M³ Evolving Woman

Throughout the Greek pantheon, we’ve seen evidence of stagnation, of an inability to change. Yet we just looked at story of Aphrodite picking up the craft of weaving. Athena invented this craft, yet Aphrodite became skilled enough to make Athena want to renounce her claim to weaving altogether.

M³ Working Woman

One day, Aphrodite got curious and started weaving on a loom. Eventually, Athena caught her at this. We all know Athena is pretty possessive when it comes to weaving. She invented the craft and turned Arachne into a spider because of it. So we can expect something will happen here. We want it to be a Catfight of Epic Proportions™.

M³ Winning Is Everything

So Aphrodite cheats the court’s decision. No, she doesn’t flat out break the rules as that would not be allowed. The details of the case are that Adonis gets four months to spend however he wishes. Now if he chooses to spend it with one of the goddesses, that’s his choice, except when it’s not.

M³ Pretty Boy

So Persephone has the chest, and Aphrodite expects her not to open it, but we all know what happens when you give a box to someone in mythology: they open it. Okay, yes, Pandora didn’t open a box, she opened a jar, but we all know what we meant. Besides, squeezing an infant into a jar is just not practical.

On finding the boy, she raises him to manhood, which means Aphrodite has been gone for a while or the kid grows freakishly fast. After he’s a man, Persephone takes him on as her lover. Yeah, it’s kind of awkward, isn’t it? Even though Persephone is in no way related to him, she still raised him. So now we have a pseudo-incestuous relationship, here. Remember the side effects of parenting according to mythology? Yeah.

Anyway, Aphrodite finds out about this, and wants the kid back because she wanted Adonis for the same reason.

Does anyone else hear David Lee Roth’s cover of “Just A Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody”? Just me? Well, okay then.

So Adonis’s only value to these two goddesses is for his body. It gets so bad that the matter actually goes to trial. Now, Zeus is a smart cookie, as we’ve seen, and what we’ve got here is a court case between two of his daughters, arguing over the man with whom they wish to cheat on their husbands with. Yeah, no way he’s going to get into that one.

He transfers the case (which is something he does quite frequently) to another court. Judge Calliope (of the Muses) gets jurisdiction. She more or less goes the Solomon route, here, dividing the year into thirds so that each goddess gets four months and Adonis gets time to himself, which I thought was considerate of Calliope to think that the guy might want some time to, you know, live his own life.

We are dealing with gods, though, and no story can end that simply. Aphrodite cheats.

M³ Stashed Away

So, yeah, it’s weird being born from a tree. But it’s Greek myth, what’re you going to do? As stated before, Aphrodite feels a bit responsible for the death of Smyrna, so she took the baby and locked him in a box. Perfectly normal thing to do, right? Mythologies around the world agree that this produces perfectly well-adjusted people, so you can throw away your parenting manuals.

Please don’t follow the advice of mythology on parenting.

M³ Atypical Godly Feeling

So, there’s a baby born from a tree, whose name happens to be Adonis. Yes, the very good-looking Adonis, and we will get to the details of that particular story soon. Before that, though, we have to examine something very curious. After Adonis is born, “Aphrodite, already repenting of the mischief that she had made, concealed Adonis in a chest.”

M³ Love Is in The Air

Never, ever, ever boast about a trait or skill as being better than one of the gods. It’s a lesson that apparently bears repeating despite having been through this before. Unfortunately, the wife of King Cinryas boasted that her daughter, Smyrna, was more beautiful than Aphrodite.

M³ Close Still Counts

Okay, so the thunderbolt was deflected, but that’s okay. Like with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons, close counts with thunderbolts. The thunderbolt travels through the ground and hits Anchises that way. It doesn’t kill him, but it weakens his legs to the point he can’t stand on his own any more. He has been struck lame, even worse than Hephaestus.

M³ Thunderbolt Aftershock

When you brag about sexually conquering a goddess, you can expect Zeus to be ticked off. He hurls a thunderbolt down at Anchises. Zeus, it must be said, is a good aim with his thunderbolts. They are his weapon of choice and has had to face down many titanic opponents (including his father) with them. He’s not going to miss. So it’s a safe bet that Anchises is a dead man.

M³ Mortal Love

If the affair was orchestrated by Aphrodite, well, she’s mostly satisfying her own lust, and possibly just emulating dear old (adopted) dad by chasing after mortals.

