The 3rd Annual #NAMEthatBUTT Challenge begins October 6th!

Artemis/Diana's beautiful backside in motion!

Join me over at blog.amaliadillin.com for some mythic sculpture fun beginning October 6th, and test your knowledge of mythology with the 3rd Annual #NAMEthatBUTT Challenge!

This year the games will cross over to this blog, as well, with some bonus clues appearing here, as called for -- I'll be using quotes from my books which relate to the butts in question, and if you guess which book I'm quoting from, you'll get a bonus two points for that week's round! (Spoiler: you can safely eliminate the Orc Saga books from these events -- so if you want to prepare by reading up, focus your attentions on HELEN OF SPARTA, and my Fate of the Gods trilogy!) As a result, you can expect this blog to be mostly finely sculpted backsides for the immediate future, and regularly scheduled posting will likely not resume until next year. (Words to write! Holidays to Holi! etc, etc.)

And since the games are coming, I thought it would be a good idea to post the rules for those of you who might be new to this greatest of adventures, just in case you want to play along!

THE RULES:

• Comments will be moderated.  You will NOT see your comment appear immediately after posting! 
• I post a butt and clues at blog.amaliadillin.com on Tuesday, you guess who that butt belongs to in the comments yonder. If you guess right, you get 5 points. 
• There may be a bonus clue posted on Wednesdays over at blog.amaliacarosella.com -- when applicable they will be announced on Tuesday in the main post and instructions for how to bonus it up will be included in the bonus post!
• If you CORRECTLY identify the artistic work (title/artist) in question, you earn a bonus 5 points total: 2.5 for title, 2.5 for artist. (Provided of course, that it differs from the subject's name alone and the artist is known at all)
• The following Friday, I reveal the full backside image of the sculpture in question! If at this time you can correctly identify artist/title/subject of the piece, you can earn up to 3 points (total -- 1 point for artist, 1 point for title, 1 point for subject) 
• You may guess artist/title/subject/book from which I've quoted until the next round of NAME THAT BUTT begins. (Usually the next Tuesday -- I'll reveal the previous week's sculpture and offer the next butt for guessing!)
• I'll keep a running tally of correct answers/points.
• For Olympians, Greek AND Roman names are acceptable for the subject guesses. For example, if the butt belongs to Mercury, I will also accept Hermes as a correct answer. Titles of works must be exact, however.
• A new NAME THAT BUTT may NOT be posted every week, depending on Things, but it's my hope they will be. 
• There will be Prizes at the finish. They will be shipped internationally. I haven't decided what they'll be yet, but for sure they will include #NAMEthatBUTT postcards/stickers.

I do hope you'll join us in the fun!

For the Love of Artemis (Art post!)

Let's start with a song, because I recently had the pleasure of seeing Dar Williams live, and she's a great advocate for mythology, if you ask me, and her song CRYSTAL CREEK is totally about Artemis, and I absolutely love the way she brought this particular myth forward with a modern framing.




But this post is mostly an excuse to share this sculpture which I came across in the National Gallery of Art in DC, of Artemis/Diana. (And the photo I took which is not completely crooked! SHOCKING, I know!)

Diana and a Hound
(photo © me!)

There's just something about the images of Diana with her hounds, or on the hunt, that really grab me. This is from the 1920s, and it's absolutely stunning, if perhaps a bit art-deco-ish to my untrained eye.

(Yes, I'm still writing. But this sculpture totally deserved its own post, anyway.)

Stay Classy, Zeus (Zeus and Callisto)

Diana of the Tower
(yet another example of why I should
not be allowed to take photos.)

Pretty commonly, when Zeus wanted to get it on with a lady forbidden to him (either by his marriage to Hera or parental control), Zeus took the form of something else to disguise himself. Sometimes this disguise was for the benefit of those who might be watching for his next infidelity, but sometimes it was to deceive the woman he wanted, grant her a false sense of security, and then do the deed once she was in his power.

