Trivia / Classical Mythology

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • As Pandora's own entry under Mortals And Demigods on the Characters page says, Pandora's box wasn't a box at all, but rather a large jar ("pithos"). This mistake is believed to have stemmed from Erasmus in the 16th century, who mistranslated pithos as pyxis (which was a woman's cylindrical cosmetics/jewelry box) in an account of Pandora's tale.
  • The Rape of Persephone/Rape of the Sabine Women, popular topics in Renaissance art. The Greek word 'rape' shares its root with 'rapture' and essentially means abduction/kidnapping; this is also why The Rape of the Lock has that title (the plot revolves around a suitor stealing a lock of a woman's hair for his Stalker Shrine). No one is raped in the modern sense in these stories, only kidnapped.
• Missing Episode: It's been estimated that the surviving Greek and Roman myths only account for a fraction of the full mythology. Most of ancient Greek folklore was passed down orally, meaning most were never written down and many that were were either destroyed or otherwise lost to time.
• Referenced by...: Has its own page.
• Running the Asylum: There was no single specific canon in Greek times or even Roman, and though every poet claimed the Muses for inspiration, they nonetheless didn't always listen to each other's continuity, and each city had its own preferred traditions (the Athenians bashed on Ares, the Spartans and Romans loved him, the Athenians loved Theseus, everyone else saw him as a huge dick, etc.).
• Science Marches On:
  • Zeus was described as giving birth to Athena "by himself" because many Greeks believed that women didn't contribute to child development beyond holding the man's seed. Thus Metis proved Zeus's body was just as good after he ate her, passing on the whole embryo development process to him and using the time to forge Athena's armor, her pounding causing headaches that eventually led to his head being split open. To a modern audience, though, nothing is really proved because we know sperm needs to meet an egg. This is also the logic that leads to him taking Dionysus into his hip, further "proving" the father of the gods can do everything the mother can. Let's also take into account we are discussing a man who throws lightning and a couple who can both shapeshift.
  • Icarus flew too close to the sun with his wax wings, leading them to melt from the heat. Nowadays, we know that flying higher would get you colder, not warmer, due to the reduced atmosphere^note And eventually hypoxia due to the lower contents of oxygen at such heights. Though this would lead to the wings breaking for a different reason- they'd become brittle due to the cold.

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