Epics, Mythology and Legends

What is the best English (academic) translation of the Poetic Edda? I'd like an edition with notes.

Optimism is a duty.

The version of the story in which Medusa was a beautiful woman who was first raped by Poesidon and then cursed by Athena is attributed to Ovid, and is a pretty late addition. Earlier versions have her and her sisters always having the wings and snaky hair; in the earliest vesions, the Gorgons are so ugly they turn people to stone, but as time passed they became so beautiful they turned people to stone. The upshot of this is, Ovid rewrote her story to have her both raped by Poesidon and cursed by Athena (he made her ugly again, too), when originally she and her sisters had been magical creatures.

I've heard other versions, written since, that make her Poesidon's willing lover; it doesn't surprise me that there might be a version where the snaky hair and stone stare might be considered a blessing, but that sounds like a late addition to me. It doesn't sound like the kind of perspective the ancient Greeks would take. In any event, in all versions she gets her head lopped off by Perseus (who then gave it to Athena when he was done with it).

Remember, the Greek gods all behave like assholes at one time or another. Artemis turned a guy into a deer and had him ripped apart by his own hounds for accidentally seeing her naked. Athena turned Arachne into a spider for daring to be a better weaver (and yeah, I know there are some versions where Arachne and/or her father bragged about her abilities, but it's still a lousy thing to do to someone). The Greek perspective was that even the best of the gods were capricious and did whatever they wanted. They wouldn't have considered that kind of behavior out of character.

Incestuous kings may have built Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb: Ancient DNA from 44 people sheds light on Ireland's Neolithic political hierarchy.

What has this incestuous king to do with mythology? Well...

Optimism is a duty.

How do they know the folktale's over 4000 years old if it hadn't been written down before?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Good question. I assume there are some hints in the tale or something. Don't know what tale it is, though.

Can anyone figure out which tale this is?

Edited by Redmess on Jun 20th 2020 at 2:14:56 PM

Optimism is a duty.

It certainly couldn't be linguistic evidence—the Celts only reached Ireland about 2500 years ago, and the earliest evidence we have of the Irish language is only 1600 years old! I suspect the "4000 years" is a bit of artistic license, shorthand for a story of prehistoric origin.

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

Perhaps it is an inference from that bit about god-kings, referring to the first arrival of Celtic farmers?

Optimism is a duty.

Maybe. But thematically, it seems to "rhyme" with a lot of similar archaic Indo-European legends that deal with the solar/agricultural cycle. The first Irish Celts could've brought the story with them from the European continent, and associated it with that particular burial mound after the fact.

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

Incestuous gods are hardly new nor unique to any one culture.The Irish are interesting in that their mythology makes no bones about their having come to the island from elsewhere; according to Irish myth there were several waves of immigration/invasion, and the Celts brought oxen and the plow to Ireland, and found the place full of giants and goblins and monsters and whatnot.

Edited by Robbery on Jun 23rd 2020 at 12:54:56 PM

And we also have the gem where Apollon just gave king Midas donkey ears, because he voted against him in a music contest! I mean, what was up with that? Yeah, that was maybe more embarressing than painful. But it made Apollon come across as a jerkass nonetheless. And yep, Aphrodite pretty much brainwashed people without a bit of remorse. Pasiphae and Phaedra and Paris and Helen are the best examples of this.

But it would have been natural to the ancient Greeks that gods did what they wanted with poor mortals. Some of their actions would have made more sense back then too. For example, it is likely that Athena was a supporter of the big All Women Are Lustful fallacy (which seems to be common in Ancient Greece). So she didn't get that Medusa was actually raped. Hybris was never a good quality either in these myths, which is why people like Arachne and Niobe were punished so severly.

It is common though these days to look at Hephaestus and Hades as better than the others, and that is probably partly because they almost never punished any mortals. There were a few times though, that a mortal did something terrible even by modern standards. It is hard to feel sorry for Tantalus, for example.

