Christian’s have often blamed Eve for the woes of the world. The ancient Greeks also liked to blame their women.
The Patriachal world of Zeus’s Olympus reveals a lot about the Grecian ideal women – a cultural milieu that has influenced the modern world.
Olympus had six chief goddesses Athena (Roman Minerva) Artemis, Hestia, Aphrodite, Hera and Demeter.
Three are virgins – is this because ancient Greek men feared full blooded female sexuality?
“We have mistresses for our enjoyment, concubines to serve our person, and wives for bearing legitimate offspring” wrote pseudo-Demosthenes.
Like, women today frustrated at being forced to be an asexual career woman, or Athena, a frivolous sex object, or Aphrodite, or a respectable mother like Hera, the ancient Greeks neatly classified their women.
Meanwhile rape does not even raise censure among the Grecian male divine pantheon. Why the endless catalogue of rapes of women, human and divine, no doubt recorded by men?
Psychoanalysis suggests points out that being carried away and overpowered by an ardent lover is so common that Helene Deutsch called it an indication of women’s innate masochism.
Karen Horney agrees arguing that these fantasies result from women’s repression in society.
Between 31% and 57% of women have rape fantasies, according to a meta analysis of 20 studies over the last 30 years. These fantasies are frequent or preferred in 9% to 17% of women – however, most go unreported.
Summarizing possible reasons for this, Matthew Hudson in Psychology Today lists Masochism, Sexual Blame Avoidance, Openness to Sexual Experience, a woman’s belief that she is so desirable a man cannot resist her, or conditioning that the male rape culture has left a psychic imprint on women.
Husdon also lists Biological Predisposition to Surrender, which is found in the mating behavior of many mammalian species, Sympathetic Activation, an activating the fight flight response linking fear and excitement, reaction to trauma or Adversary Transformation.
Adversary Transformation is commonly found in romance novels, writes Husdon, where the rugged and raping male is transformed into a marriage partner.
Archaic Female Divinities?
While Homer begins his narratives from the patriarchal throne room of the Olympian gods, the stories of the Gods before Zeus are recorded by Hesiod, a dour and bitter Boethian farmer and poet whose misogynist ideas probably reflected the populations attitudes.
Hesiod describes a progression from “female dominated generations, characterized by natural, earthy emotional qualities, to the superior rational monarchy of Olympian Zeus” wrote Sarah Pomeroy in “Goddesses, Whores, Wives and slaves –Women in classical Antiquity.”
While it is unclear if this fits historical reality, myths and legends shape civilizations for generations.
Ge is the first reigning earth goddess and her children primarily physical features of the earth. Her grandchildren however, do include a few monsters.
Ge’s husband, Uranus, is also her son and jealous of his children hides them insider Ge. Ge persuades her son Cronus to castrate her father with a sickle.
Cronus repeats the pattern, swallowing his children by Rhea. Rhea helps her son Zeus to defeat Cronus and the civilized cultural patriarchy of Zeus is established.
Zeus even takes away the females sole role of child bearing and gives birth to Athena through his head and Dionysus through his thigh.
We see Hesiod’s unsympathetic view of women in his describing the first woman, Pandora, described with a “maidens form- desirable and fair” given weaving skills by Athena. Aphrodite “drenched her head in grace” she is the “lovely curse, the price for fires boon, to other gods and men.”
Pandora can mean giver of gifts – or less benevolently, ‘recipient of all gifts’ the view taken by Hesiod as he describes her with “bitch’s thoughts, and wiley ways” and “a name, Pandora – a pain to hard toiling men’
Like Eve, she is instrumental in releasing evil into the world.
The Patriarchal world of Zeus’s Olympus reveals a lot about the Grecian ideal women – a cultural milieu that has influenced the modern world.
The Female Olympian’s
Olympus had six chief goddesses three are virgins.
Athena, (roman Minerva) is a virgin born not of a woman but of a man, the archetype of women who succeed in a masculine world by denying her sexuality.
A Warrior, judge and giver of wisdom, her pregnant mother was swallowed whole by Zeus, and Athena was born, fully clad in armour uttering a war cry, and released by the stroke of an axe by Hephaestus
This, according, to the ancients, proves parentage is patriarchal.
Sociable, she even appears to her favourites as a man, for example to Homers Odysseus. She is practical; presiding over crafts she negotiates the worlds of men and women.
Less sociable is virginal Artemis or Diana as she is known by the Romans, she shoots arrows from a far, a huntress who prefers the solitude of mountains and forests. Mortal by forms of her persona are found in the Amazon warriors and Atalanta, left to die by her son desiring father, and is raised in the forest by a bear.
