Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth

by Natalie Haynes

‘Tell me of the man, Muse, who was turned every which way’. Homer is not relating the story of the shipwrecked Odysseus on his own; he needs the assistance of a Muse. If she doesn’t tell him the story first, he can’t share it with us, his audience. So although this line may sound rather peremptory, there is real concern underpinning it. Poets need Muses or they can’t compose anything. As Homer says in the Iliad,9 these goddesses are always present and know everything. No poet could hope to have witnessed all these events that span across vast reaches of time and space, mortal and immortal worlds. So if the Muses don’t share things with him, he won’t have a story at all.

In the final book of the Odyssey, Homer says that all nine Muses sang at the funeral of Achilles.10 Agamemnon – speaking from beyond the grave – tells Achilles what happened in the aftermath of his dying. It is characteristic of their relationship that even after both men have died, Agamemnon still feels that Achilles has all the luck. You were blessed, Agamemnon declares, to die at Troy, far from Argos. I feel sure you can guess where Agamemnon died, because his grudge-bearing is barely subtextual. It’s right there on the surface for all to see. Why might Agamemnon be so resentful? Well, according to his account here, he died at the hands of his wife’s murderous boyfriend, Aegisthus. There is no mention of his funeral, and we can assume it was perfunctory at best. Whereas Achilles – as Agamemnon relates at some length – had a grand send-off, attended by divinities including the sea nymphs and the Muses. All nine of whom sang lamentations for him. So this is what it means to be the son of a goddess and die a hero’s death: the Muses themselves will sing at your funeral.

But theatrical and sporting contests – from the Dionysia to the Olympics – were rarely rewarded with gold or other treasures. The most popular playwright might win a laurel wreath, say. Or Pindar (the early fifth-century BCE lyric poet from Thebes) might write an ode centred on a victorious athlete’s tremendous sporting prowess.

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. We’re so accustomed to a dialogue which pits these two areas of study against one another – utility versus beauty – and yet the Muses wouldn’t recognize this division. Why wouldn’t you want your scientific pursuits to be beautiful? And why wouldn’t you apply forensic accuracy to your dance or song? The distinction that only sciences are useful and only arts are spirit-enhancing is a nonsensical one. I couldn’t write as much without scientists having designed my computer. And some of those scientists must want to read about Greek mythology after a long day at work. These Muses always remind me that scientists and artists should disregard the idiotic attempts to separate us. We are all nerds, in the end.

Beautiful, jealous, destructive, comical: the peacock was the perfect match for Hera, the goddess everyone loves to hate.

It is also the archetypal story about Hera: pathologically jealous wife (with good cause) taking vicious and extended revenge on a goddess, nymph, or mortal woman who is in no way responsible for the behaviour which has aggravated Hera’s temper.

Hera is more frequently angered by personal slights, and she is especially antagonized by Zeus’s habit of having children without her. She produces a son, Hephaestus, in retaliation for Zeus’s sudden (and apparently motherless) creation of Athene.

So Heracles survives Hera’s early attempts on his life. Her name forming the beginning of his is not a coincidence, by the way: he is named ‘Glory of Hera’, presumably in an attempt to win over the furious goddess. Needless to say, it is wholly ineffective.

So, while she achieves her goal, Hera has to live with the knowledge that she has helped to create this demigod herself. ‘Glory of Hera’ is a more appropriate name than it first appeared.

Perhaps the most poignant modern version of Hera or Juno isn’t onscreen, onstage, or in the pages of an adventure story. Rather, it lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on the fifth of August, 2011. The Juno spacecraft spent five years flying to – of course – the mysterious planet Jupiter, to try and discover more about it. In their press release, NASA made the connection explicit: ‘The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter’s true nature.’47

This scene is imagined by Carol Ann Duffy in a beautiful poem, ‘Demeter’. Her goddess lives in ‘winter and hard earth’ unable to break the ice that surrounds her.22 She even tries using her broken heart, ‘but it skimmed, / flat, over the frozen lake.’ It is not just Demeter’s room that is cold stone, but her heart too. She sees her daughter coming ‘across the fields, / in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers / to her mother’s house.’ Persephone brings the thaw, and so Demeter answers her with a rush of new life. ‘I swear / the air softened and warmed as she moved,’ she says.

At the beginning of this chapter, it seemed as though it would only be possible to define Hestia through a series of absences. The stories we don’t have, the statues we don’t see, the wrath she doesn’t display, the battles she doesn’t join. But – even if Socrates is a little tongue in cheek with these definitions – he does offer a different way to respond to Hestia, and it’s one that rings true, for me at least. This is a goddess who doesn’t often do, but always is. She is the heart of your home and mine, the heart of our cities and temples alike. She is our warm homecoming, our baked bread, our light in the dark.

Hesiod uses the language of giving birth to explain that having swallowed Metis, Zeus then produces Athene from his own body.7 If we want to sustain the language of a more traditional birth scenario, then Hephaestus – who frees Athene from her father’s head with a mighty blow from his axe – is the midwife. Athene is indeed cleverer and mightier than the other gods, but not so much so that her father has anything to fear from her. In fact, their relationship in, for example, the Odyssey is a close one, which we’ll examine in more detail below. Zeus is usually able to rely on Athene to do his bidding, and she often goes to him to help her get what she wants, even at the expense of other gods.

I am often asked why Greek tragedy retains such a hold on us today, and I always give the same answer: because the unit of currency in tragedy is a human being. No matter what else has changed across thousands of years, I think that remains true.