Fabula Belli Ilii!

Salvete et χαιρει! Hope you’re all enjoying my blog; I have to say I’m rather astounded at the traffic I’ve been getting over the last few weeks. Thank you all for the views and I hope you keep reading! Anyway, to business: I only just realized this and I honestly can’t believe I haven’t posted anything about this yet, its insane…And so I’d like to give you a nice, condensed version of one of the most incredible, epic stories of all time: The Trojan War! Yes, for any fellow classicists out there who could read the title, this post will indeed relate “The story of the Trojan War” (well it’s literally “the story of the war of Troy” but ‘Trojan War’ sounds better in English).

So, this is such an exciting topic! Its just so vast, you know; there’s just so much that happened in this war! No one’s even totally sure who really wrote the Iliad; the whole thing is acredited to Homer and was almost certainly compiled by him, but there’s a lot of speculation that the stories were collected from many places; sort of similar to how there may have been more than one Shakespeare. (Honestly, I don’t care who wrote all those plays, I still love them.) But enough ramble. To business!:

So, to start, if you think that the abduction* of Helen was the very begninning of the Trojan war, you’re wrong. It all actually started at a wedding, the wedding of two deities named Peleus and Thetis (incidentally the parents of Achilles). They invited all of the gods and such, naturally, but they left one lonely lady out. Her name was Eris, and she didn’t warrant an invite as she was the much disliked goddess of Discord! You could only imagine she wasn’t very much fun at parties….At any rate, she was extremely angry that she wasn’t invited to the wedding so she decided to use her evil-ness to screw up some more affairs in the long run. I have to say, to her credit, she really did an excellent job of wreaking an awful lot of havoc. What she did was show up at the wedding with a golden apple inscribed with the words “For the Fairest.” All the goddesses present freaked out and tried to get it, but eventually it was down to three candidates: Juno/Hera, Venus/Aphrodite, and Minerva/Athena. Unable to decide, they asked Jupiter/Zeus for his opinion. Zeus refused to give an opinion, though; a very smart decision on his part. He deffered** them to the lovely young man named Paris, a Trojan prince, who was chilling out in the fields as a sheperd. Now, you’re probably wondering, why would a prince be living in the fields with a nymph? Well, the king of Troy, this lovely guy Priam, had heard that his son Paris would be the ruin of Troy, so he sent him away to save his city. Thats one thing I love about all these stories; when people hear prophecies, they act in a way thats an attempt to stop the prophecy from happening, but what they do actually makes it happen. Funny, eh? So, the three goddesses approach Paris and, lets be honest, none of them use their looks to try and sway him; its bribery from the get-go. Juno/Hera promises him land and lordship all across Europe and Asia, Minerva/Athena promises she’ll put him in charge of a Trojan army and lead him to conquer Greece (the two countries hated each other if you all didn’t know that), and Venus/Aphrodite promised him a weak man’s downfall: the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris, being a…..well, I’d use the Latin word “stultissimus” (superlative form of stultus), I think its quite fitting; anyway, he chose Venus’ gift, and who was the most beautiful woman in the world? Oh, right….Menelaos’ (or Menelaus) wife, Helen.
I’m sure just about every one has heard of Helen, and you’ve probably all heard her name with the phrase “The face that launched a thousand ships.” She was actually the brother of Castor and Pollux (For more on them, see my earlier post:) it just might be my favorite.). She was married, as mentioned above, to Menelaos, King of Sparta and brother of Agamemnon (see the House of Atreus story below). The most ridiculous thing about her, though, is that even after she married Menelaos, all the men of Greece swore that if she was ever in danger, they would all kill the person who harmed her and rescue her no matter what. Pretty stupid thing to do in retrospect, eh?

So, as I talked about in my earlier post about Baucis and Philemon, there was a very, very specific standard between host and guest at this time in history. In Latin, actually, the word for guest and host is the same, “hospites.” So, Venus sent Paris to visit with Menelaos and Helen, and Menelaos, trusting in Paris like any good host should, took a trip to Crete and left Paris to hang out with his wife. Unfortunately for him, Paris broke the sacred bond between guest and host and convinced Helen to leave with him.

Now, honestly, most accounts of this part of the story say that Helen actually left with Paris of her own accord. This is really just bloody ridiculous because every damn man in Greece went to go get her back when the stupid wench left with Paris because she wanted to. She had an affair with him, left with him, and caused a ten year war. Like, seriously? I don’t blame Odysseus for trying to get out of going to war for her. He actually tried to convince them that he was crazy; unfortunately, though, he ended up having to go, which really sucks for him because he ended up being away from home for twenty years. The Odyssey is seriously my all time favorite book, I’ve read it several times. Its fantastic; personally I’d recommend the Robert Fitzgerald translation; its beautiful.

