Golden throned Hera

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Hymn 12 To Hera.

Of golden throned Hera I sing!
She was born of Rhea.
Queen of the deathless ones
She is foremost in bearing.

Sister and wife
Loud thundering Zeus.

Glorious she is,
And all the blest
Of high Olympus
Stand in dread of her.

And they honour her
Equal with Zeus
Who delights in thunder.

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Hera is an old god, attested to in Mycenaean tablets as E-ra. Her name
is open to interpretation. Maybe related to Hora, or season, to show
that she is ripe for marriage. One of her roles is the Goddess of
marriage. She is often represented (as is Demeter) in a three fold
aspect. The Girl (Pais), The wife (Teleia, which also can mean the
perfect, the fulfilled, without blemish), and finally the Widow
(Chere). In this she shows a history the live of women. Is it also
representing the yearly cycle spring, summer, winter? Every year she
regains her virginity by bathing in the sacred stream Kanathos, in
Samos her anionic plank was washed in the sea.

Chadwick sees her name as being the feminine version of the word
hero. Or maybe it is the feminine version of master, that is
mistress. Regardless her temple at Samos is the first enclosed temple,
dating back to 800BC. Before this she is represented aniconicly as a
pillar in Argos, and a plank of wood in Samos. Argos being one of the
cities she loved best, the others being Sparta and Mycenae. 

Was she a remnant of earlier matriarchal religion and society? Rather
than seeing myth as 'other people's religion', it may be better to see
myth as other people's history. Was her marriage and subordination of
Zeus, as well as her frequent opposition and jealousy to Zeus an echo
of this great overturning? Do not the frequent punishments that Zeus
feels he has to mete out to his wife point to the period of struggle
that must have arisen from an overturning of matriarchy, and could the
overturning have proceeded any other way than by violence? I do not
know enough to be able to give an firm answer, but my 'feeling' would
be yes, this is what happened and the marriage of Zeus and Hera is a
record of the rise of the patriarchy.

We can look at for example her hostility to Herakles, her hostility to
the many 'affairs' of Zeus, and also his response to her infidelities.
Many beatings and once even tying her to a cloud, with anvils on her
feet. The punishments of her lovers, Kalypso, complains in book 5 of
the Odyssey about the unfairness of the male gods taking lovers, and
punishing the females for doing the same thing. Could we also see
echos of this in her various epitaphs, such as (Iliad 8.209) Aptoepes,
fearless in speech, as well as Neikei, fond of quarrels or strife. How
many women toady to are referred to in these shrewish terms? Does all
this point to Hera as being a woman who is oppressed and yet still
striving for her freedom?

Cows are sacred to her, as are peacocks. She is also often shown
holding a pomegranate or an opium poppy. The pomegranate, as well as
being the symbol of Kore, is the symbol of the ancient Great Goddess.

In my translation I down played her beauty and tried to reinforce the
idea of her being equal to Zeus. I hope I did not do too much violence
to the originate poem.

The Barren Sea

Hymn 22 to Poseidon

About Poseidon I begin to sing!
Mover of the earth and desolate sea
Lord of the Deep!
He Enfolds Helikon
And wide Aigai

The honoured gods divided
Amongst themselves the world.

And two fold is your share, Earth-shaker.
Tamer of horses and saviour of ships.

Hail Earth-holding,
Deep sea dark maned Poseidon!
Blessed you are, and generous of heart.
Give aid to those who sail upon the sea.

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Poseidon is in some stories the senior brother of Zeus, in others he is the younger brother. Regardless of seniority the brothers Zeus, Poseidon and Aides (with the initial A sound being aspirated, that is pronounced with an H sound - therefore Hades) drew lots.