While she appears virginal and masculine, she is primarily concerned with female concerns of menstruation, childbirth and death.
Here though is perhaps where the concept of virgin becomes confusing. Artemis, possibly evolved from an ancient mother goddess, had many suitors. She refused to settle into a monogamous marriage. She was independent and in control.
She would eventually marry a suitor aided by Aphrodite– after many schemes to attachment. Interestingly, there is one chastity loving mortal man known for his devotion to her. Hippolytus, unable to find chastity in male divinities he is forced to worship chastity in female form.
Hestia, also known as Vesta by Rome, was courted by Poseidon and Apollo, she sore to eternal virginity touching the head of aegis-bearing Zeus. The archetype old maid she does not feature in many mythical adventures. She preferred the quietness of the hearth and is often portrayed as a living flame.
While far from virginal, Aphrodite (Roman Venus) also claims a masculine birth. Born of the foam of the sea released from the castrated sky god Uranus. Portrayed as frivolous, deceitful and attractively alluring she seems exhibit qualities found in Pandora and Helen of Troy, both favourites of the goddess.
Married to the ugliest immortal, the lame Hephaestus, she is unfaithful, although only mildly censurable for a fertility goddess sacred to prostitutes.
As the Romans claimed descent of Venus, son Aeneas, it is no surprise that philosophical debate over the nature of love survives through Neo-Platonism and the Renaissance until today, wrote Sarah Pomeroy.
“In philosophical discussions on the nature of love in Plato’s symposium, Aphrodite is said to have a dual nature. Aphrodite, Urania, born of Uranus without a mother, represented intellectual, non physical love” she wrote in Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves.
“Aphrodite Pandemos, said to have been created by the union of Olympian Zeus and the sky goddess Dione, was the patroness of prostitutes, and represented common, or vulgar love”
“Vulgar love could be heterosexual or homosexual, but intellectual love could be found only in a relationship between two males” she said.
In contrast to the irresponsible Aphrodite, Hera is the long suffering faithful wife.
She is not a walk over, husband and sister of Zeus, she is his equal and although patroness of marriage, Hera and Zeus seem to be at constant war. Zeus constantly threatens to subjugate her but never entirely succeeds.
True, they do spend some time lustily in bed, but Hera is both wicked step mother and persecutor of her husband’s paramours. Perhaps she can be compared to Hindu mother goddess Kali, who is both creator and destroyer of life.
Of course, goddesses are not prescribed by family budgets or restraining husbands. Domesticity restrained the real lives of classical women. Also, few men could enjoy the polygamy recommended by pseudo-Demosthenes.
The myths do not emphasize the feminine roles of childbirth, weaving and marriage – although features important to female devotees.
Protective relationships of goddess and mortal are usually of the virgin divinities. However, as reserved Artemis attests, being a virgin does not mean – although being a virgin does not mean the goddess is always helpful to humans.
The hierarchical dominance is seen in Zeus and Apollo destroying mortal lovers who discover their. Apollo was renowned for his rationality, except when rebuffed by a woman.
Just as the Grecian society allowed a wealthy man sexual access to his long suffering faithful wife and the servants, Male gods do not go out of their way to help female humans – the exception being Dionysus who rescues the seduced and dumped Cretan princess Adriane and marries her remaining faithful.
And although male gods had homosexual lovers – as did Apollo who loved Hyacinthus, but accidently killed him with a discus jealously directed by Zephyrus – we see no female homosexual liaisons except perhaps with the Amazon warriors.
While, scholars will debate whether the Olympian goddesses stem from a possible earlier female religious hierarchy of the type suggested by Hesiod, or hinted at by the frescoes and figurines of Neolithic Crete or Catal Huyuk, there is little doubt the myths have influenced our society.
As Catholic history illustrates, even misogynist societies can have periods of mother worship, without proving any archaic matriarchy.
In the modern world, Jungian psychology considers the mother goddess an archetypal figure that dominates the ego of the child, who experiences the world as a matriarchy says Erich Neumann a student of Jung.
The Great Mother can be a good mother, giving food and nurture or be Kali like in her destructive, devouring and castrating persona evoking retributive hostility in her child.
The shadow self, that feeds creativity in us all, when Accessed can empower significant transformation and change.
The feminine creative spirit in love and in life can empower and beautify our lives. If Jung is correct, it depends on whether we shed light on our dark, hidden persona and reveal it constructively to the world.