Sorry about the tangent. Heeeeenyway, once the whole army was assembled, they were all in their boats, waiting in the harbor, and…the seas were so incredibly rough that they couldn’t leave. Can’t you just see it: a whole bunch of Greek soldiers all decked out for battle and ready to go, just standing there on their ships, waiting, looking around like “So…..I hear Helen’s pretty hot.” When they realized that they were getting nowhere fast, they did what all good Greeks did and consulted a priest. He said that Artemis/Diana demanded a sacrifice from the Greeks, as they had killed a hare (apparently she really liked hares, I don’t know the gods had weird ticks like that) of hers. Her sacrifice of choice? Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia. You can imagine how ‘Memmy’s wife Clytemnestra felt about that, this is one of the reason’s she ended up going crazy. For some reason I just really can’t fathom, though, Agamemnon actually did it: he slaughtered his own daughter at the altar to save his brother’s wife. Wow. Yeah. Apparently his army’s respect was more important to him than his own child’s life. These stories never cease to fascinate me. Each little bit of it is seriously like its own well of thought and speculation and philosophy. Crazy.

Okay, I know this is a weird spot to stop, but it’s really late here and I have Attic Greek homework to do for tomorrow morning and this post is really REALLY long, so I will talk to you all hopefully tomorrow or Friday!

Also, for anyone who cares, heres my twitter! Follow me and see what’s going on with my Classical life!

Also, pop culture reference to Helen!

Namaste

On Midas and Human Regretfulness

Salvete! I know my last post was just absolutely adorable, and anyone who doesn’t think so might need their internal cute meter chicked out. Anyhow, I’ve got some lovely information to share with you all and I’m sure you’re just dying to hear it so here we go:

I’m sure almost every single person ever has heard the name Midas. Most people associate it with gold and riches, and for good reason. In terms of his story, though, Midas was a really, really stupid person, and not stupid in the way like Medea (fucking wench.) but in that harmless way where he was honestly just that clueless.

It started when this guy named Silenus fell asleep in Midas’ rose garden. Midas was king of Phrygia, which apparently was very famous for its roses. Fittingly, as king, Midas had a plentiful amount of them. Sooo when this random dude fell asleep in them, his servants were like umm what? They figured out that he was actually a Bacchanal (meaning he was part of Bacchus’ little train of people that went around and was drunk most of the time with him). So they dressed him up all ridiculous and brought him to Midas as a big old joke. Midas played host to Silenus for ten full days before taking him back to Bacchus. Bacchus was so happy to have him back that he said Midas could have any wish he wanted. So, Midas, being the fool he was, wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. Midas would probably have gotten along well with Epimetheus (see Pandora’s story). Bacchus knew how stupid Midas’ wish was, but he was obliged to grant it and thus did. Midas realized his stupidity that night when he tried to eat: as he picked up his food, he realized he was attempting to chew up a lump of gold. Now totally freaked out that he was going to starve to death, he went running back to Bacchus asking him to rescind the gift. The god of wine told him to go and wash his hands off at the head of the river Pactolus. Midas did so and was thus saved from his folly. (They also say this is why there’s gold in that river.)

So Midas was really a pretty stupid guy. Not malicious, just honestly no brains at all. So when he was told he could have anything he wanted, he wished for something that almost killed him. The more obvious thing he could have done that would have made a lot more sense would be just wishing for a large amount of gold to last his life. He realized his idiocy, though, and luckily was able to lift his curse before it quickly killed him. The major lesson in this story is ‘be careful what you wish for,’ or as I like to say, don’t be a complete fucking idiot. Unfortunately, this seems to be harder than it should be for most people. The thing with decision making, though, is that if its something really really important, its usually extremely difficult to know if you’re doing the right thing or not. Especially when you doubt everything as it is on a daily basis. You just have to go with your gut feeling, though, even if you don’t understand it. Intuition, as weird or whatever as it may sound, is really really powerful and shouldn’t be ignored. It can be really shitty sometimes, though. Following your gut. Its hard. A lot of the time, its something you don’t really want to do. But you just have to have faith that you won’t be led astray and that you’re doing the right thing for yourself; because lets face it, only you know what’s best for you, ya? You have to trust yourself; like 311 says, “You’ve got to trust your instinct,  and let go of regret; You’ve got to bet on yourself now star, ’cause that’s your best bet.” Sorry I couldn’t think of any other good comparisons. Whatever. You get the point. You just can’t hold on to that fear and doubt and regret, because that’s just not going to get you anywhere. Once something’s done, its done, and thats pretty much it.