Zeus won the sky, this can be seen from the etymology of his name, from the PIE Deyus; the day or *dyeu to shine (this is better seen in the Roman name Jupiter which means something very much like the sky father.) Poseidon won the seas, the origin of the name is more problematic, and can mean something like the Husband of the Earth, or (to me more likely) Lord of the Waters. Plato, in his dialogue Cratylus, thought the name could come mean Knowing many things, from Polla eidotos or Polla eidon, but from my amateur efforts this seems to be a going backwards and trying to find the name given in the past from the present. Some others authorities feel Poseidon is an older pre-Greek name, found on Mycenaean tablets at Knossos as po-se-da-wo-ne (Mycenaean alphabet was syllable based, not letters), so from at least 1100 BC. He is associated with Demeter, and is not yet the sea god, but is already at this stage the earth shaker. An obviously important aspect in Ancient Crete. Maybe he came to Greece as Anatolian God of Horses.

The third brother Aides, whose name means 'the unseen', won the kingdom of the underworld, which he ruled with Demeter's daughter Persephone.

It seems as if many of the ancients thought that the earth, was like a plate that floated on the sea. Is this the source of the idea of Poseidon being the earth-holder? I can not say for sure, but intuitively this seems to me to be the case. The sea that Poseidon has rule over is of course the Mediterranean sea, with Okeanus being the river that flows around the entire earth.

One word that caused me considerable consternation was the word atrugetoio. Many of the words of the ancients are remarkably elastic, having many different uses. One thing I have learned in this past year or so of vainly trying to make sense of Ancient Greek, is that there are many Greeks. Many variations on the language. With only a short step back one can see that this is true. The language covers the time frame of, of let us say, 800BC (about the time of Homer and Hesiod) to, again let us arbitrarily say, about 350AD when Constantinople was consecrated. Even here we are talking about long time periods. Constantinople was founded on the location of Byzantium which was first colonised in about 560BC, something like 890 years earlier. England was under the rule of the Normans, in China it was the height of the Song Dynasty, and in France Aberlard was castrated in the equivalent distance, which would be sometime about 1120AD, 890 years ago. The ancient Greek language was spoken over a long period of time, and over a large area, from Sicily to the banks of the Indus. All of this points to a diversity of Greek. And so the basis for my confusion concerning the word atrugetoio.

Once I understood that this was the Homeric version of the genitive case, I was able to make some sense of what was said. The first, and most common translation I got for this word was unfertile, unfruitful. It did seem a bit confusing to call the sea unfertile, but understandable as well. I do not, unlike some commentators, feel that the Greeks did not understand the idea of the riches of the sea, one only has to read some of the old texts, dig around into the cookbooks to understand that sea food was very important to Greek culture. I would think we would have to look at the sea from the eyes of the navigator, the sailor. Or as Coleridge said; in what has become a clichéd construction, "Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink". Autenrieth, in his Homeric Dictionary had a reference to the word meaning restless. This seemed to make sense to me, as a restless ocean can not be harvested. Atrugetos, a later form of the same word is defined as having the prefix 'A' meaning a negative with the word Truge, meaning a crop, harvest, vintage and the like (with hoi epi truge meaning the grape-gatherers.) So this leads us to the literal meaning of not-harvest.

Other dictionaries, while agreeing that Atrugetos is an epitaph for both the sea and the air (aither) explain the word as meaning restless, unwasting. This can easily be extended to mean barren, desolate and the like, and is seen in the Iliad (1.316) (They) sacrificed to Apollo prefect hecatombs of cows and goats on the barren sand beside the sea. Here it describes the sandy beach. Being elastic the word also came to be used to describe death as the 'fruitless night' (of sleep.) My Pocket Oxford Dictionary seems to want to please everyone and uses the definition of unfruitful, desert; ever-fluctuating. In the end, after much tossing and turning I came to land upon desolate. Creating the image of the sea (from the eyes of the nautes) as being a howling wilderness.

