classics definitions

Caduceus

Hermes Slay Hat

Petasos

Staff with the snakies (Hermes)

Heracles Mingens

Heracles urinating

The man letting loose

Centauromachy

Centaur battle

Heracles has one after opening the wine casket

First labour of Heracles

Nemean lion

Chokes it out

In some stories, this becomes his pelt

2nd Labour of Heracles

Lernian Hydra

Help from nephew, Iolaus

3rd labour of Heracles

Cerytinian Deer

Artemis divine animal, chased for a full year

4th labour of Heracles

Erymanthian Boar

Causes centauromachy when he forces Pholos to open wine. Heracles kills the centaurs, but wounds Chiron, who goes to Prometheus and takes his mortality, setting him free

Pholos dies upon picking up one of the arrows and dropping the poisoned part on his foot

Heracles just lassoes the bull, whatevs

Xenia

Guest friendship

Moral obligation to welcome foreigners

Mutual relationship: you could expect Xenia in return

Zeus Xenos

5th Labour of Heracles

Cattle of Augeais

Heracles needs to clear out his stable in one day. He says he’ll do it for payment of 1/10 his cattle, redirects two rivers, and clears it all out. Augeias refuses to give him money, so Heracles takes him to court and gets his son to testify. They both get expelled, Heracles has a little side quest where he saves someone’s daughter from marrying a centaur Eurytuon by killing him

6th labour of Heracles

Stymphalian Birdies

Loud birds

Athena gives him Hephaestus’s castanets and he scares them

Castanets

Women played these

Given by Athena and Hephaestus

Hero help

Seventh Labour of Heracles

Cretan Bull

Yes, the one Pasiphae did (and/or the bull that took Europa over the sea)

Shield of Heracles

Epic Poem by Hesiod

Paralleling Achilles’s super slay shield

Takes place as part of the eleventh task—Heracles challenges Ares and his son Cycnos, killing Cycnos and getting Ares in the knee

Eighth labour of Heracles

Mares of Diomedes (Not that one)

Told to bring the mares from Thrace to Mycenae. Diomedes is the son of Cyrene and Ares, and king of Bistones.

He takes the mares, leaves them with boyfriend, fights bistones, man eating mares kills boyfriend, and Heracles names a city Abdera after him

Ninth Labour of Heracles

Belt of Amazons from Hippolyte

Heracles goes, initially doesn’t fight, Hera makes them all mad, womp womp womp he fights them all and wins the girdle for Eury’s daughter.

Side quest: Save Hesione, demand payment from Laomedon, don’t get it, fight Troy. Hesione is given to Telamon, and she ransoms her brother Priam (which gives him that name)

Amazonomachy

Amazon war. Fighting the women

Amazons

Early concept: may represent “The Other”. As such, are often portrayed with foreign clothing and stuff (like PANTS)

Slept with neighbouring tribes, cut of breasts, warriors tho women

However, they are also shown as noble warriors–not just monsters like centaurs

Tenth labour of Heracles

Cattle of Geryones:

Three head guy with red cattle. Has a doggy named Orthos and Eurytion, 

(Apollodorus) : On the way, Heracles built his pillars, got mad when Helios made him hot, and shot an arrow at Helios. Helios thought this was insane, and gave him a cup big enough to travel in

Heracles gets the cattle, and gives the cup back after putting the cows in it and travelling.

Two people steal the cows, heracles gets mad, and then kills them, but a bull escapes and starts wrecking the world. Hephaistos looks after the cows while Heracles gets it back. Heracles wrestles someone three times and kills him to get the cows. Hera sends a gadfly to the cows, and then some are just left to roam free. He gets mad at the river Strymon, and fills it with rocks. Eury sacrifices cows to Hera.

Cattle Raiding

Common mythological task for gods and heroes (a topos: theme). Even present in Cu Cuthain and in other mythologies

Latin word for money (pecunia) comes from cattle/livestock (pecus)

Voyage to the West/Travelling spirit of Heracles

Greeks did a lot of colonizing–they liked that Heracles did, too

He builds the pillars at the border of Europe and Libya (according to Apollodorus), representing boundary of human existence

Palaephatus’s Rationalization of Geryones

A king in a place with three peaks–linguistic misunderstanding

11th labour of Heracles

Apples of the Hesperides

First, ends up fighting Cycnos and daddio. Heracles kills Cyc and injures daddy Ares. He talks to some nymphs at the Eridanos river, and they show him to Nereus. He holds onto Nereus while shapeshifting until he learns were the apples are

He fights Antaios, Poseidon’s son with Ge (or so theorized)

He passes through Egypt, where he is about to get sacrificed. He kills the king and his son (Bousiris and Amphidamas). 