So even if you make a decision and regret it shortly after, just know that what’s done is done and there’s always lessons to be learned from that. And there’s nothing wrong with learning a good lesson, ya?

 

Also, heres a contemporary reference to this story!!!

 

–

Namaste

Also

So, this really has nothing to do with anything I post about, but I found this on the interwebs and it totally relates to the title of my blog!!

http://imgur.com/QCxEJ

totally toot. Anyway I’ll post something relevant next I promise, I just couldn’t resist that little giraffe!!!

 

Namaste

Musings on the Constellation Gemini

Word. So, as I’m sure you all know, our universe is full of stars (assuming you don’t live in a city and can actually see them a little) and many, many years ago (it has to be over two thousand years ago or I’m just not interested.), people looked at the stars and were like “Hey, lets make radom pictures out of them and come up with stories to explain the existence of the dots of light in the sky!”

So, I’m going to focus on the constellation Gemini; being that its my zodiac sign and I have rather a fixation with it. The constellation is said to be made up of two brothers named Castor and Pollux. Now, they are generally held to be the twins, but their family history says something slightly contrasting. They are both believed to be the sons of Leda (she was their mother). Leda was married to Tyndareus (King of Sparta), and from him she is said to have borne Clytemnestra (see the house of Atreus, she ended up being a crazy bitch) and Castor; when Zeus took her (as he so often did with mortal women), she bore two other famous people: Helen and Pollux. Helen ended up being the reason Clytemnestra’s nuclear family ended up killing each other, which is pretty weird and sad, but just goes to show how inter-related all these people were.

Now, as I stated above, Pollux is generally said to be Castor’s twin. It’s so weird, all these minor discrepancies in mythology that can totally change a story. BUT!! (there is always a but.) The two were definitely both sons of Leda, as the lineage described above shows, but just for the sake of mentioning everything, I have to say that there are accounts that claim the both of them to be sons of Jupiter/Zeus. For the sake of argument, though, we’ll hold to the story that they had different fathers. Now, there are few little stories about them, but they’re silly and irrelevant to this discussion (e.g. they went on the Calydonian boar hunt, sailed on the Argo, etc.). The biggest story with them is that at some point they were on some cattle owners land, two guys by the names of Idas and Lynceus. For some reason, Idas became extremely angry with Castor and stabbed and killed him. Pollux, outraged, stabbed Lynceus and Zeus killed Idas with a thunderbolt. Pollux was indescribably devastated by the loss of his brother. They loved each other so much. They were the absolute best of friends; they did everything together, they just loved each other so much. And so when Castor died, Pollux prayed that please oh please could he die too? Just to be with his brother? So great was their love for each other that Jupiter/Zeus pitied them and thus they would spend one day in Hades and the next in the heavens as Gemini.

The name “Gemini” comes from the latin word “geminus,” which as a noun means “twins” and as an adjective means “twin, double-born,” you get the picture. One of the sort of….implied things I guess about Castor and Pollux is that they are pretty much the same person. They’re twin boys, and they love each other so that they can’t bear to be apart. They, for extreme lack of a better term, “complete” each other. People born under this sign are said to be very dual natured. I myself am and can honestly attest to that. I’ve always felt that way, even before I knew what “zodiac” signs and constellations were. Like, on the one hand, I’m very for doing something, but on the other, I’m too damn petrified to actually do it. Or (this happens like all the fucking time) I’ll want to do something and then be like “UMM DURR That’s totally stupid, talk about illogical why the fuck would you do that.” So, I kind of stop myself from having fun sometimes….well, I do it less than I used to. Its kind of sad, though, repressing yourself like that. Like if you really want to do something, unless its actually destructive to you, you should be allowed to try it at the very least.

But more on the dual nature thing-the biggest question anyone who’s like that usually has (it’s definitely mine) is how on earth does one deal with such a dilemma? And here’s what I’ve come up with: nothing. In my years (which maybe isn’t that many compared to most but whatever, I live my life and do what I do) I’ve really never been able to put my finger on a viable way that will consitently work in helping one slove these types of moral dilemmas/general internal conflict. For instance, what do you do when you know that you shouldn’t tell a friend something because it will hurt them, but not telling them will make them unhappier and stop them from resolving a problem? Its things like that that plague people (at least me) on an almost daily basis. But the only thing you can really do is what you should just always be doing anyway: doing whatever it is that seems and feels right to you and sticking with that. Cause thats the only way you’re ever going to get anywhere that you really want to be, ya?

