The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

That's why I think some of the "post-Troy" stories like The Odyssey stand out. The Odyssey isn't about a great man doing great things — that story is just the background of The Odyssey. It's just about a man trying to come home from a war.

It does have some of the same aesops concerning hubris and respecting xenia prevalent in other stories. A lot of Odysseus' woes are due to his arrogance when it came to dealing with Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon. And both Polyphemus and Penelope's suitors suffer for their violations of xenia (Polyphemus for being a really bad host and the suitors for being really bad guests).

Edited by M84 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 5:15:56 PM

Right, and I think that's why the Odyssey in particular is so enduring, and why foundation myths tend to favour the Trojans over the Greeks.

Speaking of foundation myths, Aeneas does pop up for a single scene at the end. It was kind of funny how he was just bluntly dropped in with a name drop without any explanation. I imagine people who do not know his story would be a little confused why this rando gets a name and a line and nothing else.

It's also a little ironic that this movie goes to such lengths to uplift Brisseis, but Aeneas' wife does not even get a mention.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 22nd 2024 at 11:32:07 AM

From what I hear, wasn't Odysseus' fault there only that he told a blinded Polyphemus who he was while leaving. I don't get how that is hubris unless he was calling himself better than his father Poseidon. Arrogance sure but hubris would be insulting the gods by defying them or stating that you are better than them somehow. And as you said, Polyphemus was in the wrong, actively being a bad host by trying to eat them all (for which being blinded seems a amazingly light punishment given the Greek gods' penchant for cruel and disproportionate punishments for pretty much everybody else who violated right of hospitality). If harming any cyclops even to save yourself counts as hubris, then that would mean there is an entire man eating monster race that has free divine license to eat and kill humans as they please (since all cyclops are either children of Poseidon or children of Uranus and the latter are on a whole different level being the builders of Zeus's thunderbolts).

Edited by xyzt on Apr 22nd 2024 at 3:18:19 PM

His hubris was thinking there couldn't possibly be any blowback to letting the demigod son of Poseidon know who blinded him.

Remember that Poseidon only got free reign to torment Odysseus because Polyphemus invoked his favor.

It's made clear that if Odysseus had just refrained from revealing his name he and his crew would have gotten away with what they did to Polyphemus.

Edited by M84 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 5:50:50 PM

Exactly.

I suppose then the next logical question would be why did the Romans claim that Romulus and Remus were descended from a Trojan hero and not a Greek one?

Also, I suppose just in case anyone was still doubting Snurri said the A Esir were actually Trojans, from the Wikipedia article on Aeneas:

Well, for one thing, Aeneas is the perfect hook for this kind of story, since the gods keep saving him in the Illiad for mysterious reasons. It seems Homer liked planting Hero of Another Story characters, which may well have been a thing in storytelling back then.

Though it helps remembering that Achilles was really young when he joined up. The foolishness of youth I suppose. He does manage to be somewhat more mature by the end, which is why his son Neoptolemus is introduced to show how horrifying it would be if he was still like that. (And alive I guess.)

Yeah, and that could be really young, too. The ancients, and really pretty much everyone until our age, did not have a concept of teenagers, so what they call "adult" could well fall under what we call teenagers now. Romeo and Juliet were considered adults, even though they were 14, just to name one example (which incidentally makes a lot of events in this and other plays make a lot more sense).

That's... probably not as true as you seem to think it is. I'm pretty sure Romans, for example, wouldn't recruit anyone under the age of 18 (normally. I'm sure one could dig up an example of dire crisis). People generally wouldn't get married before that point either. You'd occasionally see young marriages among the nobility, but that's because they were made to forge political alliances, and one's gotta strike the iron while its hot.

According to this source, the age of consent in Stratford in Shakespeare was 12 for girls, and 14 for boys.`Presumably, they could marry at that age, but they seem to have done so in their mid-20s on average. They married late because marrying young carried risks for livelihood and subsistence, but not because there was a taboo on marrying that young.

According to Wikipedia, the age of lawful consent for marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys as well. The same logic of later marriage may well have applied for farmers, but it was legal to marry that young.

Like I said, the concept of teenagers, and the idea of keeping teenagers away from adult married life, are entirely modern ones.

