Classics 270- Classical Myth: Chapters 10-12

Demeter

Considered to be the mother-goddess and is the goddess of the grain and rich harvest. She is mother to Persephone.

Persephone

Queen of the underworld and daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Taken by Hades to the underworld to be his wife unwilling until Demeter retaliated causing a deal to be made which led Zeus to send Hermes to retrieve her.

Kore

Another name for Persephone that means “daughter” or “girl.” Given as she was a parthenos, an unmarried virgin.

Eleusinian Mysteries

One of the most famous religious cults of the ancient world based on the premise of regeneration through the power of Demeter. It fostered a feeling of community, ensured the growth of the grain, and promised a happy afterlife.

Triptolemus

Prince of Eleusis to whom Demeter taught her secret rites. Said to have mounted a chariot drawn by dragons and traveled over the whole world teaching the art of growing grain.

Inanna

An’s daughter meaning “queen of heaven” and the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, curiously, war. Most influence deity on later Mesopotamian religion and myth.

Dumuzi

Sumerian shepherd-god and lover of Inanna. Eventually killed by demons commanded by Inanna and sent to dwell in the underworld

Hieros gamos

Meaning “sacred marriage” that takes place between gods. Refers to the association between sexual intercourse and agricultural productivity that took place in certain myths such as Inanna and Dumuzi

Isis

Name meaning “throne,” she was the wife and sister of Osiris. She became the greatest goddess of Egypt, absorbing all other Egyptian goddesses and to the Greeks said she was the same as Demeter

Osiris

Husband and brother of Isis. Became the king of Egypt, establishing laws and showing the Egyptians how to grow crops and revere the gods. Was trapped in a coffin by Typhoeus and torn into 14 pieces of which 13 were recovered by Isis

Cybele

Phrygian goddess of fertility and mountains who could heal, send disease, give oracles, and give protection in war. Lover to Attis. By the fifth century bc the Greeks had identified her with Demeter or Rhea

Attis

Son of Nana who was guided by Agdestis in hunting. He was arranged to marry King Midas’ daughter which infuriated Agdestis, so Agdestis drove him mad forcing him to castrate himself. From his blood grew violets that wreathed the tree.

Agdestis

Son of Zeus whose strength and violence were so great that they could not be resisted. He castrated himself by falling for a tricked placed by Dionysus and from his blood grew a fruited pomegranate tree.

Dionysus

God of wine, the life force, and the instinctive side of personality. Male principle of fertility and the god who taught the art of turning the juice of grapes into wine.

Semele

Theban princess, lover of Zeus, and mother of Dionysus. Convinced by a disguised and jealous Hera to convince Zeus to reveal himself to her which burnt her alive while pregnant with Dionysus.

Ino

Queen of Orchomenus who Hermes instructed to disguise Dionysus in girl’s clothing to protect him from Hera. She was then driven mad by Hera leading to her drowning herself.

Nymphs of Nysa

Who Hermes delivered Dionysus to after Zeus turned him into a goat to disguise him from Hera. Located on either a mountain in Thrace, India, or Ethiopia

Bacchae

Female followers of the cult of Dionysus. Name meaning “women possessed by Bacchus.” They carried the thyrsus.

Maenads

Another name for the Bacchae, the female followers of the cult of Dionysus. Name meaning “the raging women.” They carried the thyrsus.

Thyrsus

A staff crowned with a pinecone or a bunch of ivy leaves. It was carried by the Bacchae or the Maenads.

Satyrs

Male followers of Dionysus. They were half-human creatures with erect phalli and the tails and ears of horses; later they acquired goatlike legs.

Silenus

Either a general term for any old satyr or the name of one satyr in particular: an ugly, drunken, extremely fat one. He is shown in art with thick lips and pug nose

Midas

King of Phrygia and son of Gordias and Cybelê. He was rewarded by Dionysus for his generous hospitality and was granted a single wish. He wished that everything he touched be turned to gold.

Ariadnê

Wife of Dionysus and daughter of King Minos. Dionysus found her on the island of Naxos in the midst of the Aegean Sea where Theseus had abandoned her.