I’ll publish something again soon, hopefully I’ll be able to contain my ramblings a little, but whatever

Namaste

A More Modern Take on the Story of Daphne and Apollo

So, you all know who Diana was: the chaste, virgin goddess of hunting, the moon, etc. She’s also associated with the crazy more minor goddess Hecate, but that’s irrelevant for this story. She had a band of nymphs that attended her (they pretty much just followed her around all the time) and they were all also pure (virgin) huntresses. There were a fair amount of others that wanted to be like her, though. One such example: Daphne, the young daughter of the river god Peneus. Peneus was not very happy about Daphne’s insistence that she must remain a virgin huntress forever, because he wanted grandsons (all anyone wanted back then was sons/male heirs). But Daphne felt that she was a keeper of ultimate freedom, and thus she ran about in the woods hunting happily.

But of course, something had to happen wrong or this would be a really stupid, pointless story. So, when Diana and her followers hunted, they wore clothing that was unacceptable in normal social situations: a dress that fell only to their knees (THE HORROR), their arms totally uncovered, their hair unbound and uncombed. So Daphne had a grand old time running around dressed as such, until one day dear Apollo, god associated with Truth, Light, the Sun, medicine, etc. saw her in the height of her fervor and immediately wanted her. So Apollo called out to her and began to pursue her, but she ran from him as fast as she could, intent on keeping herself fully intact. Apollo was all “Wait, its okay, I just want to rape you!” and she was like “UMM NO.” Eventually, though, she began to tire, and as she reached the banks of her fathers river, she shouted to him to please, please help her; if he loved her at all he would save her!! And thus her skin suddenly became rigid, a smooth bark began to slowly encase her; she became immobile, her arms straightening into branches. (I’m getting all this from Ovid, book I, by the way.) She became the laurel tree that Apollo made his crown from, that later was given to winners of the Olympic games.

So, in this story, we see that Daphne has chosen a very specific way to live her life. She has chosen the path of the virgin huntress, forever spending her days alone in the woods, chasing game and hunting for fun. She was very, very happy with her lifestlye choice, though, and had no problem rejecting suitors everytime they approached her. So, when someone came along and suggested a radical lifestyle change to her, she freaked out and ran away. She got lucky though, because she didn’t actually have to deal with people suggesting stuff to her because her father turned her into a tree. Trees don’t usually have people asking them to change their lifestyles. “Man, you should really consider a new leaf color….green is so last season.” But seriously. For the rest of us, though? We’re always going to have people asking us why we do what we do, trying to convince us to change, trying to tempt us to do something we may not feel is right. “You’re SO missing out,” they’ll say. “Are you like, really religious or something?” “Whyyyyyy its sooooo funnnnn!!” (,-drunk speech) ”How do you have any fun????” You’ll get that a LOT if you’re the only sober person present. But for every person that thinks you’re crazy, there will be someone who respects your desicions and maybe even thinks its kind of cool that you have such a strong inner conviction.

It’s difficult, though. Like, everyone sort of jokes about the whole “peer pressure” thing, but it actually can be difficult to not just give in and do what everyone else is doing. By not doing what everyone else is, it makes you feel…sort of different, almost weird. But you have to do what’s right for you. No matter what else, you always come first. Your health, including physical, emotional, psychological, whatever, always comes first. You have to respect the way you feel, even if you don’t like it. It’s difficult, but you’ll be much better off for it.

We all go through metamorphoses, though. I think maybe that’s why I love Ovid’s Metamorphoses so much. The pervasive theme of change is so relatable and just……thats how our lives are. We’re always evolving. Growth is inevitable, and growth is good. It will happen whether you want it to or not. And the thing is, once its happened, you can’t go back. Once a butterfly comes out of a cocoon, it can’t get back in and it can’t make another one. Once you’ve grown to a certain point, you just can”t go back. After you see the logic of something, you can’t un-see it. You can try to ignore it, but it will always be there, in the back of your mind, reminding you that you’re being stupid.

If you do choose to not drink, smoke, etc., though, there are several pieces of advice I’d like to share with you:

-DO NOT HATE OTHERS FOR DOING IT. That will do nothing but make you look like a stuck up bitch and honestly, its their life, they can do whatever they want with it.

-Don’t be rude about it.  Don’t get all, “FUCK YOU I JUST DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE OMG AHHHHHH” unless someone has been badgering you about it for an extensive period of time. For the most part, people are just curious because they’ dont understand why anyone would do it differently than they do. Just explain whatever reason you have and be done with it.

-Don’t let it stop you from having fun. If you refuse to associate with people who drink alcohol, you will legitimately have no friends.

