I’m not saying Apollo was a feminist but:

– When Tityus tried to rape Leto, Apollo not only killed him but he also damned him to tartarus and made a rag doll out of him.

– Apollo killed Lampus, who tried to violate his priestess Manto.

– He has the habit of easing the birth pangs of his lovers.

– He created a contraceptive plant (called Silphium) and gifted it to women.

– He turned his gf Cyrene into an immortal nymph so that she could keep hunting, which was her greatest passion.

– Brought a plague on the Greek army because they held his priest’s daughter hostage

– He rescued Molpadia & Parthenos, turned them into goddesses when he saw that their drunk dad was giving them a hard time.

– He gifted eloquence and poetry to his daughters Phemonoe, who became his first Pythia invented hexameter.

– Apollo is the only god speaking through a woman with a womanly voice. His Pythiades were the most powerful & respected women in Ancient Greece (it’s a historical fact)

Apollo would be a feminist today and he’ll be in the front line

A response to the “Athena is a victim blamer and hates women” crowd

The idea that Athena punishes victims of rape is very popular in today’s culture because of how famous Ovid’s retelling of the Medusa myth has gotten. It hurts me that people think that Athena hates assault victims because of 1 (one) story written by a man who hated authority figures and wanted to slander the gods.

Before Ovid’s Metamorphoses (which is part of Roman mythology, not Greek mythology fyi), all of the mythology regarding Medusa said that she was born a monster. She wasn’t a beautiful woman who was assaulted and no one transformed her. She was a sister of Echidna, a monster born from a family of monsters. Ovid’s tale of Medusa is a fictional story that has no basis on greek culture and that he wrote to push a political narrative. If you want to learn how Athena acted in actual greek mythology, here are some stories for you:

- When Ajax The Lesser raped Cassandra at a temple of Athena, Athena punished him and the greeks who failed to chastise him by sending a storm that sank their fleet. Ajax was shipwrecked and drowned, while his people, the (historical) Opuntians, were told by Apollo that to appease the goddess they would have to send maidens to the Trojan land for the next 1000 years, when the maidens arrived there they became priestesses of Athena.

- In Hyginus’ Fabulae, when the princess Nyctimene was found crying in the woods because her own father had raped her, Athena transformed her into her sacred owl and appointed her as her animal companion.

- In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I’m only using this as a source to show how selective people are), Coroneis, princess of Phokis, was chased down by Poseidon. She cried out to Athena and the goddess transformed her into a crow to save her from the rape.

- For Hera’s sake, Athena IS a victim of attempted rape. In mythology, Hephaestus tried to force himself on her and she fought him off. The myth explicitly says that she felt disgusted by this.

Besides Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 4, in every other myth about Athena and rape she is completely against it, protects the woman in danger and punishes the rapist.

Also, let’s talk about how in ancient times the cult of Athena was a escapeway for women. “The cult of Athena provided women in ancient Greece not only with a purpose outside the home and childbearing but a significant role in the life of the city. In the Athenian culture, which regularly suppressed feminine energy, even while celebrating it through their patron deity, Athena’s cult was an opportunity for women to express themselves, be recognized, and contribute to the religious and cultural life of the city.” (World History Encyclopedia, Joshua J. Mark)

In the Parthenon, a famous temple of Athena, there was a statue of Pandora, the first of womankind, where she was honored. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 24. 5)

It’s worth noting that 99% of the sources that we have about ancient greece were written by aristocratic men, we have little to no idea of how women viewed and worshipped the gods. To sum it up, before y’all call Athena an anti-feminist, a rape enabler, or a victim blamer PLEASE read actual mythology and put some respect on Athena Axiopoenus (the avenger against injustice)’s name <3

The weirdest thing about stories that demonize Perseus is that most of that I’ve read for some reason absolve Athena of the blame even claiming that Athena was helping Medusa even though in the Ovid version which most of them take inspiration from make it clear that it’s was a punishment, like it or not Athena was no way helping Medusa in Ovid

She is not, no.

And like, even if she was helping Medusa - how are you going to deal with her also helping Perseus? Twist that into her being ordered ~against her will~ by Zeus to do so? The fact is that Hermes and Athena help Perseus completely unprompted.

Sure, you could assume a background of Zeus wishing his son be given aid and thus telling them, and/or Hermes and Athena jumping in to do so unprompted because they know Zeus wouldn't want Perseus dead, but. There is no such divine maneuvering behind the scenes as part of Perseus' myth.

The only divine "interference" is the aid these two give. He is not ordered by an oracle, and neither is Polydectes ordered through some sort of oracle (given then, from the will of Apollo and thus Zeus) to send Perseus against Medusa.

Perseus is sent against Medusa after an unthinking claim that Polydectes immediately seizes on and forces Perseus to honour - to kill him, so he can forcibly marry his mother.

