Many festivals were held in his honor, the most famous of which were the Pythian Games, celebrated at Delphi every three years. Artemis and her younger twin brother Apollo were the children of Zeus and Leto , born in Delos.
She is the lady of the forest and all the wild things, as well as the Huntsman- in-chief to the gods, an odd office for a woman. Like Apollo she hunts with silver arrows. She is one of the three virgin goddesses along with Athena and Hestia.
Surprisingly, she also presides over childbirth, this goes back to the fact that she did not cause her mother any pain when she was born. As always in Greek Mythology, she also had her dark side, showing her as fierce and vengeful warrior.
For example, although she is the protector of the young, she kept the Greek Fleet from sailing to Troy , until Iphigenia , a royal maiden, daughter of the Commander in Chief Agamemnon was sacrificed to her. All because the Greek soldiers killed one of the creatures, a hare, together with her young. On the other hand, when women died a quick and painless death, they were said to have been slain by Artemis' silver arrows. Artemis was vindictive and there were many who suffered from her anger.
One of her actions was to join Apollo in killing the children on Niobe. Artemis took part in the battle against the Giants, where she killed Gration. She also destroyed the Aloadae and is said to have killed the monster Bouphagus. Other victims of Artemis included Orion and Actaeon , as well as Meleager, who was fated to die as the result of the Calydonian Boar hunt instigated by Artemis.
Artemis was also associated with the moon, and called Phoebe and Selene Luna in Latin , neither name originally belonged to her. Phoebe was a titan, one of the elder gods.
So was Selene, a moon- goddess and sister of Helios , the sun-god often confused with Artemis' brother, Apollo. In the later poems Artemis became associated with another goddess, Hecate , the dark and awful goddess of the lower world. Hecate was the Goddess of the Dark of the Moon, the black nights when the moon is hidden. She was associated with deeds of darkness, the Goddess of the Crossways, which were held to be ghostly places of evil magic; and awful divinity.
Thus she became "the goddess with three forms," Selene in the sky, Artemis on earth and Hecate in the lower world as well as in the world above, when it is wrapped in darkness.
In Artemis is shown most vividly the uncertainty between good and evil which exists in every god. Ironically, this contrast is least apparent in her brother, the God of Light, Apollo. Artemis was held in honor in al the wild and mountainous areas of Greece, in Arcadia and in the country of Sparta, in Laconia on Mount Taygetus and in Elis. Her most famous shrine was at Ephesus. Artemis absorbed some cults that involved human sacrifice, such as that practiced in Tauris.
She was also the protecting deity of the Amazons who, like her, were warriors and huntresses and independent of men. The cypress is her tree. He proves literally irresistible. He disguises himself as Diana, which is the Roman name for the goddess Artemis. She responds back. I think that Ovid is just behaving the way that men do when they cannot understand the female mind.
I offer you just one example. Men—manly men—go to the bathroom individually. Women go to the bathroom in twos and threes and fours and stuff like that. Why is that? Jupiter loves her and leaves her. Being Jupiter, of course, Calisto is pregnant. She remembers what happened to that funny looking deer. But, in her eighth month or there about, Diana gets a look at her.
Get out! So poor Calisto wanders around in the woods. After Calisto gives birth to a baby boy—the baby boy is named Arcas —Hera turns her into a bear. Or what was your question?
Calisto is condemned to pad about the woods as a bear. While Arcas is raised by shepherds or goats or something like that. Guess who the bear is? Nobody in this room wants to guess who the bear is? These people disrespect me and they get changed into stars and stuff like that. I am so angry. Please promise me they will never get to rest in your soothing waters ever. They never dip below the horizon. Another character who gets a hankering to perform the love deed with Artemis is this guy named Orion.
Orion has the distinction with being the one constellation I can pick out of the sky with any regularity. How many of you are pretty much the same way? Orion wants to do it with Artemis. So she changes him into a constellation. His dog, Sirius , becomes the dog star. You know I try to draw these hunting dogs and they invariably wind up looking like Snoopy.
Yes, he is. In version number two, he gets stung by a scorpion. Okay, very quickly, we will summarize Artemis. She probably did start her career as one of a series of earth-type goddesses who were already worshiped and venerated in ancient Greece by the indigenous Greeks, before the Achaeans ever came in there.
She is also, in addition to being associated with childbirth and young animals, she is also connected with the moon.
Therefore, she is connected with the goddess Selene, the influential moon goddess. She is also connected with the influential underworld goddess, Hecate, last seen telling Demeter just where it was Persephone had been carried off.
