Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia
The constellation is named after Cassiopeia, the queen of Aethiopia. Cassiopeia was the wife of King Cepheus of Aethiopia and mother of Princess Andromeda. Cepheus and Cassiopeia were placed next to each other among the stars, along with Andromeda. She was placed in the sky as a punishment after enraging Poseidon with the boast that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids or, alternatively, that she herself was more beautiful than the sea nymphs. She was forced to wheel around the North Celestial Pole on her throne, spending half of her time clinging to it so she does not fall off, and Poseidon decreed that Andromeda should be bound to a rock as prey for the monster Cetus. Andromeda was then rescued by the hero Perseus, whom she later married.
Cassiopeia in her chair, as depicted in Urania's Mirror
Hyginus Cassiopeia
The Boreads Calaïs et Zétès délivrent Phinée des Harpies by Bernard Picart
Harpy
Phineus was a king of Salmydessus in Thrace and blind seer who appears in accounts of the Argonauts' voyage.
The Argonauts Pass the Symplegades with guidance of Phineus
The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women reported that Phineus was the son of Phoenix and Cassiopeia.
Thrace
The name appears to derive from the heroine and sorceress Thrace, who was the daughter of Oceanus and Parthenope, and sister of Europa.
The cult of the "Thracian horseman" spread over much of the Balkans during the Roman period.
"Thracian horseman" votive tablet with the standard iconographic elements-- the rider is holding a lance in his right hand aiming at a boar attacked by a hunting dog.
Thracian horseman with a serpent-entwined tree, Histria Museum, Romania
Thracian horseman with serpent-and-tree (2nd century)
oldest extant equestrian depiction of St George (but note that the horseman is trampling a human opponent rather than a dragon)
Equestrian depiction of Saints George and Demetrius
Thracian deities include:
Sabazios is the horseman and sky father god of the Phrygians and Thracians. In Indo-European languages, such as Phrygian, the -zios element in his name derives from dyeus, the common precursor of Latin deus ('god') and Greek Zeus. Though the Greeks interpreted Phrygian Sabazios as both Zeus and Dionysus, representations of him, even into Roman times, show him always on horseback, as a nomadic horseman god, wielding his characteristic staff of power...representations of Saint George slaying the dragon.
Cotyttia was an orgiastic, nocturnal religious festival of ancient Greece and Thrace in celebration of Kotys, the goddess of sex, considered an aspect of Persephone.
Jupiter and Semele (1894-95), by Gustave Moreau
Semele was the youngest daughter of the Phoenician hero Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus. Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians.
The constellation is named after Cassiopeia, the queen of Aethiopia. Cassiopeia was the wife of King Cepheus of Aethiopia and mother of Princess Andromeda. Cepheus and Cassiopeia were placed next to each other among the stars, along with Andromeda. She was placed in the sky as a punishment after enraging Poseidon with the boast that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids or, alternatively, that she herself was more beautiful than the sea nymphs. She was forced to wheel around the North Celestial Pole on her throne, spending half of her time clinging to it so she does not fall off, and Poseidon decreed that Andromeda should be bound to a rock as prey for the monster Cetus. Andromeda was then rescued by the hero Perseus, whom she later married.
Cassiopeia in her chair, as depicted in Urania's Mirror
Hyginus Cassiopeia
It was Poseidon who placed Cassiopeia and Cepheus in the sky. Cassiopeia, the myth goes, was condemned to circle the celestial pole forever, and spends half the year upside down in the sky as punishment for her vanity. She is usually depicted on her throne, still combing her hair.
Cassiopeia is famous for its distinctive W shape, an asterism formed by five bright stars in the constellation. The stars, from left to right, are Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Alpha and Beta Cassiopeiae.
Perseus turns Phineus and his followers to stone (Luca Giordano, 17th century)
Phineus (Cepheus' brother, sons of Belus) had been engaged to Cepheus' daughter Andromeda before she wed Perseus, and Phineus plotted against him, leading Perseus to turn him and his co-conspirators into stone by showing them the head of Medusa. The affair appears to have formed part of Euripides' lost Andromeda, but the sole extensive ancient treatment is found Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Phineus (Cepheus' brother, sons of Belus) had been engaged to Cepheus' daughter Andromeda before she wed Perseus, and Phineus plotted against him, leading Perseus to turn him and his co-conspirators into stone by showing them the head of Medusa. The affair appears to have formed part of Euripides' lost Andromeda, but the sole extensive ancient treatment is found Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Another Phineus...
The Boreads Calaïs et Zétès délivrent Phinée des Harpies by Bernard Picart
Harpy
The Argonauts Pass the Symplegades with guidance of Phineus
The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women reported that Phineus was the son of Phoenix and Cassiopeia.
Thrace
The name appears to derive from the heroine and sorceress Thrace, who was the daughter of Oceanus and Parthenope, and sister of Europa.
The cult of the "Thracian horseman" spread over much of the Balkans during the Roman period.
"Thracian horseman" votive tablet with the standard iconographic elements-- the rider is holding a lance in his right hand aiming at a boar attacked by a hunting dog.