I just---

I don't know.

Even if one prefers Ovid's version, having Medusa come out the victor between her and Perseus as some sort of whoo, revenge for a rape victim, who is being punished here?

Perseus didn't rape her. Perseus is only there by force, to protect his mother. Killing Perseus accomplishes only this; a dead older teenager and his mother now consigned to sexual assault for the rest of her life. Much win for rape victims, most assuredly. /s

"Subverting" Medusa's death by killing Perseus leaves Medusa's actual rapist still at large, in great health and completely untroubled. It also leaves the one who (unjustly) punished Medusa for being assaulted in a temple and unwillingly committing sacrilege at large, in great health and also, presumably, completely untroubled.

Killing Perseus or making him the villain for your subversion or to give sexual assault victims something back results in only one thing (aside from Perseus and Andromeda dead): Danae in forced wedlock to Polydectes, sexually assaulted.

Great.

50 likes!

I’ve been reading The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece by Kirk Ormand. The Catalogue of Women is a poem attributed to Hesiod that survive only in fragments and deals with women who gave birth to heroes. All the heroic genealogies culminate in the story of the marriage of Helen, which leads to the end of the Age of Heroes. Here’s one little thing that I found interesting:

Ormand says that throughout most of the Catalogue, there are a limited number of formulas that are used to indicate that a man wishes to marry a particularly desirable woman. “He made her his blooming bride”, “[he led her] to his house to be called his beloved bride”. In all of these instances, the man is the active subject, and the woman is both the grammatical object and the object of masculine desire. When it comes to the suitors of Helen, however, a new formula appears: “For greatly he wished in his heart to be the husband of fair-haired Helen”.

“The obvious implications of this shift in the way that the suitors’ desires are portrayed is that the suitors have become less active as subjects. Rather than wishing to make Helen his wife, each suitor wishes to become her husband, a subtle indication that in the marriage, Helen might be the more important partner.” Ormand draws a parallell to the Iliad where Paris is described six times as “Alexandros, husband of fair-haired Helen”, and then points out that:

“The only other male figure from the Iliad who is repeatedly identified as the husband of his famous wife is, interestingly, Zeus, several times with the formula ἐρίγδουπος πόσις Ἥρης (“high-thundering husband of Hera”). Zeus is described as Hera’s husband, and Hera receives Helen’s epithet of fair-haired: at Iliad 10.5, he is πόσις Ἥρης ἠϋκόμοιο (“Husband of lovely-haired Hera”).“

Ormand agrees with Clader who argues: "The parallell is striking, particularly when one considers the relative importance of the πόσις and his lady; Helen is certainly the stronger figure in her context, and grammatically Zeus, too, loses out to Hera (after all, he is being identified by means of her). The expression would seem to be rooted in a period when Hera was still the earth goddess and Zeus was her consort, or was taking the place of her consort.”

Ah, I just love it when people try to blame all the rape in Greek mythology on the Romans. Sorry, babes, but Ovid didn't invent the concept of sexual assault, nor is he the original source of, like, 99% of rape myths.

hot take being a maenad seems fun

Idk the animal abuse and occasional murder is kinda a turn off to me but idk maybe it’s bc I’m an introvert 😔

Do I sometimes like to picture Gaia and Ouranos as the Buried and the Vast from The Magnus Archives?

Maybe.

I need retellings where primordial deities from the dawn of time are presented as awe inspiring, terrifying, unknowable, immeasurable entities whose mere pondering on inspires dread. The Iliad already started this trend when it says that even Zeus dreads causing Nyx displeasure, or the Homeric Hymns when Hera calls on ancient powers to concieve the writhing nest of serpents that is Typhon. The horror is explicit.

Now it's time for modern authors to pick up the slack.

“Medusa’s power is framed as both evil and deadly in accounts of the Gorgons from sources like Pindar and Aeschylus. However, none of these accounts tell of her actually murdering anyone. Although Ovid does mention the statues of men and animals around her cave that testify to the deadly power of her curse, he does not go into any further detail about the circumstances of these encounters.28 The reader is meant to side with Perseus, but it is hard to attribute these deaths to malicious intent on Medusa’s part, especially when Perseus approaches her with the intention to kill on sight. If it is merely the threat of a woman with power that makes Medusa such a reviled figure within this mythology, it is worth wondering how previous encounters between her and others played out. Were these previous statues created through cold-blooded murder on her part? Were they instead the results of self-defence, or even horrible accidents? Was she considered a monster before she was cursed, or did the status come with the snakes and petrifying gaze? Perseus does not go into further detail when he recounts his story, as he kills the monster in her sleep and she therefore never actually acts or speaks in the poem. Medusa is relegated to the realm of monster from the moment she is cursed by Minerva as punishment. In this case, the reality of her malice is irrelevant. Simply the threat of unfettered female power is enough to seal her fate as a monster to be feared, hated, and finally killed.”