Helikon, the mountain of Muses who taught Hesiod how to sing, and home of the fountains Aganippe (as a cult aspect of mare-headed Demeter it means something like 'the mare that destroys mercifully') and Hippocrene (from hippo meaning horse and krene meaning fountain.) Helikon is sacred to Poseidon, maybe in his role as Lord of the Horse. Also sacred to Poseidon is Aigai, mentioned in the Odyssey 5:398 'Content that Odysseus was suffering in the open sea, Poseidon lashed his horses and made his way to Aigai.' also in the Iliad 13.19 'Poseidon strides towards Aigai with the countryside trembling under his feet.'

The final interesting confusion to me was the description of Poseidon as being kuanochaita, or dark blue/purple haired. Kuanos is the word to describe the blue enamel which was used to adorn armour, or lapis lazui, also the dark blue of the ocean and the blue corn flower. So with so much to choose from I had to go with deep sea dark maned. (Although the punk in me wanted to give him purple hair.)


The image is from http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K2.1B.html

Polytropos

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Hermes is fast becoming one of my favourite of the ancient Greek gods. Why is that? He is, like Ulysses, referred to as polytropos - being of many turns. Tropos is a word that has several meanings. Many of the words in ancient Greek had to perform many tasks. Most of the definitions of tropos centre around being a turn, a mode, a fashion or a manner. From this we get our modern, maybe overused word trope; meaning a figure of speech.

Versatile. Cunning he was, a thief and a watcher in the night. He stole the cattle of Apollo and built the first lyre from a tortoise shell and the guts of the stolen cattle. A rover and a drover, the bringer of dreams and of good luck. As he is messenger between the gods and mortals he becomes the guardian of boundaries and the guardian of interpretations. He protects harlots and thieves and crones. In his mode (or trope) as messenger he helps travellers and runners. He is often shown as an adolescent in the art works, alluding to role as a guardian of transitions. It was in this role as guardian of boundaries that he suffered the sacrilege referred to as the Destruction of the Hermai. Statues of Hermes had been set up in many places in Athens. These were simple blocks of stone with the head of the god, as well as his exaggerated phallus. These markers were also rumoured to ward off evil. On the eve of the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition unknown vandals smashed off the penis, as well as (even worse) mutilating the face of many of these statues. This was understandably the cause of great anxiety in the city, and in retrospect should have resulted in cancelling the project, which become in many ways the Stalingrad of the ancient world.

Hermes may be an old god, for he is mentioned in Linear B inscriptions found in Knossos and Pylos as e-ma-a. Others traditions say that he may been an import from the East. Although to my thinking it is best to think of the Eastern Mediterranean as being a single culture. Regardless of his origin he was worshiped in the more remote, wild places such as Arcadia. As such he was the patron of farmers and shepherds. Amusing to me to think the laconic dry witted farmer type gave rise to the smooth talking interpreter. From his early shaman origins he would have been involved in divination, of crossing between this world and the other. Evolving into the trickster dream bringing god, and giving us the words hermetic and hermeneutics.

Also it is interesting to compare Kriophoros Hermes (Ram Bearing Hermes) to early Christian imagery of the Good Shepherd. But that is another story for another day.






























Polytropos indeed.

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Homeric Hymn 17 - To Hermes

Of Cyllenian Hermes I sing! Slayer of Argos,
Guardian of Cyllene and of Arcadia
Rich in flocks of goats and sheep.

Luck bringing messenger of the gods.
Own child of Maia, daughter of Atlas,
Who had intercourse with Zeus.

Bashful she shunned
The crowded tumult
Of the deathless ones.

Into her shaded cavern
Came the son of Kronous.
To the young fair haired
Cutely trimmed new wife.

They made love in the dark
Of the night entwined in her hair

While smoothed limbed
Hera slept sweetly.

They escaped the notice
Of the deathless gods
And the mortal ones.

Of you I rejoice,
Son of Zeus and Maia
Of you I begin,
And so pass over
To other melodies.

Rejoice!
Joy giving guide,
Bringer of good luck.


pictures are from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0007MAN-Herma.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hermes_crioforo.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Good.Shepherd.Vatican.Museum.jpg