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Ancient Gods 105

Apr 26, 2023, 1:51 PM

Quality entertainment is hard to find. The standards of today just aren’t what they used to be centuries ago. For instance, today we get “Housewives of Whatever County” griping that their spouses are boinking the neighbors, or that cats are eating their salads.

That’s not drama. As we learned in Ancient Gods 104, the Greeks might reply “Salad? Hey man, at least your wife isn’t f*****g a bull!” Now THAT is DRAMA.

Pasiphae and Daedalus work on her mechanical bull. Head in lower left corner. From a villa in Zeugma, Turkey. 200 BCE.

Zeugma Mosaic Museum

These eyes…cry every night for you…

Pour me another, babe

Last time we covered god-on-god sex. And it got dirty. But as bad as the gods could be, it was the goddesses that you really had to look out for. Here’s a good example of how vengeful the divine ladies could get, before we move on to god-on-man sex.

Hold on, it’s coming. But first, Arachne was a beautiful maiden who lived in Turkey. Since her father was a shepherd and there was always plenty of wool around, she became very skilled at weaving.

Arachne hard at work

Arachne was so skilled that she became boastful and claimed that she could weave better than even the goddess of handicrafts and wisdom, Athena. Calling out a god. That was mistake number one.

Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom. She looks so reasonable, doesn’t she? Don’t be fooled.

Athena was game to show her skills and put this uppity mortal in her place, and so they had a contest to see who could weave better…god, or man. To everyone’s amazement, Arachne’s skill on the loom was unsurpassed. Her tapestry was far superior in beauty and quality to even the goddess Athena’s work. Uh oh. That was mistake number two. Don’t upstage a god.

Ancient weaving image

Obligatory Hugo Weaving image

Naturally, Athena was outraged, humiliated, and flew off the handle, as I have heard women sometimes do.

She ripped Arachne’s tapestry to shreds, destroyed her loom, and then even cracked Arachne on the skull with her divine weaving shuttle.

Then things got ugly. As an additional punishment for her arrogance, Athena transformed Arachne into a hideous creature, and cursed Arachne’s children to be just as ugly and to weave in vain all their lives. They still do to this day, and that is why we call Arachne’s children “arachnids,” or spiders.

The god’s grim humor. Arachne is given multiple arms to weave with.

One of Arachne’s children

So you can see how the early gods served to keep arrogant man in his place, and as science to explain the world around us. Now you know where spiders come from, and you won’t go around bragging about your tailoring skills, either, will you?

Sew on with the show. Pasiphae and Arachne weren’t the only women to fall victim to the anger of the gods. Next we’ll look at Polyphonte, who suffered a similar fate.

A possible Polyphonte

All Polyphonte wanted was to remain a virgin. Was that too much to ask? It’s a noble endeavor, to save yourself for the right person. I was also very noble, but that’s because all the women I knew gave me no choice in the matter.

Except that it wasn’t noble for the Goddess of Lust, Aphrodite. Virginity was a personal affront to her values.

Aphrodite in her Court

More Aphrodite. Sorry dude, you got the little person serve big person part right, but it’s gonna take a lot more than that package to please a goddess.

Still more Aphrodite. “Oops. Did I forget to wear bottoms…again?”

So as punishment for wanting to be a virgin, Aphrodite gave Polyphonte a grizzly curse. She made her fall in love with a bear. Oof.

To make a long story short, Polyphonte and the bear did the deed, and she gave birth to two horrible creatures, the cannibalistic wild man-bears Agrius…

and Oreius.

Zeus was so repulsed and disgusted with both the creatures and the family clan that he sent Hermes to kill them all. (Very Yahweh of him btw.) But Hermes took mercy on them and transformed them all into birds. Nice.

Agrius became an owl,

Oreius became a vulture,

and momma Polyphonte became a strix, or a demon-bird. So now we know where all those creatures came from, too. Isn’t science cool?

Next on our hot-mess dysfunction tour is Phaedra. Not to be confused with a phaeton, which is a stylish open motor carriage.

Phaedra was the daughter of the bull-loving Pasiphae and the King of Crete, so the Minotaur was her half-brother. Yeah, her family had all kinds of problems. But despite being the daughter of a king she still married up – to a demigod named Theseus. The product of a woman and a god.

Phaedra, from a fresco in Pompei

Pheadra’s demigod husband, Theseus, slaying his brother-in-law, the Minotaur

Demigods weren’t unheard of back then, with a half dozen or so in Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh, for instance), another half dozen or so in Egypt (Osiris, for instance), and over 50 in Greece. So the idea of being part man and part god goes way back. The gods LOVED the ladies.

