The Goddess Athena Personally Gave Odysseus’ Wife, Penelope, A Makeover

Athena was the type of deity that had wild mood swings. One day, she would be cold-hearted enough to turn an innocent rape victim into a hideous monster because the woman had the audacity to be raped in a temple of Athena—poor Medusa. Yet, on other days, Athena could be loving enough to spontaneously give one of her favorite humans a godly makeover. Fortunately for Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, Athena appeared before her on one of her more cheerful days, intending only to amplify her beauty.

Not long after a disguised Odysseus returned to his homeland of Ithaca in Book XVIII of The Odyssey, Athena, almost like a big sister, decided to give Penelope a full-body makeover. Besides Odysseus and Penelope being two of her most favorite humans, Athena also had another motivation for her spur-of-the-moment makeover plans—the goddess was determined to see bloodshed on Ithaca. Making Penelope the epitome of beauty would ensure that none of the suitors that had crowded into her palace during Odysseus’ decades-long absence would leave the island, thereby setting up an inevitable massacre.

When Athena arrived at the palace of Ithaca, she did not wait to see if Penelope would consent to the makeover. Instead, the goddess put Penelope into a deep sleep and then propped her up on a couch in order to get to work. Athena apparently had made a detour to see Aphrodite before arriving on Ithaca, because she brought a few of the love-goddess’ signature beauty products to use in the makeover. For her first step, Athena washed and cleansed Penelope with Aphrodite’s products, especially a face ointment that Aphrodite often saved for special occasions, such as dancing with the muses.

With the beauty products applied, Athena moved on to her other talents. The goddess was something of a magical plastic surgeon. With this skill, Athena accentuated Penelope’s beauty in several ways. For one, the goddess made Penelope taller. She also used her power to turn Penelope’s skin the polished color of freshly sawn ivory. Finally, as a last touch, Athena decided that it would not hurt to make Penelope a little more voluptuous.

With her makeover complete, Athena woke up the sleeping woman and planted in her head an insurmountable desire to speak to all of the suitors in her home. When Penelope stepped out into the open, she did indeed turn heads, including that of her long-lost husband who was in attendance, but disguised. With all of the men’s desires enflamed, the suitors renewed their efforts to marry Penelope, while Odysseus continued to plot their demise.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Painting of Pallas Athena, Attributed to Rembrandt (1606–1669), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009.

A Sneeze Was Seen As A Good Omen In Ancient Greece

Throughout history, religious humans of various faiths have long believed that certain emotions, feelings or sensations could be inflicted on people by supernatural forces. For instance, in the ancient Greco-Roman society, many thought that a deity called Eros or Cupid inspired the feeling of love. Similarly, according to some teachings of the Abrahamic religions, sinful temptations are caused by the machinations of demons. In that same strain of thought, the ancient Greeks also believed that sneezes could be divinely inspired. In fact, a sneeze was believed to be a good omen if it occurred after a serious statement or a decision.

This belief made an appearance in writing as early as the age of the 8th-century BCE epic poet, Homer. Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, professed her belief that a sneeze was a sign of the gods’ support in book XVII of The Odyssey. In that scene of the poem, Penelope had just finished longingly prophesying about how Odysseus would purge the shameless suitors in her home once he returned to Ithaca. As soon as Penelope ended her hopeful speech, her son, Telemachus, let out a great sneeze. After hearing her son’s powerful sneeze, Penelope cheerfully exclaimed, “Didn’t you notice that my son sneezed a blessing on all I had said?” (Book 17, approx. line 540, Penguin, 2009).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (cropped and sneeze-modified tondo from an Attic red cup, possibly Briseis and Phoenix (Louvre caption) or Hecamede and Nestor, ca. 490 BC. From Vulci. [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. 

The Legendary Greek Hero, Heracles, Supposedly Split Into Two Beings Upon His Death

Heracles is perhaps the most famous human figure from ancient Greek myth. Despite this, there was no known definitive copy or original author of the great hero’s story. Instead, the famous character of Heracles randomly made appearances in separate tales developed by different authors. The many separate stories about Heracles were thankfully gathered and combined in the poetic works of Euripides and Sophocles, and even more so in the scholarly texts of Apollodorus and Diodorus Siculus. Yet, even after the hard work of these aforementioned writers, it is difficult to place the different accounts of Heracles’ feats in a chronological order.