So, this kind of turned into a rant about my life choices, but um…..its related to Daphne’s life choice too? Kind of? Maybe? Whatever. This is my blog and I’ll post whatever I want and if you don’t like it you can leave.

So, um,  my next post will probably be more mythology related……but yeah.

Namaste

A short little tidbit for you all!

So, since I’m feeling lazy (I finally gained some weight back! No longer underweight! Woot!!!!), I’m just going to post a really short story but its nice all the same:

BAUCIS AND PHILEMON

(also, according to Edith Hamilton, Ovid is the only one who wrote this story down, which is probably why its so amazing <3 I love himmmmm!)

So one day Jupiter got bored of just lounging around being a god, and so he went down to Earth with Mercury to look for some mortal to entertain and amuse him. So they went to Phrygia (please don’t ask where that was exactly, I have no fucking clue) to see how nice the people were. As you know (and if you don’t you should), Jupiter placed a lot lot LOT of importance in hospitality, so there are some people in this story that, um, really screw themselves over. So when the two gods went into Phrygia disguised as regular beggars, they had hundreds of people turn them away (obviously gods have a lot of energy to walk through a small country…). So after they were turned away but hundreds of people, they knocked on the door of a poor little hut made out of reeds. An old couple welcomed them in and they found that it was very clean and well kept, with a nice fire burning and everything. They made a nice comfortable place for Jupiter and Mercury to sit and bustled about making them a nice dinner and such. They had a nice little feast, and during it, Baucis, the elderly woman, and her husband Philemon noticed that their wine bowl never emptied. Even after they poured more and more for their guests, the bowl was never less than full to the brim. The old couple finally realized what was going on and apologized for their meager dinner, claiming that they had a goose they ought to have caught and cooked for the gods. They went out and tried to catch it, chasing it for quite some time until they were most worn out, until finally Jupiter told them that he was going to punish the awful land around them for their inhospitality but spare the two of them. Jupiter flooded the whole valley around them and turned their little hovel into a white marble temple with a roof of gold. Jupiter also said he would grant them one wish, and they wished that neither of them would ever have to be alone: that even when they died they would die together. And so when their time came, they noticed that bark was growing around them and as they disappeared, two trees grew out of one trunk, the linden and oak.

So, they never had to be apart, so strong was their love. I hope you enjoyed this story, as much as I’d love to study and pick apart all the details of it, I have a headache and need to do something else, so PEACE HOES I’ll post again later.

 

Namaste

The Further Story of the House of Atreus

So, now that we’ve covered about half of the story of this family of weirdos, here we go with the second half:

So, Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon and Menalos. Their names should both sound really familiar, they’re some of the most famous people in mythology like ever. Agamemnon was the guy who led the Greeks into battle at Troy, and Menelaos was the husband of the ever famous Helen. For anyone who doesn’t know, she was supposedly the most beautiful woman who ever lived, she was called “The face that launched a thousand ships” because every man in Greece took an oath that if she was ever in danger in any way at all they would go to her aid and fight to get her back. Agamemnon definitely had an extremely miserable fate. Now, as many of you may or may not know, before the Greek fleet could actually sail to Troy, a sacrifice was demanded in exchange for favorable winds: Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia. And so, being the insane nut job he was, Agamemnon killed his own daughter at the altar. Some say that she was spared by….I think Demeter; anyway, she saved her soul just before she died. Anyway, when Agamemnon returned, everyone knew that his wife, Clytemnestra had taken another lover to spite her husband for killing her only daughter. She was not the only unfaithful one, though, as Agamemnon had taken Cassandra, the extremely unfortunate doomed prophetess that no one ever believed, as his lover. When Agamemnon got back from Troy, his wife pretended to recieve him well and after they went inside together, Cassandra spewed out to the people thing about Thyestes and that people in the house were going to die, et cetera. And once she went in the house, knowing that she would die, and the doors closed, people heard Agamemnon yelling and it sure did sound like he was dying…so thenClytemnestra came out of the house covered with blood and the people all just kind of went =O. She was fine with what she had done, just proving how insane she was, and Aegisthus, her lover and incidentally a cousin of Agamemnon (they were always related. Always.), just stood by her and was like “Yeah. What she said.” And so they ruled Athens for a while while Agamemnon’s daughter, Electra, sat miserably and cried for her brother, Orestes, who had been sent away long ago for his protection. Eventually, the two of them found each other at their fathers tomb, and Electra was so insanely happy I think she probably did cry. Orestes had gone to the Oracle at Delphi because literally every fucking person in Greece did that before they ever decided on anything, and it told him that he had to kill his mother and her lover to avenge his wronged family members. So when Orestes got back to Athens, he slew his mother and Aegisthus and was very unhappy about it; he was having visions of suffering women or something after words. He eventually went and was purified somehow and when he returned to Athens, he talked to Athena and Apollo (all day e’ry day) and they excused his crime and thus ended the curse upon Atreus’ line.