He kills some random travellers bull and sacrifices it. The driver calls down curses at him, leading to an aetiological explanation for a certain tradition of sacrificing to Heracles.

He frees Prometheus (replacing him with Chiron), and takes up the bond of olive. Prometheus tells Heracles to take over holding up the sky from Atlas and to send Atlas to get it himself. He has a funny smarty pants moment where he says he carry it forever if Atlas lets him get a pad for his back. Immediately leaves Atlas there forever. 

Heracles Twelth Labour

Cerberos:

Hades lets him have Cerbie if Heracles can handle him. He just chokes him all the way to Eury’s house.

Side Quests:

• Before entering the underworld, he goes to get initiated into Eleusinian mysteries. He’s not pure of the Centauromachy, so the king purifies him

• He rolls the rock off Ascalapos, the guy who testified that Persephone ate the seed

• He frees Theseus from his place, but cant save Peirithous

• He tries to kill Medusa the Gorgon, but Hermes tells him its a phantom

• Meleagros s there too

• He tries to provide some blood for the souls by sacrificing Hades’ cattle. He must kill their herder, Menoites

Alternative 11th labour of Heracles (apollodorus)

Apples of Hesperidies: He kills the snake guarding the apples, and gives them to Eury. Eury gifts them back, and Athena takes them back

Bacchylides Ode 5

Lyric Poet of 520-450 BCE that specialized in Victory Odes

This ode was dedicated to the winner of a horse race–about Heracles meeting Meleagros in the underworld

Foreshadows' Heracles’s own death by Meleagros’s sister

Kind of somber (best for mortals to never be born) for a VICTORY

Heracles descending to underworld

Best possible task for Greeks bestest hero. Potentially foreshadows future immortality. 

Battle over Deinaira

Battle between the river Acheloos and Heracles, detailed in Ovid’s metamorphoses, after twelve labours

Breaks the literal horn of Acheloos–better than the river god

Nessus

Tries to rape Deinaira–takes Deinaira and helps her across the river. Heracles takes the oppurtunity to show that he is stronk and swims the river, and then kills Nessus with the poison arrows. Nessus tells Deinaira that the blood is a love potion, so she takes it later to ensure Heracles will stay in love with her (BAD plan).

Apotheosis of Heracles

Deinaira fears she will be replaced by Iole, and drenches his tunic with Nessus’s blood (maybe semen?). This has hydra’s blood, and it starts burning him alive.

Heracles gets mad at the guy who delivered the hirt and flings him off a cliff (Ovid, metamorphosis–his name is lichen and he becomes lichen)

He builds himself a pyre out of entire trees, and burns away the mortal to become a god. He goes up to join dad, and marries his sister Hebe (truly a god)

Heracles the athlete

Heracles was the image of the ideal athlete –nude save for lion pelt, bearded, VERY muscular.

Perseus

Ancestor of Heracles

Famous Perseus things (3)

Killing Medousa

Rescuing Andromeda

Kinda sorta killing grandaddy

Bonus:

• Saving mom

• Having numerous evil uncles

• Namesake of Percy Jackson

Why Perseus is an ULTIMATE folktale hero

1. No known epic poem 

2. Clearly meant to be told to kiddos

3. No unique personality: just an amalgation of slay traits

Folktale element – Girl’s Tragedy

1. Prohibition

2. Seclusion

3. Violation

4. Punishment 

5. Liberation

Danae – Girl’s Tragedy

1. Acrisius says “no grandkids”

2. Traps her in the basement

3. Zeus and the golden shower

4. She and her son get locked in the box and thrown into the sea

5. Dictys the fisherman saves them

Shower of Gold

How Danae is impregnated–in some depictions, she is shown with a nurse (in some stories trapped with her) and/or with her breasts uncovered

Heroic Quest

Most common Folktale type

Impossible task/ labour to accomplish

Evil Uncles – Perseus

A common folktale motif

Unc One–Polydectes, king of Seriphos and brother of Dictys. Tries to marry Perseus’s mother and is mean

Unc Two–Andromeda’s uncle Phineas wants to marry her and tries to kill Perseus in response.

