Day Thirty Eight

If you’ve ever read any Greek mythology, you’ll know Zeus was, at best, a lying, obnoxious rapist. Totally dysfunctional, unreliable and disgusting.  
He was married to Hera who spent her time stalking him and then killing or transforming into animals, the women he abused.

Whatever the gods taught us, fair play wasn't one of them.

Why would anyone want to write about the top bloke of the gods as someone who forces himself on every woman and boy he sets his lustful eyes on?   

To make things worse, he could change shape  so the victim often didn’t realise the danger.  Ask Leda.

She offered protection to a swan being chased by eagles, only to be raped - the swan was Zeus.

Scholars tell us the myths were written by Hesiod (700 BC) and Homer (800 BC, The Iliad and Odyssey but then they also say Homer’s father was the river Meles and his Mum the Nymph Critheis.

Given that the Greeks began every breakfast with Barley Wine and carried on imbibing regularly throughout the day, we can take that idea with a pinch of salted fish.

I have a theory, and this will make the hackles of every misogynist rise:  the Greek myths were written by women. 

Who else would write about revered divinity scything his dissolute way through  vulnerable womanhood unless it was as a warning? 

And it doesn’t stop with Zeus, none of the gods and goddesses were the sort of people you’d invite to join the Bridge Club.

Kronos, egged on by his mother, Gaia took a scythe to the private parts of Ouranos. This shouldn’t surprise us, Zeus was his.

Kronos or Chronus is now seen as Father Time (chronology, chronological), the Grim Reaper or Death.   If you slice off someone’s genitals, you certainly make it impossible for them to reproduce; you have stolen their future, stopped time.

Arachne was a skilled young weaver, so talented that she evoked the envy of goddess Athene, who beat her with a shuttle so she could no longer work at her loom.

 Deprived of her passion for making spectacular tapestries,  Arachne hanged herself at which Athena transformed her into a spider.  A spider for goodness sake!  And to think they named the capital city after that nasty goddess, so unfair.

 Narcissists are people who believe the world revolves around them.  Trump is said to be typical,  except that Narcissus was a great looking guy who, as far as I know, wasn’t bright orange with a dead cat on his head.

Narcissus, seeing his reflection in a pool, fell deeply in love with himself.  Oh, don’t feel sorry for him.  He wanted his devotees to kill themselves as proof of how much they loved him. 

Lessons to be learned here at this present time. Hint: disinfectant injections.

The name, Narcissus has been given to a pretty Spring flower but a recent suggestion that the Stinkhorn fungus (phallus impudicus) is named for Old Orange Face has been rejected, even though he is a d*ck and ‘impudicus’ means flaunting.

The only good goddess I’ve come across is Iris.

She had four sisters, two of them Harpies but Iris, in the form of a rainbow, carried messages between earth and the gods.

She too has a flower named after her, as does Hyacinth.

Now there's a sad tale. 

 Hyacithus a martal, and Apollo the god, were friends and lovers who regularly played discus (now you know where Frisbee came from). 

They were engaged thus when Zephyrus,the West wind,  also in loved Hyacinthus, blew by and as Apollo cast the disc, wafted it off course.
It hit poor Hyacinth in the temple,  killing him. No doubt Zephyrus slunk away hoping no one would know but Apollo, devastated, ran to catch up the body of his beloved.

As Hyacynth's blood and Apollo's tears mingled, Apollo wanted to die but gods are immortal, so instead he decided the most beautiful flower of all would be names after his lover. 

  

This is not the bulb we plant indoors to catch the first, fragant scents of Spring but wild hyacinth, or what wenow call the Bluebell.

Greek, Roman, Norse and Maori mythologies often explain how things came to be: why the spider spins such glorious webs for instance.  

They are signposts to modern life and the characteristics of humanity.

Zeus deserved to come to a sticky end but being immortal, he’s still around, still worshipped by around 2,000 persons in Greece.  

 In May 2006, the court in Athens officially recognised the veneration of Zeus and his cohorts.