Nice story, eh? I probably won’t do Cadmus, I had to read that recently and it’s just as fucked up as this one, so……….the next story will be totally random and quite possibly very short.

Namaste

The Fall of the House of Atreus

χαιρει! So, as I mentioned in my last post, I’m going to move into some royal families. Royally fucked up, that is. So, as I mentioned before, Tantalus was a member of the house of Atreus, as was Agamemnon, Menelaos, and all their children. These people really make me appreciate my parents and honestly, I think they’ll do the same for you.

So, to start: Tantalus. If you’re wondering, this is indeed where we get the word “tantalize” from (that will be explained later). At first his life seemed pretty damn great: he was a son of Zeus, who like loved him to death and let him eat at the table with the gods and stuff. (Bellerophon would have been SOOOOO jealous. totes jelly. lol.) So, to thank them for their generosity, he, as Edith Hamilton puts it, “Acted so atrociously that no poet ever tried to explain his conduct.” (pg. 346) He had one son, Pelops (what a poor soul) who he had murdered, cut up into pieces and boiled and served as food to the gods. Don’t you love your dad so much more now? Even though they were so nice to him, he like really hated them…..he had some major daddy issues, both being one and with his own. So, before you flip, remember: the gods were just that. Gods. As in all powerful and omniscient. So obviously they knew that Tantalus was a fucked up maniac and that he needed some serious punishment. So, to really scare people into never doing anything even remotely like this ever EVER again (as if anyone would do something like this), they punished him by eternally making him stand in a pool of water beneath grape vines. Whenever he bent down to drink, the water vanished. Whenever he reached up for food, the grapes were just out of reach. So yes, this is where we get tantalize from. Oh, also, Tantalus couldn’t die, so….yeah. He was stuck like that forever. So, after that particularly disturbing bit, onto a…well less gnarly piece. Pelops, the poor dear thing, was restored to life by the gods, but one of them (either Demeter or Thetis) had accidentally eaten some of the truly revolting…i cant even call it food but so a small piece of Pelops was gone, and so he had a shoulder made of ivory. After this hugely unfortunate event, though, Pelops had a really good life. He married Princess Hippodamia, who like…i guess you could say had more daddy issues. Her father was a total fucking creep and didn’t want her to get married because he like kind of had a thing for her, so he had these horses from Ares and said if anyone could beat him in a chariot race they could have her, and if they lost, they died. So, a lot of people died, but Pelops showed up with horses from Poseidon (woot!) and won. Supposedly, ethier because she was sick of her wack job dad or she actually loved Pelops she had her fathers chariot driver loosen the bolts on his cart, allowing Pelops to win. And so, though Pelops was okay, Tantalus’ disgusting awfulness doomed his whole family basically forever.

So, Pelops also had a sister, and her name was the unbelievably unfortunate Niobe. She was like clinically insane. She was married to this guy called Amphion, and they ruled Thebes for a while until she just completely went around the twist. She started walking around barking at people “Why the fuck are you worshipping Leto? That goddess only had two children, Apollo and Artemis, and they’re major gods!! But I have seven sons and seven daughters so I’m obviously better. You all have to worship me now. DO ITTTT.” Now that is arrogance if I’ve ever heard it. She was such a bitch. Anyway Apollo and Artemis obviously heard her and, not at all willing to take that kind of insult to their mother, a titan, they went down to Thebes and made Niobe stand there and watch while they killed each and every one of her children in front of her. She was so insanely struck with grief that she couldn’t even move. All she could do was stand and stare at the bodies of her children, still so young, weeping, until at last she became a stone that forever flowed with tears.

Then there are Pelops sons. Oh yes, there were a LOT of people in this family. Anyway, his two sons were Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes fell in love with Atreus’ wife and…um, well, he nailed her, and so when Atreus found out, he took Thyestes two little sons and had them cut up, boiled and served to their father as a dinner (pattern…?). Thyestes ate all of his supper and when he found out what happened, he basically just threw up everywhere and cursed and yelled at his brother. The story of this family is really quite horrible and makes me feel very normal indeed. Unfortunately, since Atreus was king, Thyestes apparently like was unable to avenge this truly horrible crime, but instead all of Atreus’ children were basically cursed beyond belief.

Soooooooooooo I’ll talk about them in my next post. Woot.

