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Homeric gods are petty, aggressive, and routinely obnoxious. They are immortal, hugely powerful, and have the emotional range and sense of proportion we might expect to find in a toddler deprived of a favourite toy.
Why – if we create gods in our own image – didn’t the Greeks design nicer ones? My answers to this question vary, but in essence I think that Greek gods are capricious and destructive because they are connected with the natural world, which can often be the same – more so in prescientific times than now.
My point isn’t that men create deficient art, it’s that if we only have art created by men, we might want to bear that in mind when we respond to it. James Bond shows us who Ian Fleming (and, by extension, at least some of his readers) wanted to be; Pussy Galore just shows us who he wanted to bang.
By the twentieth century, Muses have had their creativity clipped away altogether. Poets, artists, and musicians still have muses, but the role is largely to be pretty and make a man creative.
Sappho is like a Muse why, exactly? Because she is a glorious singer, composer, and performer, perhaps? Or is it just because she is female while doing those things and so were the Muses? The crucial point to note is that the eight other poets on the canonical list are all men. So is it a compliment that Sappho doesn’t belong there, because she belongs with the Muses, or is it a way of removing her from the conversation about who makes great art?
Zeus – with help from the goddess Metis – forces Kronos to vomit up the stone and the siblings. Perhaps you might not see this as the ideal way to meet your current sister and future wife, but we have to allow that ancient deities don’t always observe the same niceties we might.
Aphrodite finds herself in pursuit of Anchises, who is (somewhat confusingly, but the Trojans make a habit of this kind of thing) both a prince of Troy and a cowherd.
I didn’t start this book expecting to compare Arnold Schwarzenegger to the goddess Artemis, but we are where we are.
Nothing has perplexed me more, in exploring Artemis worship across the ancient Greek world, than the apparent contradiction between her connection to animals and girls and her remorseless taking of their lives.
No matter how many different aspects of Artemis we examine, it all comes back to this. She is a true predator.
Iambe is one of those extraordinary people who doesn’t shy away from the crippling weight of grief in another person, and a stranger at that. She isn’t horrified by Demeter’s sorrow; she doesn’t treat it as a contagion that might spread to her. She reaches right down into the chasm of grief where Demeter has found herself, and she lights the way so that the goddess can climb out again.
Demeter is so angered by this lack of faith that she pulls the boy from the flames and drops him on the ground. (I hope it doesn’t need saying that you should try literally none of Demeter’s childcare tips at home.)
Poseidon is sitting behind Demeter, his head fully turned to eyeball her incredible outfit. He’s literally holding a dolphin in his left hand, and he still looks underdressed in comparison. Even the dolphin looks a bit put out.
As we’ve already seen, the family tree of these gods is more of a dense thicket, given the complications that ensue when – for example – Zeus gets married multiple times, including to his sister, and that is before we try to decide on a birth order for gods who are born, immediately swallowed by their father, and then regurgitated in reverse order.
Hestia swears a mighty oath by the head of Zeus himself that she will remain a parthenos – an unmarried woman. And Zeus gave her a glorious gift instead of marriage (I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that this tradition hasn’t survived to modern times).
Other Vestals could, he claims, stop runaway slaves in their tracks. Given the many bizarre and anachronistic treatments Rome has received onscreen, it slightly surprises me that the telekinetic Vestal Virgin bounty hunter TV series has yet to be made.
Pausanias tells us the statue was so large that the tip of her spear and the top of her helmet were visible from the sea at Sounion, some forty miles to the south. Athens has always belonged to Athene.
The Parthenon is named after Athene in her role as a parthenos – a maiden, one who doesn’t marry, a feature we’ve already noted she shares with Artemis and Hestia.
Ajax slips over because Athene trips him. Not only that, but she does so at the exact point that will ensure he lands face-first in ox manure. Athene may be ageless, but she isn’t very mature.
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.
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.
Primarily, I think, because too many people have been emboldened to simply lie and keep lying, to deny the truth, to deny the past, to deny the collective memory of those they are supposed to serve. And so I find myself thinking that of all the goddesses in this book, the Furies – not in their role of vengeance goddesses but in the sense of collective, societal shame that they also personify, shame at breaking your word or behaving cruelly and dishonestly – might be the ones I would most like to see restored to a modern pantheon.