Wait a minute. How can Artemis be Selene and Hecate at the same time? This does not compute. When she walks around on the earth hunting she is Artemis.
She is a huntress who prefers the company of other women. She stands out among the Greek pantheon, among the other goddesses for being a goddess who does it her way. I pause for a question up to this point. Synchrotism is that process by which we have Keri, goddess of thunder and also Mona, goddess of thunder. The god Jupiter is the same as the god Zeus.
They are not different gods. They are basically two versions of the same god. Was that a good answer? Ask me another question if it is not. Okay thank you. A good question answered finely. I would think so. One more crack like that and I am going to make you teach this class.
Of course, Rosie does a good job of demonizing her own bad self. But one only need consider the career of—hate to date this, but—Mrs. But I sure do respect her for being able to stand up for what she believes in and being willing to take the flack for it. And so on and so forth. Okay, next Apollo. Apollo according to me is perhaps the most anthropomorphic of the Olympians. His dad is Zeus. He is associated with the sun. As such he is perhaps the most civilized and refined of the gods.
To a certain extent, Apollo is like the ideal of the Greek person and especially the Greek male person. In his myths you would think that a guy like this would have his pick of willing goddesses and females.
It does not work out that way. He never gets the girl. He never gets the boy. Yes, he likes boys sometimes, too. Apollo is, supposedly, a god of wisdom and prophecy. Supposedly, when Apollo was a boy, he had a dream that he was supposed to establish a center of worship on Mount Delphi. So he goes to Mount Delphi, right? He finds a big dragon known as Pytho. We do get our term, python, from that, although Pytho means rotter, she who is rotten.
So he kills it. He incurs miasma. Did I tell you miasma is? Miasma is bloodguilt. It literally means, in ancient Greek, pollution, defilement, and a stain. As such it can be applied to, if you have really bad breath, it could be miasma breath.
Try calling somebody that someday. But as a technical term in Greek mythology it is a term for the bloodguilt you incur when you kill somebody. So he kills me. Stop the insanity, but how? Well, Apollo incurs miasma for killing the python out on Mount Delphi. Eventually he will atone for it. The word Delphi in ancient Greek means dolphin. The real etymology is lost in the depths of time.
The only thing I can guess is that to somebody with a vivid imagination—and probably a pretty good snoot full—the mountain reminded him or her of a dolphin. Remember that the Rorschach test had not yet been invented. Here it goes. For my money, one of the stupidest aetiologies in all of classical Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo changed himself into a dolphin and recruited the priests.
So, next time you see a talking dolphin come up to you No, I was going to suggest you check yourself into the Marion Center or something like that. Supposedly, Delphi is the omphalous or belly button of the world because it is the holy place of the god Apollo.
Indeed Delphi became very quickly the spiritual center of the ancient Greek world. By the way, the belly button of the world is located in very many different places. Most of the students I talk to seem to think that the absolute center of the world is located in Springfield, Missouri.
I think it is. By the way, the Delphic Oracle is percent correct. Write this down. It is percent correct. It is right all the time. People come from all around the Greek world to consult the Delphic Oracle. They have to come to the oracle and they have to bring presents for the god Apollo.
The nicer the present, the more Apollo likes you. They also have to spend time in the city which surrounds the oracle at Delphi. They need to eat and sleep. Quite the little cottage industry. Then, next, when the oracle is open and available, people must buy a sacrificial cake, which is kind of like your year-round pass to Silver Dollar City, I guess.
You come into the area of the prophets and this is what you see. You see a woman wearing a long dress sitting on a tripod chair under which is burning a pot with a special herb in it. When you ask your question to the priestess who is known as the Pythia or the Pythoness, she listens to it and she responds by going pure gibberish.
She babbles. I say this sidling back toward the door, but this fits in very well, of course, with the behavior of a patriarchal society. The woman is inspired. The woman, you know, brings to us the words of the god. Let me tell you a story. The best one is which this king of Lydia by the name of Croesus. Lydia is here in modern day Asia Minor. He was going to go to war with Persia. Before he went to war with Persia, being a smart, Greek-speaking, king sort of guy that he was, he sent off the Delphic Oracle.
Croesus, of course, being a human, being a tragic character, interpreted it to mean exactly what he wanted it to mean; that he was going to kick Persian butt. You know what happened. Does anybody want to know what he says up on top?
I destroyed my kingdom. I misinterpreted the Delphic Oracle.
0コメント