Speaking of demigods, rumor has it that Kim Jong Un sank his first hole-in-one at age 6 months old.

As common as demigods were, the idea of divine conception was not unheard of either. Usually it only took one god and one lady to make a demigod. But Theseus had two dads and a mom, sort of like Jesus.

Jesus had God (the Father) and Joseph as dads, and Theseus had Zeus (the king of gods) and King Aegeus of Athens as dads. Having an extra guy around was a bit more exclusive in Greek Mythology. The gods usually operated solo with the ladies. So King Aegeus was kinda special. You might have even heard of his sea, the Aegean.

Theseus the demigod has quite a story. He’d make several good posts all on his own. He was married either three or four times, he went to hell with his good buddy and got him killed, he killed one of his pregnant wives, he killed his wife Phaedra’s half-brother the Minotaur, and you might have also heard of his ship.

The Theseus’s Ship Paradox

The Theseus Ship Paradox is a great philosophical question that gets to the heart of the definition of identity and change over time. And if it applies to ship planks, does it also apply to human cells? Since my cells are being replaced all the time, was the young me the same as the old me, and if not, then what is me? Am I a constant entity, or a continual evolution? Deep.

Anyway, for now Theseus is only important because he was Phaedra’s husband, and because he had a son, named Hippolytus, through another wife. So Phaedra was Hippolytus’s step-mom. You might see where this is going…

Hippolytus, like Polyphonte, only wanted to be a virgin. And again, Aphrodite was having none of it. But instead of giving Phaedra the hots for a bull or a bear, it’s for her own step-son this time. Paging Pronhub!

Hippolytus turned down Phaedra’s advances so in vengeance she accused him of rape. And then Theseus begged the gods to kill his own son Hippolytus for rap ing his wife, which they do, and then Phaedra, out of guilt, killed herself too. It’s all the same stuff you might find in the stands on any random night at a Carolina home game.

Phaedra and Hippolytus. “Mom, NO! Just because I’m not wearing pants it doesn’t mean I’m interested in you. I’m a young Greek boy. I never wear pants.”

“Stop it mom! You can’t touch me there!”

The completely innocent Hippolytus getting dragged to death by a team of horses, courtesy of the gods answering Theseus’s prayers. Why? Because it’s a tragedy, that’s why.

It would be nice to blame everything on the gods. But sometimes people just make bad choices. So as long as we are already in the gutter, let’s move on to Byblis.

Byblis, Byblis, Byblis. You naughty girl.

Byblis loved her brother. LOVED her brother. No gods involved, just good old human lust. Naturally, he rejected her advances.

“No Byblis! French kisses are not for brothers! I had to grab her hair to pull her away from me, your honor.”

But Byblis persisted, and wrote her twin brother Caunus a long letter about how since the gods were ok with incest, he should be too.

But Caunus fled across Turkey, and the relentless Byblis chased him until she literally killed herself from fatigue and mournful crying. The gods took mercy on her and transformed her, and her tears, into a spring. Science!

Byblis crying herself to death over her unrealized lusts. Tragic, and yet, hot.

So is that it? Have we fully plumbed the depths of godly and human depravity? No, not yet. Let’s go one plunge deeper, with Myrrha.

Myrrha, you minx

Myrrha was another woman driven to the edge by her own lusts, but not for her brother. (WHO are these women, and why don’t I know any of them?) Myrrha loved her daddy.

And you probably thought the whole Daddy’s Girl thing was a contemporary kink.

Noah knows what I’m talking about. Get someone drunk enough off grapes, and ANYTHING can happen. But Myrrha was so disturbed by her urges that she even tried and failed to commit suicide. Her nurse intervened and saved her, but on the second attempt the nurse decided to help Myrrha fulfill her desires in order to save her depressed and troubled life. Like yeah, that plan’s gonna make things better. SMH.

Myhrra at death’s door, while her nurse cries out in horror. Maybe sex with her dad will help.

So the nurse took Myrrha to her father in the deep dark dead of night and the deed was done. My old composition teacher would have loved that alliteration. But the father turned on a lamp, and seeing his daughter, resolved to kill her on the spot, instead of soothe her pain.

