bio( class myth)

8/7/2019 Bio( Class Myth)

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Athena

is the goddess of war, civilization, wisdom, strength, strategy, crafts, justice and skill in Greekmythology. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewdcompanion of heroes and the goddess of heroic Endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens. The

Athenians built the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens, in her honor (AthenaParthenos).

Athena's cult as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest times and was so persistentthat archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes. In her role as a protector of the city(polis), many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena asAthena Polias ("Athena of the

city"). Athens and Athena bear etymologically connected namesName, etymology, and origin

Athena had a special relationship with Athens, as is shown by the etymological connection of the namesof the goddess and the city. The citizens of Athens built a statue of Athena as a temple to the goddess,which had piercing eyes, a helmet on her head, attired with an aegis or cuirass, and an extremely longspear. It also had a crystal shield with the head of the Gorgon on it. A large snake accompanied her andshe held the goddess of victory in her hand.

Athena is associated with Athens, a plural name because it was the place where she presided over hersisterhood, theAthenai, in earliest times: Mycenae was the city where the Goddess was called Mykene,and Mycenae is named in the plural for the sisterhood of females who tended her there. At Thebes shewas called Thebe, and the city again a plural, Thebae (or Thebes, where the "s" is the plural formation).Similarly, at Athens she was called Athena, and the city Athenae (or Athens, again a plural) Whether hername is attested in Eteocretan or not will have to wait for decipherment of Linear A.

Gnther Neumann has suggested that Athena's name is possibly of Lydian origin;[ it may be a compoundword derived in part from Tyrrhenian "ati", meaning motherand the name of the Hurrian goddess"Hannahannah" shortened in various places to "Ana"[. In Mycenaean Greek, at Knossos a singleinscriptionA-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja/Athana potniya/appears in the Linear B tablets from the Late Minoan II-era"Room of the Chariot Tablets"; these comprise the earliest Linear B archive anywhere. AlthoughAthana

potniya often is translated Mistress Athena, it literally means "thepotnia of At(h)ana", which perhaps,means the Lady of Athens; Any connection to the city of Athens in the Knossos inscription isuncertain.[57] We also findA-ta-no-dju-wa-ja/Athana diwya/, the final part being the Linear B spelling ofwhat we know from Ancient Greek as Diwia (Mycenaean di-u-ja ordi-wi-ja): divine Athena also was aweaver and the deity of crafts (see dyeus).[58]

In his dialogue Cratylus, the Greek philosopher Plato, 428/427 BC 348/347 BC, gives the etymology of

Athena's name, based on the view of the ancient Athenians:

That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist inexplaining the view of the ancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that hemeant by Athena "mind" [nous] and "intelligence" [dianoia], and the maker of names appears to have hada singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, "divine intelligence" [ Thou noesis],as though he would say: This is she who has the mind better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong insupposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence [ en ethei noesin],and therefore gave her the name ethonoe; which, however, either he or his successors have altered intowhat they thought a nicer form, and called her Athena.Plato, Cratylus, 407b

Some authors believe that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general:in Book 3 of the Odyssey, she takes the form of a sea-eagle. These authors argue that she dropped her

prophylactic owl-mask before she lost her wings. "Athena, by the time she appears in art," Jane EllenHarrison had remarked, "has completely shed her animal form, has reduced the shapes she once wore ofsnake and bird to attributes, but occasionally in black-figure vase-paintings she still appears with wings.

Some Greek authorshave derived natural symbols from the etymological roots of Athena's names to beaether, air, earth, and moon. This was one of the primary developments of scholarly exploration in theancient world.


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Picture of athena

Achilles

Achilles was the son of the nymph Thetis and Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon hadbeen rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus, the fire-bringer, warned Zeus of a prophecy thatThetis would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, andhad her wed Peleus.[2]

As with most mythology there is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events:inArgonautica (iv.760) Hera alludes to Thetis's chaste resistance to the advances of Zeus, that Thetiswas so loyal to Hera's marriage bond that she coolly rejected him. Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her resistance to the advances of Zeus.