Namaste

My Further Discussion of Bellerophon

Okay, sorry I can be so lazy sometimes, but I’ve been really trying to get enough sleep lately so as I sit here yawning, I shall finish my further commentary on Bellerophon’s “mistake.” So, as you may or may not have read in my previous post, our dear Belly’s ‘mistake’ was that he ‘thought thoughts too big for man’ by thinking that as a rider of a Pegasus, as a man who so nobly was able to tame such a creature (completely with divine help, not sure where he got the idea of being so great), that he could fly up to Mount Olympus and join the gods. Well I would like to firstly say that this is a really stupid notion; like, think about it: say this is the era before satellites and rockets, before anyone knew what was outside the Earths atmosphere. Now imagine that you magiacally have a plane. You’re a pious, regular, happy person with a spouse and kids. Now, would you ever think “Oh, hey, since I can fly I should totally try and go chill with God/Allah/WhoeverItIsYouWorship? Yeah, I didn’t think so.  I mean, there was definitely more of a….how do I say this without offending….okay, so I’m pretty much non-religious, I believe in feng shui, the universe and brownies, but I think that back then people belived that the gods had like, a more direct role in their day-to-day lives; and I don’t mean necessarily like destiny, but like, the gods supposedly would like appear to people for stuff and EVERYONE went to consult an oracle before basically doing anything. I think what I mean is just that basically everyone back then was intensely religious and they all belived the same thing, while today everyone believes something different and probably like a third of those people don’t believe in anything. So, Belly probably believed that he had a more direct connection with the gods and that they were more (for a huge lack of a better word) “accessible.” Like, he believed that there was a mountain he could go find and Zeus would just be chilling up there, where as in I think most other religions their God-figure is a man who cannot be found anywhere except heaven, which can only be reached if, well, you die. So thats that. Anyway, moving on. This ‘mistake’ of his also shows a very VERY strong belief the Greeks held: you kept your head down and respected anyone superior to you, and everyone was inferior to the gods, so you definitely NEVER disrespected them. Now, one thing that I find interesting about the Greek gods is that they were very, very human. They felt anger, rage, jealousy, etc. They were also very proud I suppose you could say because one thing that really pissed them off was any human that went around boasting that they were better than or as good as the gods (See the story of poor Niobe…maybe I”ll do Tantalus’ family next. Actually lets face it Niobe was a bitch). So when Bellerophon was all YO I can totally go be as good as you they were like UHHHHHH fuck no. Even Pegasus, even his flying freakin horse knew that it was a bad idea and so he threw him off before Belly could do the unthinkable. Thats probably why Zeus liked him and let him into Olympus…ironic eh? Anyway, as much as Pegasus tried to help him, Bellerophon still ended up as one of the most hated human beings on Earth and for the description of the rest of his obviously bright future see my previous post. Now, I think there’s a pretty obvious purpose to this story: to scare people into listening. They say, “Oh, well look what happened to this idiot, you don’t want to end up like him right? RIGHT?????” and then everyone is pious and god-fearing and whatever. It also passed down the whole motto of “respect your elders and above all else the gods.” Its amazing how these things work. Like, today, for the most part, people just write to like, convey their feelings and stuff but back then, people wrote these fantastic tales to teach lessons and pass down important peices of history. Of course, there was the Romans, who wrote things like the Aeneid which was basically some thousand lines of propoganda. (As bad of a story as that was, the Latin is absolutely BEAUTIFUL if you can read Latin I would recommend reading some of it.) I may actually do a post about Aeneas soon, I’m thinking my next two candidates will be the house of Cadmus and the house of Tantalus, which, as is practice with the Greeks, are uplifting, sunshine-y stories.

Soooooooo hopefully I’ll get at least half of one of those up tomorrow, if not…….I’ll just get them up before the month is out.

word.

Bellerophon (the man, not the spaceship)

Greetings all. I know I usually am super sporadic about posting anything but I have more free time today so I figured for once I’d actually do what I said I would. Now, getting to business, Bellerophon. For anyone who’s wondering what I mean by spaceship, theres a ship in that really old movie Forbidden Planet called Bellerophon. Just being clear.

