Some Hard Truths and Gloria Victis

I don't discuss much of my personal anything on this blog, but there are some hard truths being revealed which necessitate me to take a bit of a hiatus again --

1) My cat is on the downward slope of a very wearing battle for her health, and we are pretty sure the end is coming in the next couple of weeks. What time I have that is not taken by deadlines or absolutely necessary work is now spent in her care -- making sure she eats what little we can get her to eat and is medicated, making sure she knows she's loved, making sure that when the day comes that there is nothing left to do to make her comfortable, I know I put her first and did right by her. She's only 10. We thought we'd have a lot longer with her.

For those of you who don't have pets, I just ask for understanding, because this is a really, really difficult time for us. Particularly as it has come on the heels of another loss, which leads me to the second event which necessitates my hiatus:

2) Earlier this year we lost El Husband's grandmother, and now that the weather is turning, the family is gathering for funeral services. Ourselves included.

The third item is a more positive "I've got a lot on my plate in April" bullet point, which I'm very grateful for, but means that the headspace I have left for blogging is pretty much burned up with all the OTHER words I need to be writing. So.

We'll see you on the other side of the writer-cave-tunnel, from which I hope to emerge in May! And in the meantime, allow me to share with you this fantastic bronze -- Gloria Victis, because regardless of what comes, or how hard things get, I believe that I will find the strength to triumph, if not gloriously, at least... somehow. At heart, I am very much the optimist.

(And if that isn't Athena-Nike, or at least Nike, I do not know what is.)

photos taken by and belong to me!

The Iliad as Historical Record

The Trojan War is a fascinating event, at once both myth and understood as historical in nature. To the Greeks, there was no question of the fact that it had occurred-- even Thucydides accepts it as fact. They believed it had happened. Perhaps not to the scale of the poem, but a war had been waged between the Greeks and the Trojans. The poem was treated as historical record for a very, very long time, as much as it was a view into legend and later, the myths of the gods, and a work of art and literature.

Homer's Iliad (perhaps not quite as long as it is today, and certainly not exactly as it was written) was an oral recitation before it ever made it to paper--or scrolls, but we can still see in its language the devices used by a bard or story teller to complete the meter of the lines and allow the poet to remember what comes next. The poem is full of repetition. Phrases, even entire passages are reiterated. Some of these things are identifying characteristics such as "white-armed goddess Hera" and "bright-eyed Athena" and others are ritual, such as the description of how offerings and sacrifices were made to the gods. That the repetition is preserved in the poem as it was written down is fascinating, and it's a veritable gold mine of an example for writers who may be interested in trying to adapt their written work into something that could be sold on iTunes to the world of people attached to their mp3 players. These devices could serve us just as well as they did ancient bards.

The other beautiful (and problematic) thing about The Iliad is the smorgasbord of customs! Because it comes from an oral tradition, and the poem was refined by each teller for his time, using this catalog of phrases, they could and did insert new, more modern ones, as time went on, adding them to the archaic phrases and customs already in place. This means that looking at the Iliad for daily customs for a particular time is probably not going to give you a good picture of any specific time and place, but rather, an overview of customs for an extensive period in history from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, thrown back on the Trojan war as an historical event.

In my personal opinion, the a lot of the value of The Iliad is not its preservation of an historical event, but in the preservation of the gods and their characters. Sure, it also gives us a look at how war was glorified and the ideas of the Greek culture in that regard, but it's hardly of the same historical significance in regard to the actual event it transcribes as, say, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. From the epics of Homer we are given a lot of information about the society and culture as a whole, especially its reverence for the gods that were worshipped. But its those gods that give the story mythological and legendary proportion. The gods involving themselves in mortal affairs, from Athena sweeping down to stay Achilles hand from striking at Agamemnon to Achilles own immortal heritage, and Helen's.

It's not unlike the Old Testament, when Prophets walked the earth and the voice of God boomed from the heavens. The destruction of Troy as a vendetta by Hera and Athena isn't that far different (though much more mercurial) than God's own destruction of cities and peoples that displeased Him. But the story does more than just capture these moments between gods and men, and goes so far as to show us the infighting and strife that must have been ongoing between Zeus and his wife and his entire family. We are given the understanding of the gods as a disagreeing family under the rule but not entirely submissive to, their patriarch.

We are also given to understand that a great war such as the one waged against Ilium was more than just mortal rage and lust for plunder, but set in motion by forces beyond mortal understanding and control. Ordained and encouraged by the gods, so to speak. A theme which I find fascinating to the extreme.

The Fall of Antaeus, Son of Poseidon

The Epic Wrestling Match
photo © me!

Antaeus was a son of Poseidon and Gaia, a giant who drew power directly from his mother -- that is, the earth itself. He was one of those jerks who wouldn't let anyone pass through his land without first defeating him in a wrestling match. (This is the kind of guy Theseus might have taken apart on the Isthmus Road, just for the record. And in fact, Theseus does defeat a similar Wrestle-or-Die figure in Kerkyon as one of his own labors. I'd imagine the parallels are deliberate.) But of course, Antaeus being Antaeus, and drawing power from the ground underneath him, he was unbeatable. The losers ended up dead, and their skulls shingled his temple roof to the glory of Poseidon.

Why those skulls didn't go to a temple to the glory of his mother, whose strength allowed him to perform these feats, I do not know. Maybe he was trying to get his dad's attention, because Poseidon was an absent father figure. Considering Poseidon and Zeus' track records, it isn't difficult to imagine that they neglected their less impressive children.

Anyway. One day, Heracles was passing through Libya (Antaeus' home turf) and Antaeus being Antaeus couldn't just let that opportunity go. I'm sure at that point he was thinking: YES. A real opponent! Or maybe something along the lines of: Haha! If I defeat Heracles I will be famous throughout all the lands and my name will be remembered for all time! Fame was, as we know from Achilles' choice, of great value to the Greeks. But either way, whether it was pride or because he just wanted to test himself, Heracles was made to wrestle him.

Now, this sculpture -- I don't know. Antaeus does not look very large for a giant, or else Heracles has got to be supersized for a man. Maybe it was a little bit of both. But regardless, the story ends the way you might expect. Heracles lifts Antaeus up off the ground in a crushing bear-hug, preventing the giant from drawing upon his mother's power. Antaeus weakens, and Heracles defeats him utterly.

Now, Heracles is kind of not the brightest crayon in the box himself, so some say that Athena told him how to win. But no matter how he figured it out, it seems kind of like dirty wrestling, to me.

...Not that Antaeus didn't deserve to reap what he sowed.

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!