According to theAchilleid, written by Statius in the 1st century AD, and to no surviving previous sources,when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. However, hewas left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him, his heel (See Achilles heel, Achilles'tendon.) It is not clear if this version of events was known earlier. In another version of this story, Thetisanointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire to burn away the mortal parts of his body. Shewas interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage.[4]


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However none of the sources before Statius makes any reference to this general invulnerability. To thecontrary, in the IliadHomer mentions Achilles being wounded: in Book 21the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. He casttwo spears at once, one grazed Achilles' elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood."

Also in the fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle in which we can find description of the hero'sdeath, Kpria (unknown author),Aithiopis by Arctinus of Miletus, Ilias Mikr by Lesche of Mytilene, Iliouprsis by Arctinus of Miletus, there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famousweakness (heel); in the later vase-paintings presenting Achilles' death, the arrow (or in many cases,arrows) hit his body.

Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron the Centaur, on Mt. Pelion, to be raised

Fate of Achilles' armor

Achilles' armor was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax (Ajax the greater). Theycompeted for it by giving speeches on why they were the bravest after Achilles to their Trojan prisoners,who after considering both men came to a consensus in favor of Odysseus. Furious, Ajax cursedOdysseus, which earned the ire of Athena. Athena temporarily made Ajax so mad with grief and anguishthat he began killing sheep, thinking them his comrades. After a while, when Athena lifted his madnessand Ajax realized that he had actually been killing sheep, he was so embarrassed that he committedsuicide. Odysseus eventually gave the armor to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.

A relic claimed to be Achilles' bronze-headed spear was for centuries preserved in the temple of Athenaon the acropolis of Phaselis, Lycia, a port on the Pamphylian Gulf. The city was visited in 333 BCby Alexander the Great, who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the Iliadwith him, but his

court biographers do not mention the spear, which he would indeed have touched with excitement. [12] Butit was being shown in the time of Pausanias in the 2nd century AD.

Picture of Achilles

Coeus

KOIOS (or Coeus) was one of the Titan gods, sons of Ouranos (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). Heand his brothers conspired against their father, laying an ambush for him as he descended


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to lie with Earth. Four of the siblings were posted at the corners of the world, where theyseized hold of him and held him fast, while Kronos castrated him with a sickle.

In this myth the brothers apparently personified the great pillars which occur in near-Eastern cosmologies holding heaven and earth apart, or sometimes the whole cosmos aloft.Koios' alternate name, Polos ("of the northern pole"), suggests he was the Titan of the pillarof the north. His brothers Hyperion, Iapetos, and Krios, on the other hand, presided overthe west, east, and south respectively. Koios, as god of the axis of heaven around which theconstellations revolved, was probably also a god of heavenly oracles, just as his wife Phoibepresided over the oracles of the axis of earth Delphi,--a common inherited by their

grandson Apollon.

The Titanes were eventually deposed by Zeus and cast into the pit of Tartaros. Hesioddescribes this as a void located beneath the foundations of all, where earth, sea and skyhave their roots. Here the Titanes shift in cosmological terms from being holders of heavento bearers of the entire cosmos. According to Pindar and Aeschylus (in his lostplay Prometheus Unbound) the Titanes were eventually released from the pit through theclemency of Zeus.

Koios was the Titan-god of the inquisitive mind, his name meaning "query" or "questioning".His wife, Phoibe, was the goddesss of the prophetic mind. Together, the couple may havefunctioned as the primal font of all knowledge, both that born of heaven (Krios son ofHeaven) and derived from earth (Phoibe daughter of Earth).