Of all of the events that occurred in the tale of Heracles, his death and ascendance to godhood is likely the easiest point to place on a chronological table, as those chapters of the tale usually served as the ending of the Heracles myth. As the story goes, the downfall of Heracles came not long after he married his second wife, Deianeira. Sometime after their marriage, Deianeira was kidnapped by a lusty centaur by the name of Nessus. Heracles easily caught up to the centaur and downed the creature with a poisoned arrow shot from his bow. Yet, before the centaur died, Nennus tricked Deianeira into believing that his spilled blood would act as a love potion powerful enough to keep Heracles from straying to other women. Convinced by the centaur’s dying words, Deianeira collected some of the centaur’s poisoned blood, thinking it to be a simple love charm. Unfortunately for Deianeira and Heracles, the centaur’s poisoned blood was anything but harmless.

Deianeira’s fear became reality several years into her marriage with Heracles. She felt powerless as her husband grew to love another woman by the name of Iole. In an effort to regain her husband’s affection, Deianeira laced one of Heracles’ shirts with the poisoned blood of the centaur, hoping the bloodied shirt would rekindle her husband’s fading love. Tragically, the shirt did not restore Heracles’ love for Deianeira, but instead it gave the hero a fatal dose of painful poison. After putting on the poisoned shirt, Heracles felt such constant anguish that he eventually burned himself alive.

As the story goes, upon his self-immolation, Heracles ascended to Mount Olympus, was accepted into the community of the gods, and took the goddess of youth, Hebe, as his godly wife. Yet, according to Homer, something strange occurred during that time of mortal death and immortal transcendence. According to The Odyssey, a bloodthirsty wraith bizarrely split from the burning demigod and was sent down to the realm of Hades. The wraith was said to have been “like black night” and he could be found prowling the underworld with bow in hand, stalking the souls of the dead as if they were wild game. The wraith comes across as a conscious being—it had memory, speech and personally identified as Heracles. Yet, it also had knowledge that another less wild version of Heracles was also present on Mount Olympus.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (heavily modified adaptation of an image from "A classical dictionary of Greek and Roman biography...revised.." (1894), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and Flickr).

Sources:

• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. 
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Apollod.+2.4.8&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0022 
• http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/4B*.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Heracles 
• http://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/heracles.html 
• https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Heroes/Heracles/heracles.html 
• http://www.livius.org/articles/mythology/heracles/ 
• https://pantheon.org/articles/h/heracles.html 
• http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/heracles.html  

The Oracles Of Dodona

Herodotus (c. 490-425/420 BCE), the father of Greek history, claimed that Dodona in Epirus held the honor of being the most ancient oracle site in the Greek world. The earliest written information on Dodona came from the epic poet, Homer. In the Iliad (book sixteen), Achilles proclaimed in an informative speech that Zeus was the god of Dodona and that his priests there slept on the ground with perpetually unwashed feet. Homer elaborated on the topic in the Odyssey (book fourteen), where Odysseus spoke of a sacred oak tree in Dodona from which the will of Zeus could be determined. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, claimed to have personally visited Dodona and confirmed that there was a sacred oak in the region. Besides affirming the importance of the sacred tree, Herodotus provided additional information on the origin and organizational structure of the oracle of Dodona.

Herodotus presented three origin stories for the oracle of Dodona in his text, The Histories. The first tale he claimed to have obtained during his travels in Egypt. According to the Egyptian version, two priestesses in Egyptian Thebes were captured by Phoenicians and sold as slaves in different regions. One was sent to the Siwa Oasis and the other ended up in Epirus, where both priestesses founded new temples that became sites for oracles of Zeus. The second version of the story came from Dodona, and was supposedly narrated to Herodotus by the three reigning prophetesses of the temple, whom he named as Promeneia, Timarete and Nicandra. Their story also began in Egyptian Thebes, but instead of enslaved priestesses, it was two black doves that flew respectively to Siwa and Epirus. When these doves reached their destinations, the birds allegedly gained the power to speak and instructed the locals to build temples to Zeus. After recounting these tales, Herodotus, himself, proposed a third version—a hybrid between the two. He theorized that the black doves mentioned in Dodona were symbols for the captured priestesses of the Egyptian story and that the miracle of the dove speaking was analogous to the priestesses learning vernacular languages used in Siwa and Epirus.

