an absolutely catastrophic way to compliment anyone and I urge you never to do it, even if it sounds fine in your head. It is not fine.

moral (don’t pretend to be less than you are to make a mediocre man feel better, as you will both regret it when you have tails).

I didn’t start this book expecting to compare Arnold Schwarzenegger to the goddess Artemis, but we are where we are.

There is no more difficult goddess to pin down than Artemis.

In this whole story, there’s not much I like more than the unspoken assumption that goddesses are taller than nymphs.

For almost every art form, I find I can imagine where the artist began. The first words of a story that demands to be told, the distant musical refrain in an ear, the dash of colour in a mind’s eye. 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.

If we have learned nothing else from myths, folklore, and fairy tales, we should at least know this. If an old woman approaches you and asks for anything, or suggests anything, you always, always say yes, and thank you very much for asking. There is an almost zero chance that she is an actual old lady and not a goddess, a witch, or an enchantress in disguise. You either change your offending behaviour immediately or – and this is the best-case scenario – you find yourself stuck in a castle full of singing furniture, with one erratic houseplant your only hope of salvation.

Finally Athene adds a border of olive branches, as a symbol of peace.54 No matter how good the weaving, it’s hard to imagine it could outclass the passive-aggression.