This particular mortal is Anchises, a prince of Troy. And whether it was Aphrodite acting alone or Zeus manipulating the chess pieces, Aphrodite eventually reveals herself to be a goddess to Anchises. She warns him, though, that he can’t tell anyone he’s sleeping with a goddess, or Zeus will get angry and strike him down.

M³ Arranged Affair

Stories vary about the exact circumstances of this. Some say Zeus set up Aphrodite to fall in love, others say she chose out and seduced the mortal. If it was Zeus who set it up, we have to explore the exact reasons for this given how he called Hephaestus a fool.

M³ Sex & Marriage

Aphrodite will not be tamed, even by Zeus. He decided to give her to Hephaestus to try and keep her contained and to get Hephaestus to make him all the good toys, especially his thunderbolts. Hephaestus, inspired by Aphrodite’s great beauty, makes her legendary girdle, a belt woven of gold that enhances her beauty even more. It is so potent that, on occasion, Hera borrows the girdle so that she can entice Zeus into bed instead of going off and having another affair.

M³ Seashells on The Seashore

After hitting the Bible pretty hard, let’s move on to lighter fare. I have been putting off a deep analysis of the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Every treatment I’ve seen of her in articles, film, and fiction has tended to treat her as somewhat vapid and very one-dimensional, but that portrayal is similar to many analyses of Zeus. However, like Zeus, when we look at the totality of her myths, a bigger, more revealing picture of her begins to emerge.

M³ Diomedes's Hat Trick

            Diomedes rules! Yeah, I’m biased but the facts bear me out. The guy drove off not one, not two, but three gods from the battlefield, all in the same day. Show me another Greek hero who could accomplish so much? Achilles? He’s supposed to be the greatest warrior, but he’s sulking in his tent. Odysseus is a great thinker and did was the man against Polyphemus, but this is on a whole other level. Hercules? Sure, he did a lot, and is the paragon of what human beings should aspire to, but his trick with Atlas doesn’t measure up to driving three gods from the battlefield, injuring two of them. We also can’t let go that one of these gods is Ares, the god of War.

            Diomedes rules.

            Mic drop.

            Mic pick up.

            Yeah, I’m not done with Diomedes just yet. We have to deal with the question of why this matters. Yes, Athena is superior to Ares, but that’s something else. Athena’s involvement with Diomedes is minimal. She allows him to see the gods and leans in on the spear thrust against Ares, but that’s it. Diomedes does all the rest on his own.

            Diomedes was able to face off against gods and came out victorious. This is huge. Achilles gets all the glory, but Diomedes is the one we need to recognize for great deeds. This changes the very nature of the godhood for the Greeks. Before this moment, the gods were on a level far removed from humanity. Even when we have contests such as Arachne vs. Athena, the gods always have the power to beat the humans. Arachne might be a better weaver, but she is powerless against Athena’s other gifts.

            Diomedes, though, wins the day. Driving Aphrodite and Apollo from the field are lesser—though still great—accomplishments as their areas are not war. Ares, however, is at home on the battlefield, and should be able to best anyone in hand-to-hand combat. Yet Diomedes is the victor. And that’s an end to it. The contest has already been decided, and either Ares is powerless to go after him in another way, or not bright enough to think of it (50-50, I’d say).

            What this means is that mortals can challenge the gods on their own level. It’s also important that it is Diomedes to accomplish this. Achilles, Aeneas, Perseus, Bellerophon, Theseus, or Hercules would rob these deeds of their true importance. They all have divine blood. That connection to the gods would be the excuse that allowed them to engage the gods in battle. Diomedes, though, is completely human.

            Mortal parents and his own prowess are what gave him the victory. Not only has he earned the reputation for a terrifying war cry to opposing armies, but to the gods themselves, and Greek mythology is forever changed.

M³ Lover Not A Fighter

            We’ll get into why Athena wants to hurt Aphrodite, later (it’s a really good story with appropriate trash-talk). For now, however, all we need to know is that Athena has authorized the use of force against Aphrodite. She does, indeed, take to the field of battle. She has no actual interest in the outcome of the war. Instead, she’s there to protect her son Aeneas because Diomedes will wreck him. Actually, he pretty much did wreck him. He smashed his hip joint pretty badly. He was going to die.

M3 War Over the Pretty Boy

War Over the Pretty Boy

            Adonis, born from his mother the tree, is very handsome. Aphrodite, goddess of love, is down with that, and wants to keep him for herself. So she locks him in a box—no one ever said that Greek mythology was free from abuse—and hands the box over to Persephone for safe keeping.