Whatever the truth may have been about the site’s origin, Dodona was undoubtedly an important religious center with very ancient roots. There was activity in the region before or during the final centuries of the second millennium BCE, around the time of the Mycenaean Civilization in Greece. The religious cult in Dodona seemed to have originally worshiped an earth deity, but the site eventually became associated with Zeus and the titan goddess, Dione. By the time of Herodotus, the temple at Dodona was inhabited by a team of three prophetic women, who were fittingly known as the Doves. Over the years, the way the Doves divined the future seemed to change, yet it usually depended on a sacred oak tree or birds. In some stories, the oracles received their message by listening to avian chirps. In other accounts, they divined the future by interpreting the sounds of wind, or even falling acorns, hitting against a bronze surface, which was sometimes a gong and at other times a cauldron. The most popular form of divination, however, was apparently to perceive the future based on the rustling of leaves from the sacred oak.

Although Dodona was surpassed by Delphi in terms of popularity and importance, the Doves continued to interpret the gods’ will for pilgrims until the 4th century CE. The end for the temple at Dodona is believed to have come during the reign of Emperor Theodosius (r. 379-395), who formally adopted the Nicaean Creed version of Christianity as the faith of the Roman Empire, outlawing paganism and other interpretations of Christianity.

Picture Attribution: (The Oracle, by Camillo Miola (Biacca), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Histories by Herodotus, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• The Iliad by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by Peter Jones. New York: Penguin Classics, 2014. 
• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. 
• http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanisDione.html 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Dodona/ 
• https://www.ancient-greece.org/history/dodona.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/place/Dodona  

Homer Wrote A Tortoise And Hare Fable Before Aesop

By the 5th century BCE, a collection of fables featuring a cast of personified animals with moral tales to tell became associated with a legendary figure called Aesop. One of the few pieces of information that the ancients could agree upon about Aesop was that the storyteller likely lived in the 6th century BCE and that he supposedly was born in some Greek-associated region. Because of Aesop’s vague or unknown background, he is widely regarded as a semi-legendary, or possibly purely-mythical, figure. Whatever the case, somebody (or some people) wrote the timeless stories. These scattered fables, like the collected works attributed to so many of the ancient sages in East Asia, were probably compiled by students and fans, eventually resulting in a collection of Aesop’s Fables often called the Aesopica.

Of Aesop’s many fables, the tale of the hare and the tortoise is one of the most popular. In the story, a slow tortoise challenges a speedy hare to a foot race. The hare, confident in the disparity of quickness between the two animals, eagerly accepted the challenge. After the race began, the tortoise fell so far behind in the race that the hare decided to take a nap on the side of the path. The clever tortoise, however, calmly kept crawling along the race path, eventually surpassing the sleeping hare to win the race.

Interestingly enough, Homer wrote a similar story centuries before Aesop. Homer’s tale, however, did not feature animals, but instead pitted the lame-legged god, Hephaestus, against the spry and lusty god, Ares. The story in question takes place in book VIII of The Odyssey, beginning around line 260.

As the story goes, Odysseus met an incredibly talented bard named Demodocus in the blessed community of Phaeacia. While Odysseus was staying in the region, Demodocus took up a lyre and began to perform a song about an embarrassing scandal that occurred at the home of the gods on Mount Olympus. This was Demodocus’ story:

According to the bard, Hephaestus, the talented craftsman of the Greek gods, won Aphrodite’s hand in marriage after producing a series of wondrous presents. These gifts, however, were sent to Zeus, not Aphrodite, and the resulting union was an arranged marriage. Consequently, Aphrodite did not return Hephaestus’ affection and was predisposed to extramarital affairs, especially with handsome Ares, the god of war.

Unfortunately for Aphrodite and Ares, one of the ablest informants in the Greek pantheon, the sun god Helios, was a close friend of Hephaestus. Helios spotted the two lovers fooling around in broad daylight while he was doing his daily rounds. Helios immediately sent this information to Hephaestus, who, upon receiving the news, stormed off to his workshop with revenge on his mind.