Perseus–Instances of Divine Help

Athena and Hermes —> Graiai —> Nymphs with the cadecus, winged sandals of Hermes, and kibisis

Perseus–Super Weapons

Gorgon Head

Winged Sandals

Kibisis

“Adamantie sickle” from Hermes to kill Medusa

Gorgons

PRIMAL TERROR

Literally monsters

Had beards, tusks

Were shown FACE ON

Apotropaic–therefore, kinda commonly shown–warded off “evil eye” (the drunker you are, the more protection you need from evil eye)(also put on temples)

Gorgons on temples/in cups

Apotropaic–therefore, kinda commonly shown–warded off “evil eye” (the drunker you are, the more protection you need from evil eye)(also put on temples for same reason)

Perseus–After medusa

Get with Andromeda (Damsel in D)

Fight unc

Fulfill prophecy (discus in the head)

Andromeda’s “punishment”

Her mother, Cassipeia, had compared herself to the Nereids, and they had to sacrifice their daughter to Cetos

How Perseus kills Cetos

Ovid–Magical sword, much much blood

Apollodorus–he just kills it

I mean, why the heck does he have the damn head????

Folktale Motifs in Perseus’s Tale

Girls Tragedy

Evil Uncles

Divine Help

Super Weapons

Impossible Task

Damsel in Distress

Jason and Perseus sims and diffs

Both extraordinary deeds

Jason is more morally ambiguous

The Golden Fleece

From the golden Ram that saved Phrixus and Helle (ish)

Hyginus: 2 (Ino tries to get Phricus and Helle killed, gets found out, are saved by Liber), 3 (Liber drives Phrixus and Helle crazy, Nebula saves her kids with this ram. At Colchis, Phrixus gives Aeetes the ram. Aeetes starts worrying that a foreigner will dethrone him due to a prophecy, kills Phrixus, and Phrixus kids flee. They get shipwrecked on Dia, but are later saved by the Argonauts and join them)

Jason

Complex hero, chosen by Hera

Son of Aeson and Alcimede (not rlly divine)

Jason’s impossible quest

Given by uncle Pelias–hopes Jason will die

To retrieve golden fleece and bring it (thought protected by serpent")

Because he received a warning to “Beware the one sandaled man”

Modern Day region of Colchis

Georgia

Argo

Greatest ship ever

(according to Apollodorus)

Built by Argos, child of Phrixus

Fifty oared ship

Had a prow made of wood from Dodona (what does the arrow of Dodona do? TALK. THIS DID THAT TOO)

Argonauts

Bestest Greeks of the time basically

Joined Jason’s mission (Jason likes working with others :) )

If you had a cool ancestor, they were ON THE ARGO

Important Argonauts

• Heracles (leaves after Hylas is kidnapped)

• Theseus

• Telamon

• Peleus

• Meleagros

• Orpheus

• Atalante (yes a woman)

• Admetos (Alcestis husband)

• Castor and Pollux/Polydeuces

• SONS OF BOREAS

Hylas and Heracles (and kinda sorta Polyphemos)

After Cyzicos. Hylas (hot boyfriend) is taken by nymphs while fetching. He calls out, and Polyphemos hears him. Poly tells Heracles, and they search for him. Meanwhile, the ship leaves without them

According to Strabo, this is etiological: it explains a ritual in the area where they hike through the woods calling out for Hylas

Order of Jason’s Tribulation (in Apollodorus)

1. Lemnos, the smelly women

2. Doliones, the people with night blindness

3. Mysia, where they ditch Poly + Heracles 

4. Land of Bebryces, where they fight the boxer king

5. Salmydessos in Thrace, where they save Phineus the prophet

6. Pigeons and Symplegades

7. Mariandynoi, where King Lycos receives them. Idmon is killed by a board, and Tiphys (steer guy) dies too

8. Get to Colchis (Yay!)

Lemnos

Land of only women, who smell.

• They neglect Aphrodite

• Aphrodite makes them smell

• Their husbands take Thracian women

• They get mad and kill all men (only Hypipsyle’s dad Thoas is saved by her)

The men dilly dally here for a year, doing what you’d expect. Jason and Hypipsyle (the queen) have twins, Euneus and Nebrophonos.