Also known as Polos, this son of Ouranos (the Heavens) was probably the god of thenorthern axis of heaven around which the constellations revolved (the Greeks called thisheavenly axispolos). In ancient times this point in the heavens was marked by the staralpha Dra in the constellation Draco. His wife, Phoibe, was the complimentary goddess ofthe navel of the earth, which stood at the centre of the flat world-disc. Clearly Koiosfunctioned as the prophetic voice of his father Heaven, just as Phoibe was the propheticvoice of her mother Earth. Like Delphoi, navel of the earth, the axis of heaven was alsoguarded by a Drakon: the constellation Draco.

The daughters of Koios appear to have represented the two main branches ofprophecy:Leto and her son Apollon presided over the prophetic power of light and heaven,

whereas Asteria and her daughter Hekate presided over the prophetic powers of night,chthonian darkness and the ghosts of the dead.

His grandson, Apollon the god of prophecy and light, divided his time between Delphoi, theshrine at the centre of earth previously held by Koios' wife Phoibe, and--during the wintermonths--Hyperborea, the land beneath the axis of heaven in the far north, represented byhis grandfather Koios.

Koios' name sometimes appears in the list of Gigantes, suggesting that he played a role inthe Gigantomakhia or War of the Giants.


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Picture of Coeus

Centaur

In Greek mythology, the centaurs are a composite race of creatures, part human and part horse. Inearly Attic and Boeotian vase-paintings, as on the kantharos , they are depicted with the hindquarters of ahorse attached to them; in later renderings centaurs are given the torso of a human joined at the waist tothe horse's withers, where the horse's neck would be.

This half-human and half-animal composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caughtbetween the two natures, embodied in contrasted myths, both as the embodiment of untamed nature, asin their battle with the Lapiths, or conversely as teachers, like Chiron.

The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele (the cloud made in the imageof Hera). Another version, however, makes them children of a certain Centaurus, who mated withthe Magnesian mares. This Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting anadditional generation) or of Apollo and Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. In the later version of the

story his twin brother was Lapithus, ancestor of the Lapiths, thus making the two warring peoples cousins.Centaurs were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oakforest in Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia.

Centaurs continued to figure in literary forms of Roman mythology

Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th century Romanesque carved capitals of MozacAbbey in the Auvergne, where other capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats and griffins guardingthe chalice that held the wine.

Centaurs are shown on a number of Pictish carved stones from north-east Scotland, erected in the 8th9th centuries AD. Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire, these depictions appear to be derivedfrom Classical prototypes.

Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great, the hermit monk of Egypt, written by Athanasius ofAlexandria, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur,who challenged the saint but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episodewas often depicted; notably, in the The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermitby Stefano diGiovanni called "Sassetta", of two episodic depictions in a single panel of the hermit Anthony's travel togreet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter along the pathway with the demonic figure of a centaur in awood.


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Picture Centaur

The fates( But known to be called Moirae)

The Moirae were supposed to appear three nights after a child's birth to determine the course of its life,as in the story of Meleager and the firebrand taken from the hearth and preserved by his mother to extendhis life Bruce Karl Braswellfrom readings in the lexicon of Hesychius, associates the appearance of theMoirae at the family hearth on the seventh day with the ancient Greek custom of waiting seven days afterbirth to decide whether to accept the infant into the Gens and to give it a name, cemented with a ritual atthe hearth. At Sparta the temple to the Moirae stood near the communal hearth of thepolis,as Pausanias observed.

The Greeks variously claimed that they were the daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis (the"Institutor") or of primordial beings like Nyx, the Night, Chaos or Ananke, Necessity.

Even the gods feared the Moirae. Zeus also was subject to their power, the Pythian priestessat Delphi once admitted. Hesiod referred to "the Moirai to whom wise Zeus gave the greatesthonor",[1] though no classic writing clarifies as to what exact extent the lives of immortals were impactedby the whims of the Fates themselves, and it is to be expected that the relationship of Zeus and theMoirae was not immutable over the centuries.