Channeling his rage and sense of betrayal, Hephaestus constructed a metallic masterpiece of a net. It was made of chains so fine that they could not be easily seen by the naked eye, while also being strong enough that even the gods could not pull the links apart. With this net in hand, Hephaestus returned to his home and marched into his bedroom. There, he threw the net around the feet of the bed, and also hung other sections to the rafters. When the trap was set, the invisible spider web of chains weaved all around the bed, just waiting for some unsuspecting prey to enter the room.

With his preparations done, Hephaestus loudly announced to his wife and neighbors that he was leaving on an impromptu vacation to Lemnos. Hephaestus, however, did not go very far. Instead, he found a hiding spot and contacted Helios to keep an eye on his house.

Ares, for his part, was completely fooled by Hephaestus’ sudden departure from town. When he could no longer see Hephaestus, the god of war quickly rushed over to Hephaestus’ house, where he eagerly found his beloved Aphrodite. Within moments of their clandestine encounter, the two flushed lovebirds inevitably fluttered over to the bedroom. Yet, as soon as they lay down on the bed, their hearts, which had been beating with longing and anticipation, suddenly began to thump with a cadence of terror. As soon as they hit the bed—in whatever state of dress they were in—the trap was triggered and the net caught its prey. Like the tortoise from Aesop’s fable, Hephaestus caught his rival sleeping.

By now, Helios had already informed Hephaestus that Ares was in the house. Accordingly, the craftsman of the gods returned home where he triumphantly found his wife and her lover entangled in his net, which was so tight that the two inside where stuck exactly as they were the moment the net fell. After seeing that his trap had worked, Hephaestus sent word to all of the gods, calling them forth to witness the sad creatures he had caught in his net. The goddesses, who had an inkling of what they would find, decided not to go to Hephaestus’ house. Zeus and Hades also interestingly ignored the craftsman’s call. Yet, many other important male gods curiously wandered over to the house to see why Hephaestus was shouting.

Poseidon, Apollo and Hermes were mentioned by name as having entered the home to see the spectacle inside. The gods in attendance, all except Poseidon, immediately began laughing at the chained lovers on the bed and started cracking jokes about the situation. Between these eruptions of laughter, one of the observers commented:

“The tortoise catches up the hare. See how our

slow-moving Hephaestus has caught Ares, though no god on

Olympus can run as fast. Hephaestus may be lame, but he has

won the day by his cunning.”

(The Odyssey, Book VIII, approximately line 330)

After the other gods had made their jokes, the unimpressed Poseidon finally convinced Hephaestus to release the captives. After the net was undone, the lovers fled Mount Olympus in disgrace, with Ares huffing and puffing off to Thrace and Aphrodite going into self-exile at Cyprus, where the Graces tried to comfort the distressed goddess with gifts of new clothing and oils.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan, painted by Alexandre Charles Guillemot (1786 - 1831), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Odyssey (Book 8) by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aesop 
• https://www.biography.com/people/aesop-9176935 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aphrodite-Greek-mythology  

The Fate Of King Agamemnon, The Mythical Leader Of The Greeks During The Trojan War

The Odyssey, written by Homer (flourished c. 800 BCE), focused on the long journey home of Odysseus after the Greek victory in the Trojan War and the events happening in his homeland of Ithaca during his absence. Despite this focus, the epic poem also briefly mentioned the fates of other Greek leaders. Through dialogue and plot, the reader (or in Homer’s day, the listeners) learns of how figures such as Nestor, Menelaus and Agamemnon all fared after they returned home from war. While the first two of the above-mentioned people lived out the rest of their days, the last, Agamemnon, was met with a treacherous end.

Agamemnon’s wife, Clytaemnestra (or Clytemnestra), was a stark contrast of character to Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus. While Penelope tricked and avoided suitors for the many years while Odysseus was away, Clytaemnestra succumbed to the advances of a seducer named Aegisthus. Not only did she have an affair with the man, but also she conspired with him against her husband. In her defense, however, Homer wrote that the gods were determined to make her fall for Aegisthus.