So, dear old Belly (yeah, im going there). Bellerphon was thought to be a descendent of the every famous Sisyphus (I;ll post more about the lovely underworld maybe next. Believe me, if you don’t already know who he is, you shouldn’t exactly be dying to.) He lived in what later became Corinth, and yes, the book of the Bible, Corinthians, is named after there. Anyway, though people for the most part thought he was descended from the line of Sisyphus, there were rumors (there were always rumors…) that he was actually a son of Poseidon (PERCY JACKSON). He was supposedly like ridiculously good at everything, too, and his mother had been taught by Athena and was basically a genius, so thats why the rumor about his immortal father was believed. Oh, his mothers name was Eurynome, just, you know, for the record. If you see my last post, I say again, I’m not as sexist as the ancient Greeks were. So, since Belly was such a big deal and he was just such a general winner, he ended up with his dear little heart absolutely set on having Pegasus. Pegasus was a beautiful winged horse that supposedly sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus chopped her head off (Yes, as you can tell by the top of the page, Perseus is my favorite story). So Belly went to the local seer, Polyidus, and told him how badly he wanted Pegasus (who would say no to a flying horse?) and Polyidus told him to go sleep at Athena’s temple and see what he dreamed about. How he slept on solid marble and stone is totally beyond me, but he fell asleep there and in the middle of the night Athena showed up and was all YO and she gave him a golden bridle with which to harness and tame his greatly desired Pegasus. Some men want women, Belly wanted a flying horse. Go figure. Anyway, Belly got up and ran out to find Pegasus. He eventually located him at some super-famous spring in Corinth called Pirene (no idea how thats pronounced). He slowly approached and then PEGASUS RIPPED OFF HIS HEAD. No not really he just kind of walked up to Pegasus and put the bridle on him and Pegasus was like “okay whatevs.” So then Belly was like YES I”M THE MASTER OF THE SKY I TOTALLY WIN and he just flew around doing cool stuff.

Its weird, though, cause a while after this, in some freak accident, Bellerophon accidentally killed his brother. He went, much in the fashion of Hercules, to a King (this one in Argos, named Proetus) to be redeemed. So, this is where the unluck of people even supposing you’re related to Sisyphus comes in. The wife of the king, Anteia, was all “word lets bone” and Belly was like “uh………………no, that would kind of contradict why I’m here.” She was so mad (the skank) that she told her husband that Belly was mean to her and had to die. Unfortunately, Belly had eaten at Proetus’ table, and everyone knows the gods like instantly smite anyone who kills a guest. So instead, he contrived a plan that would indirectly get Belly killed. He sent him with a letter to the king of Lycia (that was in like Asia). Apparently they really new how to treat guests out there or maybe the guy just really liked Bellerophon cause he entertained him and they feasted for nine days before he even asked to see the letter, which of course said “Hey, friend king, kill the bitch that brought this letter. Love, Proetus.” /facepalm. So, for the same reason as Proetus, the Lycian king knew he couldn’t just have Belly’s head loped off. So instead he asked him to go and kill the Chimaera, a really fun little critter that was a lion in its head and front paws, a goat in the middle, and a snake in the back. Oh, and it breathed fire. So very cuddly. So Belly went out on Pegasus and flew up and shot it with arrows, killing it easily. He went back to Proetus, who tried a few more times to get him killed, but never was successful. Eventually the two became friends, and as a friendship gift, Proetus gave him his daughter to marry. Typical.

So for a while it was cool, he just chilled with his wife and Pegasus, but then came the most interesting part. Bellerophon did something that really REALLY pissed off the gods by thinking that since he had Pegasus, he could fly up to Mount Olympus. When he tried, Pegasus was all “Um, no, you’re going to make them really mad” and so he threw Bellerophon off. The gods hated him for the rest of his life, which was spend, I quote Edith Hamilton, “wander[ing] alone, devouring his own soul and avoiding the paths of men until he died.”  Pegasus flew himself up to Olympus where Zeus took care of him and supposedly Pegasus actually brought him the thunderbolt to use as a weapon.

Okay, so there are several aspects of this I would like to examine. We’ll start with the small things first: the incredible hospitality of the Greeks. WHY is it that people back then were so incredibly kind to their guests and now if a stranger came to your door you would just be like KTHANKSBYE???? Because back then people had this thing called RESPECT. THEY RESPECTED EACH OTHER and as such when a person requested to be  guest, they knew they had a special relationship with their host, the rule that meant they would each RESPECT EACH OTHER and treat the other well. The host was gracious, caring, and did not ask too many questions, while the guest was kind, respectful, and always very grateful for the hosts hospitality. It was a mutual bond that people understood back then, and belive me, there was definitely “stranger danger” back then too; people walked around with daggers and swords. It just really makes me sad that people now are so mistrustful because some idiots decided it was a good idea to steal and maim and kill and do all assortment of terrible things. Its really just too sad.

also, i really want to examine belly’s “mistake,” but im really tired and just don’t feel like it. I’ll post that tomorrow if i have time, if not, by this weekend.

 

Namaste