Week 8: Book III, chapters 9 (Atlantids) & 10 (Asopids)

[David]

9. Laconian and Trojan mythology (the Atlantids)
The Pleiades
More geneology.

The birth and early exploits of Hermes
More cattle rustling. This time Hermes jump-starts his career by stealing his step-brother Apollo’s cattle. A little trading afterwards and things are square between them.

Early Lacedaimonian genealogies; the story of Asclepios
In which we learn the crow is black instead of white because Apollo was a jilted lover and Zeus did not wish for mortals to learn how to defeat their mortality.

Tyndareus, Leda, and their children
We get a couple of conflicting version of the birth stories of some rather prominent women, notably Penelope, Clytemnestra, and Helen.

Helen and her suitors
In order to keep the peace among the kings of Greece all vying for the hand of Helen, Odysseus, in bargaining for Penelope, dooms them all by an agreement to come to the aid of the chosen bridegroom if he were ever injured by another with regard to his marriage.

The fate of the Dioscuri
More cattle rustling causing a minor war.

Early Trojan mythology
The aged father who Aeneas famously carries on his shoulders out of a burning Troy is mentioned here as the son of Capys and lover of Aphrodite.

Priam, Hecuba, and their children
I was surprised to learn Hecuba was Priam’s second wife. Cassandra learns the art of prophecy from Apollo in exchange for sex, but is robbed of all power to convince because she refuses to sleep with him. There seem to be some good trivia questions here. What was Paris’ other name? What was the name of Paris’ wife when he abducted Helen from Sparta? I never knew Paris was already a married man when he kidnapped Helen. That fact makes the meet and greet between Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, with Menelaus and Helen a little more understandable. Maybe she was kidnapped against her will?

10. The Asopids
Aiacos in Aegina
For being the most pious, Aiacos’ prayers save Greece and he is given the honor of guarding he Keys of Hades.

The Exile of Peleus and Telamon
Aiocos’ sons, Peleus and Telamon kill their step brother, Phocos and are exiled. Telemon fathers Aias, a.k.a., Ajax.

Peleus in Phthia, Calydon, and Iolcos
Peleus attends the Calydonian boar hunt and kills Eurytion and goes into exile again to Iolcos. False accusations against Peleus by jealous women result in the suicide of his first wife and avoids being killed by centaurs when an angry husband hides his sword.

The marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and early life of Achilles
Peleus survives to have a Achilles by Thetis who scares of some big contenders by claiming her son would be more powerful than the father. I am alarmed at the belief that fire would destroy the mortal parts of children making them immortal. I am afraid to think of those real parents who believed in this procedure to a criminal degree. We do not get the story of Thetis dipping her child into the River Styx by his heels to make him invulnerable here, at least not yet. We do learn her child, Ligyron, was fed on powerful and courageous animals instead of being breast-fed earning a new name, which seems to be a way of saying Achilles did not suck.

[David]

Susanna wrote: "I wasn't aware that Helen may have been hatched."

I remember reading something of Helen coming from an egg, but this is the first source material I have read that mentions any details on it. I wonder what the significance of singling her out for this type of birth is?

[Tamara]

David wrote: "I wonder what the significance of singling her out for this type of birth is?.."

Many ancient cultures linked the birth of the universe to an egg. The ancient Egyptians saw the earth as originating from some sort of cosmic egg. The ancient Greeks and Romans gave painted eggs as gifts to celebrate the Spring equinox—the beginning of the new year. So eggs came to represent resurrection, new life, new beginnings. And, as with all new beginnings, there have to be endings—the death of the old, the birth of the new.

Perhaps Helen’s birth from an egg can be seen as signifying the death of the old (the fall of Troy) and the birth of the new.

William Butler Yeats has a wonderful poem based on the rape of Leda and the birth of Helen:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem....

[Ian]

Helen isn't always singled out. In some versions, she is born from one egg with Clytemnestra (Agamemnon's wife), while the male twins Castor and Pollux were born from another, one of each pair being immortal. A lot of this may be later elaboration.

In an alternate tradition, found in the fragments of the epic Cypria (the Trojan War up to the beginning of the Iliad), Helen is the daughter of Nemesis, implacable judgement personified, but her father was still Zeus. In the extended version cited as "metaphysical" by Wikipedia, all four children would have immortal parents, which would turn the story of Castor and Pollux into a muddle. As we have seen, Apollodorus restricts this origin to Helen, as a variant.

The Latin phrase "ab ovo," from the egg, sometimes refers to some version of the story. According to Wikipedia:

"The English literary use of the phrase comes from Horace's Ars Poetica, where he describes his ideal epic poet as one who "does not begin the Trojan War from the double egg" (nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur ab ouo), the absolute beginning of events, the earliest possible chronological point, but snatches the listener into the middle of things (in medias res)." (The word ouo is an alternate grapheme for ovo -- the u and v were not yet distinguished in form.)

Horace clearly would not have liked the Cypria, which apparently did exactly that.

Confusingly, the short form, "ab ovo" has another referent, also taken from Horace. In this cave, the full form is Ab ovo usque ad mala, "from the egg to apples," referring to the first and last courses of a Roman formal meal. This indicates completeness (although to me it could also suggest a brief period of time). I have rarely, if ever, seen this used: in American English, at least, "from fruit to nuts" is an equivalent phrase, as I have seen mentioned in several places.

[Ian]

Tamara wrote: "David wrote: "I wonder what the significance of singling her out for this type of birth is?.."

Many ancient cultures linked the birth of the universe to an egg. The ancient Egyptians saw the earth..."

There are a number of Egyptian creation stories, so I may have missed that one, but those that I recall begin with primordial water, from which arises either the sun-god or a whole group of primordial gods.

A better candidate might be the peculiar Greek creation story in the Orphic literature (which I would prefer not to go into right now), in which the world begins as an egg, from which emerges a god, or a whole group of gods, who begin ordering the cosmos. There is what seems to be a sort of parody of this in the creation story told in Aristophanes' comedy "The Birds."