According to Homer, when Agamemnon returned to his homeland of Mycenae, the treacherous Aegisthus set out to greet the king with all the fanfare he could muster. He picked up Agamemnon with a chariot and transported him back to the palace, where a huge banquet had been prepared to welcome the tired king home. Not suspecting a thing, Agamemnon stuffed his belly with rich food and hazed his mind with splendid wine while dining with his enemies. After the king became thoroughly inebriated, Aegisthus gave a signal and twenty hidden assassins rushed into the room, murdering Agamemnon and all of his loyal followers. A second version of the myth gave Clytaemnestra a much more active role in her husband’s death. The Greek dramatist, Aeschylus (c. 525-455 BCE), rewrote the story so that Clytaemnestra murdered Agamemnon with a knife while he bathed.

After Agamemnon’s death, Aegisthus declared himself to be the tyrant of Mycenae and he successfully managed to keep power for seven years. Aegisthus’ luck, however, ran dry during his eighth year of power, for that year Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, decided to take revenge.  Urged on by the desire for vengeance and given encouragement by the gods, Orestes left from where he had been staying in Athens to kill both Aegisthus and his own mother, Clytaemnestra. Orestes later featured in numerous other myths relating to the consequences of his matricide.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (The Wrath of Achilles, painted by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Iliad by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by Peter Jones. New York: Penguin Classics, 2014.
• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Agamemnon-Greek-mythology
• https://www.ancient.eu/Agamemnon/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orestes-Greek-mythology    

The Father Of The “Spartan” Lifestyle Allegedly Played A Huge Role In Circulating Homer’s Epic Poetry

A great deal of what we know about Spartan history comes from Plutarch (c. 50-120), a Greek scholar born in Boeotia while the region was under Roman influence. In a series of biographies known as the Parallel Lives, Plutarch alternated between accounts about Roman and Greek figures from history, including several influential men of Sparta. One of Plutarch’s many subjects was Lycurgus, the man credited with founding Sparta’s iconic culture of pragmatic simplicity and disciplined militancy. By the time Plutarch was writing, the legends of Lycurgus were more myth than history, a reality that Plutarch freely admitted in his work. Nevertheless, he recounted the stories he had collected about Lycurgus, often listing out his sources and judging which versions he believed were more feasible. As many of the sources he used regarding Sparta have now been lost or damaged, modern historians rely heavily on Plutarch’s summaries.

Concerning Lycurgus, Plutarch admitted that there were conflicting accounts that clashed on almost every part of the legend’s life.  Nevertheless, the scholar impressively pieced together a narrative and notified his readers where most of the inconsistencies occurred. Even the century in which Lycurgus was supposed to have lived was unknown, ranging from as early as the 9th century BCE, in the age of Homer, or as late as the 6th century BCE, by which time Sparta had become noticeably militant and adverse to luxury.

According to Plutarch’s sources, Lycurgus was a king of Sparta for eight months until he abdicated in favor of his infant nephew. So as not to be a threat to the boy-king’s power, Lycurgus allegedly decided to travel the Mediterranean, collecting information that would be helpful for Sparta, as well as recruiting wise people that would be beneficial to Spartan society. The various sources that Plutarch browsed disagreed on where exactly Lycurgus traveled. Most stated that the wandering Spartan sailed to Crete, and then wandered around Anatolia, spending time in the Greek-settled coastal region of Ionia. In addition, Plutarch claimed that other individual sources reported Lycurgus as also having traveled through Libya, Iberia, Egypt and India.

While in Ionia, the homeland of Homer, Lycurgus was said to have run across a community that descended from Creophylus, a legendary figure who was close to the poet. This unnamed community had apparently taken it upon themselves to preserve the works of Homer. According to the tale, the Greeks of Lycurgus’ time had a vague notion of the Ionian poet, but had not fully embraced the famous epics. Plutarch wrote that Lycurgus initially dismissed the poetry as useless, but once he recognized the wise military, political and cultural lessons embedded in the verses, he changed his mind and made copies of Homer’s works. Therefore, according to the tale, Lycurgus helped popularize the poems of Homer by bringing his copies home to mainland Greece. Ironically, along with the timeless poetry, Lycurgus also brought back with him the “Spartan” way of life, which was famously opposed to art and excessive education.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Lycurgus of Sparta, by Merry-Joseph Blondel (1781–1853), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Lycurgus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.