Doliones

Apollodorus:

After Lemnos. Where their king, Cyzicos, takes them in and does very good xenia. However, at nightfall, a storm drives them back, and the Doliones, thinking they’re a pelagasian army, start fighting them. They kill Cyzicos, but in the morning, they mourn him and cut their hair

Bebycres

Apollodorus:

After Mysia. Their king, Amycos, son of Poseidon and some Bithynian nymph, liked boxing strangers and killing them that way. Pollux went to box him, killing him by striking his elbow. The Bebryces go to kill them in return, but the Argonauts fight back well, and even kill them as they flee

Salmydessos/Phineus

Apollodorus:

Phineus was a blind prophet (some say blinded by gods for just telling the future, some say blinded by Poseidon for telling Phrixos’s sons how to sail from Colchis to Greece, some say Argonauts+Boreas themselves blinded him for blinding his children on stepmom’s origins)/ Gods also had harpies set on him, and would eat all his food and leave the scraps terrible. 

The Argonauts went to get advice, and he says he’ll give it if they fight the harpies. Boreas’s children, Zetes and Calais, chase the harpies down–the harpies were fated to die due to the sons of Boreas, and they are fated to die when they can’t catch something. As such, they pursue them all the way to Strophades – one falls into the Tigres, now called Harpys after her, on the way– and both collapse. In other version, both live after the Harpy just promises not to do that eveer again. Phineus tells them how to pass the big smashy rocks (Symplegades)

Symplegades

Set of smashing rocks–they send a pigeon through

Represents a magical/impossible barrier between the magic/foreign world and Jason’s.

Crossing this boundary is symbolic–Jason is not a normal man, and does not normal things

May be kind of etiologically symbolic–represents how Greeks might’ve seen colonizing new territories and maritime times

Medea

Magic hot sorceress (slay!). Falls in love with Jason, saves him with magic, kills his uncle with magic, and gets mad. 

What Medea gives Jason

• Gives him a potion for firebreathing bulls,

• tells him how to defeat serpent men (throw a thing in)

• Puts the dragon to sleep and STEALS THE DAMN FLEECE

Events in Colchis (Apollodorus)

Aeetes promises to give the fleece himself if Jason can yoke his bulls and plant some serpent teeth. These two bulls were given by Hephaistos, and they had bronze feet and breathed fire (because WHY NOT). Medea gives him special not fire ointment, and makes him swear to marry her, ordering him to smear the potion all over himself. He yokes the bulls, and on Medea’s instructions, throws a rock into the teeth soldiers and they fight amongst themselves. 

Aeetes, does not, infact, give the fleece, and instead intends to kill them and burn the Argo. Medea herself gets the fleece by putting the serpent to sleep, brings along her brother Apsytros

Throwing Stuff–Folktale Motif

You throw stuff to delay your pursuer–this happens in Jason and Medea’s flight from there

Death of Pelias

Apollodorus: Pelias wants to kill Aeson, but Aeson kills himself by drinking a bull’s blood in sacrifice. His widow Alcimede curses Pelias and kills herself. Pelias kills their baby, Promachos. Medeia convinces his daughters to cut HIM up and put him in a pot so that she can make him young again, by kind of doing the same with a lamb. Pelias’s son Acastos kicks them out and they go to Corinth

Ovid: Medeia does a long long ritual, invoking Hecate to make Jasons’s father young. Pelias’s daughters ask the same, and she does the above to them too.

Jason’s Homeward Voyage (Apollodorus)

• Aeetes pursues them

• Medea does “the thing”. Aeetes stops to go put his son to burial, naming the place Tomoi

• Aeetes sends many Colchians to get Medea back, saying that he will give them the punishments he intends for Medea if they don’t get her back

• Zeus, mad at the murder, throws the argo off course. The ship (Dodona) speaks and tells them they must go get purified

• They do exactly that (Circe)

• They sail past the Sirens, and Orpheus sings to counteract the song. (One guy, Boutes, swims to the but Aphrodite saves him and puts him in Lilybaion)

• They go through, Charbydis, Scylla, Wandering Rocks, all that jazz, but the Nereids like them and therefore save them