A supposed epithet Zeus Moiragetes, meaning "Zeus Leader of the Moirae" was inferredby Pausanias from an inscription he saw in the second century AD at Olympia: "As you go to the starting-point for the chariot-race there is an altar with an inscription to the Bringer of Fate.[2] This is plainly asurname of Zeus, who knows the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them, and all that is not destinedfor them."[3] At the Temple of Zeus at Megara, Pausanias inferred from the relief sculptures he saw"Above the head of Zeus are the Horai and Moirae, and all may see that he is the only god obeyed byMoira." Pausanias' inferred assertion is unsupported in cult practice, though he noted a sanctuary of theMoirae there at Olympia (v.15.4), and also at Corinth (ii.4.7) and Sparta (iii.11.8), and adjoining the

sanctuary of Themis outside a city gate of Thebes [4]

H. J. Rose writes that Nyx ("Night") was also the mother of the Moirae[5] as she was of the Erinyes, inthe Orphic tradition.

When they were three,[6] the three Moirae were:

Clotho "spinner") spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle. Her Roman equivalentwas Nona, (the 'Ninth'), who was originally a goddess called upon in the ninth month of pregnancy.


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Lachesis "allotter" or drawer of lots) measured the thread of life allotted to each person with hermeasuring rod. Her Roman equivalent was Decima (the 'Tenth').

Atropos "inexorable" or "inevitable", literally "unturning",[7] sometimes called Aisa) was the cutter ofthe thread of life. She chose the manner of each person's death; and when their time was come, shecut their life-thread with "her abhorred shears".[8]Her Roman equivalent was Morta ('Death').

In earlier times they were represented as only a few perhaps only one individual

goddess. Homer's Iliad(xxiv.209) speaks generally of the Moera, who spins the thread of life for men at

their birth; she is Moera Krataia "powerful Moira" (xvi.334) or there are several Moerae In

the Odyssey(vii.197) there is a reference to the Klthes, or Spinners. At Delphi, only the Fates of Birth

and Death were revered.[12] In Athens, Aphrodite, who had an earlier, pre-Olympic existence, was

calledAphrodite Urania the 'eldest of the Fates' according to Pausanias

A bilingual Eteocretan text[13] has the Greek translation (Omosai d-haperEnorkioisi, "But may he swear [these] very things to the Oath-Keepers"). In Eteocretan this is rendered S|TUPRMRIIA, in which MRIIA may refer to the divinities the Hellenes knew as the Moirae.

Versions of the Moirae also existed on the deepest European mythological level. It is difficult to separatethem from the other Indo-European spinning fate goddesses known as the Norns in Norse mythology andthe Baltic goddess Laima and her two sisters. Some Greek mythographers went so far as to claim thatthe Moirae were the daughters of Zeus paired with either Ananke ("Necessity") or, as Hesiod had it inone passage,[14] Themis ("Fundament") or Nyx ("Night"). Whether or not providing a father even for the

Moirae was a symptom of how far Greek mythographers were willing to go, in order to modify the oldmyths to suit the patrilineal Olympic order. the claim of a paternity was certainly not acceptableto Aeschylus, Herodotus, or Plato.

The Moirae were usually described as cold, remorseless and unfeeling, and depicted as old crones orhags. The independent spinsterhas always inspired fear rather than matrimony: "this sinister connotationwe inherit from the spinning goddess," write Ruck and Staples (Ruck and Staples 1994:). See weaving(mythology).

Despite their forbidding reputation, Moirae could be placated as goddesses. Brides in Athens offeredthem locks of hair and women swore by them. They may have originated as birth-goddesses and onlylater acquired their reputation as the agents of destiny.

They likewise have forbidding appearances (beards), and appear to determine the fates of all individuals.

While the Moirae were feared even by the formidable Olympians, including Zeus, they could still bedefeated in battle as proven in the Gigantomachy where the Giants fought against the combined forces ofthe Gods, the Moirae and Heracles. Though the Moirae did kill the Giants Agrios and Thoon with theirbronze clubs, a prophecy detailed a victory for the Giants should Heracles not fight alongside theOlympians.


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The fates

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