Roman recruits could be as young as 17, but that has more to do with physical fitness than the idea that teenagers (which, remember, did not exist as a concept) should not fight at all.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 22nd 2024 at 4:21:03 PM

It was stupid arrogance but I don't get how it is hubris as Odysseus isnt boasting about being equal to or better than the gods by revealing his identity to Polyphemus, unless harming and/ outwitting even the children of the gods (in self defence no less) is supposed to be hubris too, which incase of man eating cyclops is a whole additional problematic can of worms? Not to mention, said demigod broke the sacred rules of hospitality by imprisoning and trying to eat them, so it is not like he isn't in much hot water already with the gods as well. So the fact that Poseidon has free reign to rain hell on Odysseus instead of pleading to Zeus to not make his son's life worse as is the fate of anyone who breaks said laws of hospitality, thereby disrespecting Zeus himself whose domain said custom falls under, is wierd. It is not like Gods had any issues with making lives of demigods they hate absolutely miserable.

Edited by xyzt on Apr 22nd 2024 at 7:53:04 PM

Yes it is, hubris can be dangerous overconfidence too. Odysseus is being overconfident in believing that he can just tell his enemy who he is,believing that there will be no bad consequences from revealing this information, and it comes back to bite him hard. That's hubris: he puts himself and his crew in unnecessary danger after already having reached safety by revealing his name.

What do guys think of Joesph Campbell's A Hero with a Thousand Faces? What do you do of the monomyth in general?

I'll admit I haven't read his book, but I have certainly heard and read about it. So going off of my second-hand knowledge:

To my understanding it's actually as much a philosophical treatise as anything, an attempt at trying to find some fundamental truth of humanity in the myths we create.

For my part, I consider it to be overrated. Not bad, just overhyped. To my understanding, even Joseph Campbell himself didn't consider it to be as universal as it's often made out to be. Likewise, in my opinion, for something to be so universal would imply it's perhaps too broad to be meaningful.

It's also probably more useful as a template to create mythology-looking media than it is as a tool to understand myths that came before it.

Also to my understanding in its original form it's rather sexist and heavily influenced by Freud, but the media based on it isn't necessarily.

I would say in its favor that there's something I'll call "Welcome Cliches". Basically, these are concepts and tropes that are definitely not omnipresent; but are they're tried-and-true cliches so venerable that seeing them will tend to put a smile on people's face. A lot of monomythic concepts, I feel, are like that.

As far as monomyth goes, it's as fine as any other template. If anything, it perhaps speaks to the unconscious relapse in telling the same basic story, but after about 10,000 years of human civilization (not including the thousands of years before when it was just hunter-gatherers), that sort of thing was always bound to happen anyway.

So there's this painting of Madonna with what is supposedly a UFO in the background. The article names it "Madonna and Child with the Infant St John", but I can't find it. Does anyone know about it?

And any ideas what the thing in the sky actually is?

It's in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, it was probably originally meant to be an Angel or the Eye of God looking down but with the original gilding taken off it's just sort a shape in the sky

So why was the original gilding removed?

No idea, I'd guess something simple like it was wearing so was removed to be freshly replaced which didn't end up happening.

You can see something similar with the Annunciation with Saint Emidius A golden shape representing the holy spirit blessing Mary with child

Edited by Gaiazun on Apr 27th 2024 at 1:37:07 AM

Having rewatched the latest Overly Sarcastic Productions video on Athens, it’s kind of hilarious that Herodotus couldn’t rein in his need to overexaggerate things even when it wouldn’t make sense to.

Like, I’m sure the Greeks felt like they were fighting millions and millions of Persians during the Greco-Persian Wars as they faced the very real threat of being conquered and their cities razed to the ground, but the story of Peisistratos’ second attempt to legitimize his power by returning to Athens on a chariot alongside Athena and the Athenians sincerely believing it really was their patron goddess just feels like a con-man comedy film ripped right out of the early 2000s 🤣.

Edited by Angelspawndragon on Apr 28th 2024 at 3:42:33 AM

Are Hungarian myths particularly similar to Finnish (since their languages are similar despite the geographical distance between them)?

Is this a homework question?

I’m a bit puzzled by that question since it doesn’t sound like any homework question I’ve ever heard of.

The United Methodist Church will be lifting its 40 year ban on gay clergy on May 4th.