• They go the Corcyra, where Alcinoos rules, and where some of the Colchians catch up (the others just settled elsewhere)

• Alcinoos says he’ll give Medea back if she is virgin–Arete, Alcinoos’s wife, tells them to sleep together, and as such, the Colchians decide to live there instead instead of face punishment

• They get stuck in a storm and find an Island that they call Anaphe (shown to them by Apollo). Arete’s gifted servants mock the heroes–etiological myth as to why they now make jokes during sacrifices on those islands

• They go and Talos, a man made of bronze (by Hephaistos), starts throwing rocks at them from his island. Medea tricks him by promising to make him immortal but draining him of ichor instead (removing a nail ) / he gets shot in the ankle

• The whole voyage takes four months, perhaps showing what greeks thought about meritime times

End to the Jason and Medea

Apollodorus: Jason and Medea are exiled for Pelias’s death, and Creon, king of corinth, offers to engage him to his daughter Glauce. Jason takes that up, and Medea makes a special wedding dress for her. That dress burns Glauce to death and kills her father when he tries to help her. She also kills their kids

Hyginus: She does the same thing, but instead makes a poisoned crown for her sons to give to their stepmother (named Creusa here). The crown kills her, Creon, AND Jason in fire, and she kills her kids too

Jason and Medea’s children (its probably fine if you don’t know tbh)

Mermerus, Pheres

Meleager

Relatively minor figure, but the Boar story is REALLY cool. His myth is the special birth

His power comes from an OBJECT (his log)

Similar to samson

The Calydonian Boar and Hunt

Boar sent by Artemis to Aetolia because she was not sacrificed to (SACRIFICE TO YOUR GODS GUYS!!!!). Object of Meleager’s story

Meleager also invites a bunch of people

Events of the Hunt Itself

Ovid: Everyone gets utterly wrecked by the boar–Atalante gets the first hit with her arrow, in its ear. Meleager kills it himself. 

Baccylides: Meleager just kills it, but there is a war afterward

Apollodorus: Atalante is the first to shoot it, in the back. Amphiaros is the second, hitting the eye. Meleagros kills it with a blow to the flank.

Atalante–Calydonian Boar Hunt

She’s mostly included because Meleager thinks she’s hot, and wanted to have a child with her (Apollodorus). 

The others don’t want her with them–this is because the collective hunt feels more like a male initiation ritual, as it is not solo (like Heracles vs Lion). 

Significance of the Hunt

If it’s collective–male initiation ritual

Emblematic for heroes

Analagous to warfare and monster slaying

Hunts could turn violent quickly

Death of meleager (main)

He fights with his uncles (maybe over Atalante, maybe just over the furs) and kills them

Angry, his mom kills him by burning the wood

Althaia kills herself and his sisters (save for Deinaira) become pheasants (meleagrides)

Meleager in the Iliad

Curetes, who aided in the boar hunt, go to fight Calydon because ot the hunt. Meleager kills his mother’s brothers, and she curses. At one point (and because his bitter about this curse) he refuses to fight, and the Curetes nearly kill everyone. His wife must beseech him to fight. This story is told to Achilles to get HIM to fight

Orpheus

The special music man (IDEAL mortal music man even)

Disputed parentage–sometimes, dad is Apollo, sometimes, Oiagros

An Argonaut–mostly known about because of Eurydice

From THRACE

Thrace

Place near Thrace, with a language similar to Greek+Lation. 

Considered “tough” and “uncultured”, warlike and violent

Where Tereus and Orpheus are from

In Art: Distinguished by clothing

Vergil

Roman poet of 70-19 BCE, last gen of Roman Republic and beginning of empire

Bucolics collection of 10 poems on pastoral themes

Georgics: didactic poem in 4 books on agriculture

Aeneid: You know this

Georgics

Work by Vergil in four books

First half–LITERALLY beekeeping

Second half–Epyllion, little epic

Ends to the Eurydice Myth

Georgics (main one): Orpheus looks back, loses Eurydice forever. May have been invented by Vergil

Euripides Alcestis: Alcestis states that she wants to be like Orpheus–no mention of his failure, implying he succeeded

Plato’s Symposium: Orpheus is given a fake, because the gods just don’t like him

Second Death of Eurydice: Effects on Orpheus

He is unable to get back over the river

Either:

• Invents homosexuality because he could never love a woman again

• Sings of love and mourning forever

Death of Orpheus

Thracian women/Bacchae tear him apart because he sings of love but doesn’t engage in it

Vergil: Orpheus weeps for seven months, singing to everyone, and then they rip him up. The Women rip him up and scatter him everywhere,and the Hebrus river carries his head which called out Eurydice’s name as he died

Ovid: Same thing, but added that the Thracian women are only able to overcome his singing by being so loud that nothing can hear his music and therefore cannot come to his defence. His head floats to LEsbos, which becomes THE lyric poetry place as a result

Thracian women

Were meant to be creepy and scary

• Warlike

• Had tattoos on their faces and neck

Orphism

Orginiates about 6th century BCE, that souls are reincarnated until they purify and are released

This moves Orpheus’s myth from mere folktale to religious mysticism and practice

Theseus

Famous hero from Athens

His stories become popular in 6th century BCE after athens becomes a Mediterranean powerhouse–propaganda

Europa and the Bull

Europa (picking flowers), sees the white bull. Bull (zeus) kidnaps her and takes her from Phoenicia to Crete. She has Minos, Sarpedon (dies in Trojan war), and Rhadamanthys. 

Europa marries ASTERIOS and becomes queen of Crete. Minos becomes king after

Minos and the Bull

ApollodorusL

Minos is opposed from being king of Crete. He makes a sacrifice to prove the gods want him to be king, and asks for a bull to appear from the depths. Poseidon gives the bull, but Minos thinks its so slay that he sacrifices a different one. Naturally, this doesn’t work.

Pasiphae falls for the bull, gets Daedalus to help her get with it. She has THE MINOTAURRR

The Labyrinth

Daedalues builds it

Some aspects seem to be drawn from the pre-Greek Minoan culture, which has MANY MANY MANY bulls (and bull leapers (MARY RENAULT WIN!!!))

Minoan palace structure were big and complex (like LABYRINTHS)

The etymology may come from that of a ceremonial double axe–these were commonly found in archeological digs

Unusual Birth

Folktale motif:

Twins (WILD in Greek times)

Superfecundity (two dads)

Prophecy

Theseus: Unusual Birth

• Daddy’s prophecy

• Two dads in one night

  • Overlap with Heracles potentially?

• Tokens of recognition

Theseus’s Birth Prophecy

Apollodorus:

“The projecting mouth of the wineskin, O best of men,

Loose not until you come to the Athenians’ peak.”

Aigeus doesn’t get that the next time he sleeps with someone he’s going to get them pregnant, but Pitteus, king of Troizen, DOES, and gets him so drunk that he sleeps with Aithra his daughter.

Same night, Aithra sleeps with Poseidon. We have no idea who his real dad is–both of them treat him as a son

Aigeus instructs Aithra to raise it if it’s a boy, and leaves a sword and sandals under a rock for him to get once he’s of age to come find him

Theseis

Lost epic about theseus

Composed around end of 6th century (same time as Athenian superiority)

May have popularized 6 labours

Minoan Crete

Bronze age civilization, started from at least 3100BCE (or even as early as 7000 BCE) 

BIGGGG on bull sacrifice

Bull dancers!!

Labyrinth–Labros, double axes?

Wrote in Linear B

Supplanted by Myceneans around 1600BCE

Theseus’s Six Labours

After Theseus picks up the sword and sandals, he travels by foot to Athens

1. Periphetes: kills people with a club

2. Sinis: kills people with trees

3. Phaia: monster woman, child of Typhon and Echidna

4. Sceiron: kicks ppl off cliffs to feed a turtle

5. Cercyon: wrestle-man killer

6. Damastes: put ppl in beds to kill them (tall–chop limbs off, short–stretch to death)

Theseus links to Heracles

May have been done intentionally, to make him better:

• Two dads

• Labours

First labour of Theseus

Periphetes (Corynetes)

Son of Hephaistos and Anticleia

Known as Corynetes (the clubber)

Had weak legs, and used an iron club to just casually kill travellers

Theseus took it from him and took it with him after killing him

Second Labour of Theseus

Sinis (Pityocamptes)

Son of Polypemon and Sylea.

Forced passing travelers to bend down pine trees, catapulting them/tearing them in half

Theseus kills him the same way