— Isabelle George Rosett, Voices of Ancient Women: Stories and Essays on Persephone and Medusa

"In art a Pontic amphora shows Herakles squared off in single combat against a woman armed with spear and shield who is clearly not an amazon, especially since a dignified-looking male with staff stands behind her (London B57). In such circumstances the female is very likely Hera, and that possibility may be strengthened by the goat horn extending up from her cap (or head?); such iconography in Etruscan and early Roman art is later linked with Iuno Sospita. If this interpretation is correct, the artist perhaps intended a story in which Hera challenges her husband's son (the male behind her seems in fact to hinder her spear-thrust)." - Timothy Gantz Early Greek Myth

The ultimate square off. I've always loved this weird representation of Uni/Juno Sospita (specially the uncanny antefix). Curiously but totally unrelated, this isn't the only association between Hera/Herakles/Goats:

"The Lacedaemonians are the only Greeks who surname Hera Goat-eater (Aigophagos), and sacrifice goats to the goddess. They say that Heracles founded the sanctuary and was the first to sacrifice goats, because in his fight against Hippocoon and his children he met with no hindrance from Hera, although in his other adventures he thought that the goddess opposed him. He sacrificed goats, they say, because he lacked other kinds of victims." - Pausanias Descriptions of Greece 3.15.9

Hera GOAT confirmed? (don't ask Herakles)

Artemis should really be kinder to animals

ARTEMIS POTNIA THERON

I don’t think that’s the correct way to handle animals Artemis

"[...] Ovid's Metamorphoses - that extraordinary mythological epic about people changing shape (and probably the most influential work of literature on Western art after the Bible) - repeatedly returns to the idea of the silencing of the women in the process of their transformation. Poor Io is turned by the god Jupiter into a cow, so she cannot talk but only moo; while the chatty nymph Echo is punished so that her voice is never her own, merely an instrument for repeating the words of others."

Mary Beard, Women & Power

@deathlessathanasia when she sees 99% of Greek mythology retellings

I have such a weird relationship with Greek myth-based stories. So far I've read about 110 (yeah I just counted them)books and series and out of them all I only rated four with 5 stars. Clearly, my expectations are ridiculous and this is why no one should take my opinions about Greek mythology retellings seriously.

I think you and the Hera's fan lady hates Lord Apollo 😞

It's okay if you don't like him, but please show respect for the people who worship him... Always i want to see the news of Apollon and Artemis i found posts or asks of how he is a mysoginist or how he could be a perfect villain... Aeschylus is the one who was a mysoginist, not Apollon, that argument in Eumenides contradicts many myths of him in were he supports women (like Leto, Artemis, the Muses, many of his lovers).

We need to know that the tragedies are not resources for the deities worship... Wasn't wrote by religious people, were poets and dramaturgs! Takes it like an "ancient fanfic"

Also Lady Artemis, she wasn't a mysoginist! We need also to puts ourselfs in the context and the ancient laws... And i repeat, the aurho was the mysoginist, not the deities

I don't know if you will answer me, i understand if you don't, but please, i'm tired of people blaming the Gods and Goddesses 😞😫

Also sorry if my english is bad, is nor my laungage

I actually don’t hate him but I disagree with claim that we should ignore Aeschylus he was part of culture and religion and was a significant playwright and his play or more accurately his trilogy of plays The Oresteia was one of the most significant plays Greek plays to ever exist and clearly this play was reflective of his culture and religion and also to the claim That we shouldn’t use tragedies as sources for god worship i kinda of disagree most of what we know about Greek religion comes from the tragedians and poets not from priests examples like Medea by Euripides is one of the most important sources for life of Medea even though we know that Euripides made some major changes to her character and how much we would’ve know about the theban cycle like stories of Antigone and Oedipus if it was not for the tragedians however yes i do agree that the claim that Apollo,Athena or Artemis are misogynistic is wrong oversimplistic they meant different things to different people for example Artemis in Ephesus was worshipped in different capacity than Artemis in Athens and i and @deathlessathanasia were not attacking Apollo worshipers if it was seen as a an attack then I am sorry and i don’t think Apollo worshipers should be attacked and they should worship him freely as they want

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

How can it be right for you to make laws for men, and appear as lawbreakers yourselves? Why, if - suppose something impossible, for the sake of argument - if you, Apollo, and Poseidon, and Zeus King of Heaven, are to pay to men the lawful indemnity for every rape you commit, you will empty your temples in paying for your misdeeds. You put pleasure first and wisdom after

euripides ion

Hmm these anti-god sentiments are really problematic. 😡 Another reason for why we should also cancel Euripides.