So Myrrha fled to the desert and was chased by her father for 9, yes 9 months. Myrrha, exhausted and at the point of death, finally begged the gods for mercy. They actually agreed. Can you believe it? And so they turned her into a Myrrh tree, just in time for her to give birth to the incestuous love child Adonis.

Myrrha becomes a Myrrh. Nice knots.

You can still see Myrrha’s tears of shame on any Myrrh tree to this very today. Science again.

And her son Adonis went on to be a professional wrestler in the late 80’s

Myrrha, later, hiding her shame in hell, from Dante’s Divine Comedy

And of course, I saved the most gruesome for last. There a ton of rape stories in Greek mythology, but none as ugly as Harpalyce. King Clymenus had eyes for his own beautiful daughter, Harpalyce. Then things turned dark. He raped her, which was bad enough, but then Harpalyce vowed to get her revenge. It’s not often that a mortal can outdo a god on revenge, but Harpalyce did.

Harpalyce and those cold, dead eyes

Harpalyce carried the incestuous child for the full term, and at the next King’s banquet she showed up with a very special dish. She might have been inspired by the wisdom of King Solomon, but where as Solomon stopped short of cutting that baby in half, Harpalyce not only halved her own child, she just kept on chopping. And then she served the bits to King Clymenus.

Naturally, when the King found out, he killed his own daughter. Right after eating his own son. Ew. A similar thing happened in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. Note to self: NEVER eat the barbeque in Whistle Stop, Alabama.

So that’s a flavor (lol, flavor) of what both the gods and man get up to when they get between the sheets. It’s down and dirty. There’s more to be sure, like the mother-son tryst between Jocasta and Oedipus, and Electra, who plotted with her brother on how to kill their own mother.

Electra

But the bottom line is, before you go on Nextflix or Pronhub looking for entertainment, check out some ancient mythology first. Because whatever violence or perversion you’re looking for, you can bet someone was into the very same thing 2-3000 years ago, too. Courtesy of your fellow man, and the gods.

Now let’s think some HAPPY thoughts! Say goodnight, Antiope!

“Goodnight, Antiope!”

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It does cut both ways if one hangs their hat on the "so many people" argument for any particular religion, at least. Far more people in the history of man have interpreted God as something different than how Western culture now sees him.

But from my perspective, that doesn't invalidate the possible reality of God, only any one particular description of God, if that makes sense. In my mind it actually strengthens the possible existence, it's just that we as a species can't come to a common description on what he, or it, is.

As far back as we have evidence, there seems to be in man the common belief that "something" is beyond us, out there in the universe. I've called it the "great mystery." Whatever it is that causes life, or created the universe, or give us our consciousness, or whatever metric one wants to use to try and grasp the unknown.

Imagine an unknown item in a small box, and a group of people trying to figure out what is in it. The first guy shakes the box and says "well, I heard it move, so I KNOW something is in there, I just have no idea what it actually is. A second guy says "it sounded like it rolled to me, so my perception tells me it must be round. A third guy picks it up and says, "I hear it making a noise, maybe it's a radio, or a clock." And a fourth guy picks it up and says "The box feels heavy, maybe it's a brick, or an iron." And a fifth guy picks it up and says "I don't sense anything inside. This box has to be empty."

They all look at each other and ask "don't you guys sense the same thing I do?" And all of them say "No, I only heard it roll, or I only heard it beep, not roll," or whatever. Each had a different experience with the box.

So the first guy is likely an agnostic. Guys 2-4 are various religions, and guy 5 is an Atheist. No one knows for a fact what is in that box. They all have a belief, based on their personal experience with the box, on what might be in there. And each experience is different. To me, that's religion. And what may or not actually be in the box, is God.

Just because it beeps for one guy doesn't mean it beeps for all, or rolls, or feels heavy. It's a personal relationship. And one makes their decision on what they believe based on what they have experienced. And all you've got to go on is what you personally have experienced, and what others, who may have experienced it the same, or maybe differently, have to tell you.

To me, most religions make God too small. As if he can only do things in one very defined, very controlled, very tight way. Only using certain books, or certain words, or certain rituals.

Making God big is hard to do. The idea that he is all powerful is easy to say, but hard to conceptualize. Because then he's not restricted to just one religion. He's ALL religions. He's ALL things. Even us, potentially. Even the religions and concepts we don't perceive, or understand, or even believe in. That's a much more difficult thing to grasp and conceive of. It means your way is right for you, and someone else's way is right for them. And both are right. As I sometimes ask, "How did God come to you?"

Ancient Gods 105

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