Edited by Kickisan on Jun 25th 2020 at 11:12:39 AM

That depends on how you look at it. Since Aphrodite is the goddess of love, arguably any time someone falls in love, it's Aphrodite's doing (or possibly Eros's). Does brainwashing still apply if the story presupposes that free will doesn't exist?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I see what you mean. But I guess that my problem is that Aphrodite used Pasiphae and Phaedra to punish other people, and Paris and Helen to win this competition with Hera and Athena. They are just treated like pawns with no free will, and no way to stop bad things from happening.

But I don't have a problem with Aphrodite making people fall in love in general (which pretty much was her job anyway). It is only a few stories, where I don't like what she did to innocent people.

However, maybe we can see those stories as a way to explain why some people fell for the wrong person (or with an animal, as it was with poor Pasiphae). Aphrodite was trying to teach a wrong-doer a lesson, albeit through a huge case of Aesop Collateral Damage, or she might have used her powers for her own selfish reasons, just like most of the gods did now and then.

Edited by Kickisan on Jun 25th 2020 at 1:29:28 PM

Just ask poor Psyche how freaking terrifying Aphrodite can be when she's even mildly annoyed.

The Medusa stuff is interesting, too, given the rape backstory comes from Ovid who had...issues with authority figures and used the gods as stand ins.

Yeah, that's a good example as well. She got a happy ending though eventually.

Edited by Kickisan on Jun 27th 2020 at 7:45:58 AM

True, but that's because all the other gods are helping Psyche and are all thinking Aphrodite's going just a teensy bit overboard.

Although I'll confess that this is speculative and not necessarily accurate to how either the Greeks or Romans saw Aphrodite/Venus at any given time, but my general impression is that Aphrodite was not really envisioned by the Greeks as a particularly benevolent goddess, and the creepy, primordial origin of her in some tellings seems to bear that out.

Also, at least in the retellings of read of the Trojan War-related stories, Aphrodite is presented as the Designated Villain to Athene. I wonder how much this has to do with Ares, who is Aphrodite's lover, given that he is also less sympathetic in Greek mythology (at least from Athenians), compared to Athene.

On the other hand, the Romans liked Mars and Venus and had their heroes claim descent from them. The Cupid and Psyche story does kind of go against the grain, but it's more of an original story by Apuleius than a "actual myth". IMO it kind of reminds me of some of the stories connected to Demeter after she lost Persephone or any number of times Hera sought vengeance on Zeus' lovers and/or their children. And I'd say that Venus in the story is relatively chill considering.

I also called to mind the Roman backstory to Aeneas' birth. For some reason (no reason?) Jove, IIRC, put a spell on Venus that would make her desperately in love with a mortal - Aeneas' dad, and the spell was lifted after she had sex with him (in a mortal guise) and became pregnant by him. It has some Rape Is Love undertones since Venus had affection for him and his son afterward, although Aeneas' dad wasn't aware of the spell and had no idea the woman he slept with was Venus until afterward.

Edited by Hodor2 on Jun 29th 2020 at 2:39:31 PM

Yeah, good points. It is remarkable though that so many Roman heros were conceived under some (what we must see as) dubious circumstances.

I had never heard about Venus having been brainwashed by Jupiter when Aenas was conceived until now. But there is also the story where Rhea Silvia was raped by Mars, so Romulus and Remus were conceived...

Edited by Kickisan on Jun 29th 2020 at 8:18:52 AM

At a quick look, the Homeric hymns say that it was because the gods feared how Aphrodite would jeeringly poke and prod at so many of them in conversation over how they were prone to bedding so many mortal men and women. So Zeus made Aphrodite fall for and bed a mortal so she would have no right to mock them for it when she's equally guilty of the same act.

Edited by Tsuzurao on Jun 29th 2020 at 4:35:10 AM

How nice it is to still learn new stuff about Greek mythology after all these years! Thank you!

Edited by Kickisan on Jun 29th 2020 at 8:19:06 AM

Yes. Thank you so much for sharing. I must confess that I had no idea that that particular story was that old. I had always figured it was a Roman invention.