            The idea is that Persephone, being both the Queen of the Underworld and married to Hades, would be less inclined to do anything with Adonis. Plus, she’s supposed to keep the box locked tight and in secluded space so no one discovers him. Unfortunately for Aphrodite, Persephone is curious. She opens the box, discovers Adonis, and proceeds to make him her boy toy.

            Yes, she’s cheating on Hades. Affairs in Greek mythology are so common that they might as well be the normal instead of monogamy, but we have to remark on this one simply because of how gentlemanly Hades acted in courting her. And this is how she repays him.

            We have to conclude at this point that her power is such that she has no difficulty in brazenly cheating on him with Adonis. The affair was not kept private at all. When Aphrodite discovers what Persephone is doing, she takes the matter to Zeus. It’s a real People’s Court moment.

Both women want to possess Adonis. Zeus is in a pickle because on the one hand is his daughter Persephone and on the other is his daughter Aphrodite, neither of which he wishes to piss off. He does the only sensible thing and decides on shared custody. Persephone gets four months, Aphrodite four months, and Adonis has four months for himself. The entire affair would have been broadcast all over Olympus by taking the matter to Zeus, but Persephone shows no concern over Hades’s feelings.

The schedule is fine until Aphrodite cheats. She uses the power of her girdle (a belt) to make Adonis spend his own time with her, giving her twice as much time as what Persephone gets. However, it’s a legal play on the loophole, so no foul can be called. Again, Persephone is quite open about enjoying her boy toy, she’s just mad that Aphrodite outmaneuvered her and she gets shafted (less than she’d like) on the deal.

Hades actually takes no part in this myth, even though he would be well within his rights to take Adonis off the playing field. However, that honor goes to Ares. Persephone, not happy, informs the god of war of Aphrodite’s newest boy toy. Since that honor once belonged to Ares, he turns himself into a boar and kills Adonis.

Aphrodite, not into necrophilia, loses on this one. However, Persephone is the Queen of the Underworld, so Adonis would descend to her realm. She may have won that battle and continue to have herself a boy toy while still being married to Hades.

M3 Unnatural Love

            After all the effort and gentlemanly behavior of Hades, Persephone doesn’t prove to be as caring. In fact, she has herself an affair with a mortal and kicks off a catfight with Aphrodite. Aphrodite is responsible for starting the whole thing . . . well, indirectly. Okay, let’s get into.

            So, Aphrodite rescued a child born from a myrrh tree. . . .

            Um, right. I need to rewind a bit more, don’t I?

            Right, this is more of an Aphrodite myth, but it does have a big dose of Persephone in it.

            Okay, so King Cinryas was an arrogant SOB, and he decided to boast that his daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite. Classic mistake. We’ve already seen with the likes of Arachne and others that it’s a crazy-bad idea to ever boast that someone can do X better than one of the gods.

            But he did it anyway. Now, in the course of punishments handed down from the gods, the Acteon and Arachne generally top out the list as being the most famous, and received pretty severe punishments. Demeter has a nasty one about a man name Erysichthon—say that five times fast—where she makes him perpetually hungry. However, Aphrodite wins the prize in my book.

            When Cinryas makes his boast, Aphrodite gets revenge with her own style. Cinryas has a daughter, Smyrna. Instead of doing something directly to Cinryas, Aphrodite instead puts a whammy on Smyrna. She makes Smyrna fall uncontrollably in lust with her father.

            And she acts on this lust.

            Yup, the daughter rapes the father. He’s not really aware, either, since she slipped in at night. And she gets pregnant.

            Yeah, this is why Aphrodite wins this particular contest. PSA: do not ever, ever claim to be more beautiful than Aphrodite.

When Cinryas learns that he is both the father and grandfather of Smyrna’s unborn child, he kind of goes off the deep end. He wants to kill her and the child for the unnatural lust. Aphrodite felt a little bad over what happened, so, at the last moment, she turned Smyrna into a myrrh tree. Cinryas’s sword cut the tree in half, and out fell a baby boy.

This sure beats the idea of the stork, right?

This baby boy is Adonis, and he becomes the object of Persephone’s affections, but we’ll tackle that next week.

M3 Love Goddess: Aphrodite

            In honor of the month celebrating Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be good to examine the Greek gods and goddesses responsible and with strong connections to love.

            First up, everyone’s most well-known Greek goddess of love: Aphrodite. Aphrodite is a surprisingly complex. Certainly she had numerous affairs, almost as many as her (adopted) father Zeus. Like many of the Greek gods, there are multiple stories regarding her birth (a result of so many different regions having their own worship and stories).