Lycurgus

King of a tribe in Thrace who persecuted Dionysus, his, cult, and his traveling followers. Eventually went mad and attempted to rape his own mother and pruned off the legs of his son with an ax, thinking him the ivy plant that was sacred to the Dionysus. He was staked him to the ground by Thracians and eaten alive by wild horses.

Minyads

The three daughters of King Minyas who refused to join the cult of Dionysus like the other inhabitants of Orchomenus. Dionysus drove them mad in retaliation leading to them eating their own children. Dionysus later turned them into bats.

Pentheus

A king of Thebes who championed reason against disorder and opposed Dionysus. He was then tricked by Dionysus leading to the dismemberment of his body and his death

Thespis

Noted by Aristotle to be the man who added “a prologue and a speech” to the preexisting chorus of a tragedy. He also started the practice of having an actor take on the role of a mythical character by speaking in the first person.

Hades

Name meaning “the invisible,” he is the brother of Zeus and Poseidon and was the ruler of the underworld. He did not live on Olympus and had a magical helmet that made him invisible made by the Cyclopes. He commanded legions of demons and is married to Persephonê.

Pluto

Another name for Hades meaning the “enricher.” Given because from beneath the earth where Hades rules comes mineral and agricultural wealth.

Psychopompos

Word meaning “soul guide.” It refers to Hermes’ job of leading the dead to the house of Hades.

Tiresias

The most famous seer in Greek myth who was transformed in a women as punishment after seeing a pair of serpents coupling and killing the female. After seven years he saw a another pair of serpents coupling and killed the male, turning back into a man. He sides with Zeus on a debate on who has greater pleasure in sexual intercourse, so Hera blinds him and Zeus gives him the gift of prophecy.

Tantalus

Once a friend to the gods who tested them by serving them his own son Pelops at a banquet. All but Demeter, who was in mourning for Persephonê saw through this trick. Punished by having to stand in a pool of water that drains when he tries to drink it and beneath a tree of fruit that rises when he reaches for it.

Sisyphus

Famed for his cleverness. He seduced Anticlea, Odysseus’ mother, on her wedding night and tricked Death himself, one time imprisoning him and another time escaping to the upper world to live out a second life. Was punished by being forced to push a boulder up a hill in the underworld for eternity.

Elysium

Also known as the Elysian Fields, it is a special afterworld. Those destined for it do not descend to the underworld, but continue a blessed life in a remote part of the earth.

Orpheus

Lover of Eurydicê who was famous for his sweet singing to the lyre. He journeyed to the underworld to save Eurydice but failed to obey Hades and Persephone’s order to not look back at her while they traveled back to the upper world causing Eurydice to descend back into the underworld for eternity. Wanting nothing to do with any other woman, he invented male homosexuality and was later killed by the Bacchae.

Eurydicê

Lover of Orpheus and on her wedding day, Aristaeus pursued her intending to rape her. As she fled, a snake bit her on the heel and she died. Was saved by Orpheus in the underworld except on the journey home Orpheus, who was told not to look at her while traveling to the upperworld, looked back causing her to recede back to the underworld for eternity.

Zagreus

Another name for Dionysus given to him in the teachings of Orpheus. In this version his story is one of initiation where he is killed by the Titans and then brought back to new life as an adult and eventually his flesh is used to create humans.

Pythagoras

Best known for the philosophical claim that the essence of reality resides in mystical relations among numbers, proportions, and measures. He taught his followers to lead ascetic lives based on principles much like those of Orphism.

Er

A man who’s experiences Socrates used to prove his point that injustice is not rewarded, but instead punished in this world and the next. He was killed in battle, but ten days afterward, he was found still alive. He tells that he and all the other dead were judged and sent under the earth or into the heaven, to be punished or rewarded tenfold for the evil or good they had done.

Acheron

One of the five rivers of the Underworld, marking the boundary between the mortal world and the realm of the dead. Souls are ferried across it by Charon

Charon

The grim ferryman who takes the dead aboard his boat to cross the river Acheron. He requires a fare to cross and those who do not have it must wait one hundred years to cross.

Ixion

A king who lusted for Hera, but Zeus, not believing that anyone could really desire his wife, made an image of Hera out of cloud. Ixion pounced on it and his seed tumbled through the cloud to the earth springing up Centaurus. Zeus then punished him by bounding him to a wheel of fire that turns slowly through the eternal mists.