I’m
probably going to catch some flak for this, but it’s not me, it’s the Ancient
Greeks.
How do we
connect Prometheus, Hestia, and Perseus? Well, we already know that fire and
the hearth go together. Worship starts with the hearth. But who tends the
hearth? Women. Women are the absolute center of the Greek home.
Again, I am
not anti-women. In fact, the ancient Greeks were not anti-women, either. Their
practices don’t align with our modern values, true, but women were central to
Greek life. Yes, cooking was women’s work, but they were not servants, they
were the mistresses of the house. Men didn’t cross women when it came to the
home. Woe to the man who disrespects a woman in her house (and there are many
myths about this taking place, all of them ending bad for the man; we’ll get to
some of those, eventually).
Where was
I? Right. Women and the hearth, the
center for Greek life. Without fire and the hearth, there is no worship of
other gods. Without women, there is no hearth and home. And this is how we
connect Perseus.
Perseus is
a defender of women. He steps in to save his mother from Polydectes, he steps
in to save Andromeda from her own parents. Remember that bit I said about poor
family values? This is what I’m talking about. Perseus, however, has the right
value system. He is not rescuing women so that he can dominate over them; he is
trying to restore and preserve a set of family values that has somehow gone
astray.
It even
starts before Polydectes. Acrisius, Perseus’s own grandfather, casts his
daughter and baby grandson out into the sea. Had he adhered to family values,
he wouldn’t have died by Perseus’s discus later on. Polydectes tried to force
himself on Danae, and while there are plenty of stories about men forcing
themselves on women, none of them end happily for either party. Andromeda’s
parents try to sacrifice Andromeda for their blasphemy, then renege on a deal
with Perseus, so they can sell her off to someone else.
Clearly,
family values are gone. Yet Perseus is one of the few stories of a Greek hero
where the hero gets the girl and lives happily ever after. As I said, he founds
a great dynasty. His line and kingdom prosper for generations, in large part
because he defends these values. He gives proper deference to the gods through
his actions, not just in giving up Medsua’s head to Athena, but by the small
actions of caring for his mother and wife.