The story of Europa and the Bull is a good example of this particular device, which we have discussed at length elsewhere. But today, we're going to talk about that time that Zeus took it even further--too far, even. We're going to talk about Zeus's rape of Callisto.

Callisto, you see, was a sworn virgin, a nymph of Artemis, who herself was a virgin goddess. So what did Zeus do in order to get with his daughter's ladyfriend and devotee?

Apollodorus (3.8.2) presents the story this way:

Now Zeus loved her and, having assumed the likeness, as some say, of Artemis, or, as others say, of Apollo, he shared her bed against her will, and wishing to escape the notice of Hera, he turned her into a bear.

If Zeus took the form of Artemis herself in order to get close to Callisto, and then when he had her in his grasp, took her virginity and impregnated her, there is no excuse for it. He could have at least had the decency to present himself as a dude, so Callisto wouldn't have been caught completely unaware. But this is only the first half of the story -- the second half is what happened after. Because Callisto? she didn't get the Happily Ever-married-off-to-some-other-guy-and-leave-the-fruit-of-this-unwanted-labor-to-die-of-exposure After.

In the next breath, Apollodorus tells us:

But Hera persuaded Artemis to shoot her down as a wild beast. Some say, however, that Artemis shot her down because she did not keep her maidenhood. When Callisto perished, Zeus [...] turned [her] into a star and called it the Bear.

Now look. Zeus has power. He can give the gift of immortality when he wants to, and if he can turn a girl into a bear, he can darn well protect her from Artemis' bow, even from Hera's wrath, were he moved to give said girl just a moment more of his attention beyond the pleasure he's stolen from her body.  But he doesn't. He almost never does. And I really struggle to understand why. Is it to make these women cautionary tales? Even your virgin goddess won't protect you, if you catch the eye of a man? Your virgin goddess will turn on you, the moment you break your vows, whether you do so willfully or not? Are these stories meant to keep women in their place? Tied to men and the protection of fathers, brothers, and husbands? I can't decide. But I do know one thing:



This particular story is why, in my most humble of opinions, Poseidon will always be classier than Zeus.

Relating to Hera

Juno

As you know, Hera is the wife of Zeus, and Queen of the gods in Greek mythology. She's also pretty notorious for sentencing people to a) madness or b) death in punishment for Zeus finding them attractive and/or giving birth to them.

I'm not saying that Hera doesn't have perfectly good reason to be up in arms -- Zeus gives her justification after justification for any and all acts of vengeance, without even the slightest of apologies. His affair with Leda as a Swan, Europa as a bull, his affair with Callisto wherein he took the form of Artemis, even! There's quite an extensive list of his infidelities, and I'll tell you, if I were Hera, I'm not sure I'd be even half as reasonable as she was about the continued parade of indiscretions and lovechildren.

But Hera isn't a goddess of revenge. She's a goddess of marriage, childbirth, of women in general. The goddess of the pious wife, the loving mother. We just... don't see a lot of that in her myths. More often, we see her cursing Heracles with a madness which convinces him to murder his own wife and children, simply because he's a son of Zeus. We see the sly, deceitful Hera, seducing her husband for the sole purpose of circumventing his command in the Iliad. We see the woman who punishes other women for catching the eye of her husband, not unlike Athena punishes Medusa, when Poseidon ravages the poor priestess in the goddess's own temple. (And that, from the goddess of Wisdom and Reason!)

and her peacock

To the Romans, Hera was Juno, and their interpretation of her was slightly different, more solemn, a protector of the state. Even, perhaps, with a warrior element. There's no question that she's incredibly complex, in both interpretations. And I have to wonder, really. Was part of this complexity, this difficulty in her character, related to the difficulty men have in understanding women as mothers, wives, virgins? Is Hera's ultimate character the result of the male struggle to be anything but mind-boggled by women and their motivations?

One thing is certain: Hera makes for an easy villain in a lot of mythological retellings, and I'm always slightly baffled by how underutilized she is in that form -- especially when the most frequent substitution seems to be Hades.

images © me!

PSA: I'll be away from the blog for the next two weeks, but I'll be back again with new posts on July 3rd!