Thracian horseman with a serpent-entwined tree, Histria Museum, Romania
Thracian horseman with serpent-and-tree (2nd century)
oldest extant equestrian depiction of St George (but note that the horseman is trampling a human opponent rather than a dragon)
Equestrian depiction of Saints George and Demetrius
Thracian deities include:
Sabazios is the horseman and sky father god of the Phrygians and Thracians. In Indo-European languages, such as Phrygian, the -zios element in his name derives from dyeus, the common precursor of Latin deus ('god') and Greek Zeus. Though the Greeks interpreted Phrygian Sabazios as both Zeus and Dionysus, representations of him, even into Roman times, show him always on horseback, as a nomadic horseman god, wielding his characteristic staff of power...representations of Saint George slaying the dragon.
Cotyttia was an orgiastic, nocturnal religious festival of ancient Greece and Thrace in celebration of Kotys, the goddess of sex, considered an aspect of Persephone.
Jupiter and Semele (1894-95), by Gustave Moreau
Semele was the youngest daughter of the Phoenician hero Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus. Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians.
Perseus
Perseus
Constellation of Perseus Woodcut From Gaius Julius Hyginus Poeticon Astronomicon
Agol, the Demon Star
Perseus frees Andromeda by Piero di Cosimo
Detail
In Greek mythology, Perseus was the son of Danaë, who was sent by King Polydectes to bring the head of Medusa the Gorgon—whose visage caused all who gazed upon her to turn to stone. Perseus slew Medusa in her sleep, and Pegasus and Chrysaor appeared from her body. Perseus continued to the realm of Cepheus whose daughter Andromeda was to be sacrificed to Cetus the sea monster.
Perseus rescued Andromeda from the monster by killing it with his diamond sword. He turned Polydectes and his followers to stone with Medusa's head and appointed Dictys the fisherman king. Perseus and Andromeda married and had six children. In the sky, Perseus lies near the constellations Andromeda, Cepheus, Cassiopeia (Andromeda's mother), Cetus, and Pegasus.
The Lion Gate at Mycenae.
Perseus slays Madusa averting his eyes
Athena instructed Perseus to find the Hesperides, who were entrusted with weapons needed to defeat the Gorgon. Following Athena's guidance, Perseus sought the Greae, sisters of the Gorgons, to demand the whereabouts of the Hesperides, the nymphs tending Hera's orchard.
Perseus and the Graeae by Edward Burne-Jones (1892)
The Graeae were three perpetually old women, who had to share a single eye. As the women passed the eye from one to another, Perseus snatched it from them, holding it for ransom in return for the location of the nymphs. When the sisters led him to the Hesperides, he returned what he had taken.
Minerva Giving her Shield to Perseus-René-Antoine Houasse
He slays Medusa by gazing at her reflection, not her directly.
Perseus and Medusa - Annibale Carracci - 1597
From the Hesperides he received a knapsack (kibisis) to safely contain Medusa's head. Zeus gave him an adamantine sword (a Harpe) and Hades' helm of darkness to hide. Hermes lent Perseus winged sandals to fly, and Athena gave him a polished shield. Perseus then proceeded to the Gorgons' cave.
Perseus holding the kibisis
The Head of Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens
From the blood that spurted from her neck and falling into the sea, sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor, her sons by Poseidon.
John Singer Sargent Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa
Perseus Liberating Andromeda Peter Paul Rubens
Detail, Medusa's reflection, Eros, Pegasus and Gorgon shield
Edward Burne-Jones, The Baleful Head, 1885
This part of the series plays with the theme of the reflected gaze, as Perseus has Andromeda look at the Gorgon's head, but only as reflected in the well.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini
Polydectes turned into stone by Perseus
The Gorgons, three sisters who had hair made of living, venomous snakes, as well as a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld her to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale, their sister Medusa was not and she was slain by the demigod and hero Perseus.
The daughters of Phorcys and Ceto...
The daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, born in the caverns beneath Mount Olympus [making them Chthonic beings ]. Stheno and her sister Euryale were both immortal, and the third sister, Medusa, was mortal.
Phorcys (middle) and Ceto (right), and Triton or Thaumas
Phorcys is a primordial sea god, generally cited (first in Hesiod) as the son of Pontus and Gaia (Earth). According to the Orphic hymns, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea were the eldest offspring of Oceanus and Tethys. His wife was Ceto, and he is most notable in myth for fathering by Ceto a host of monstrous children.
Pontus was the divinity of the sea, one of the Protogenoi or first born gods. He was the father of the most ancient of sea-gods by the earth-goddess by Gaia (Earth) including Nereus, Phorkys and Keto.
Pontus was Gaia's son and has no father; according to the Greek poet Hesiod, he was born without coupling.
[Pontifex Maximus--Pope!]
Greek: Πόντος, Póntos, "Sea", personification of the sea, ho pontos, "the Road", by which Hellenes signified the Mediterranean Sea. (Hesiod)
Tomis Fortuna with Pontos
Pontus, rising from seaweed, grasps a rudder with his right hand and leans on the prow of a ship. He wears a mural crown [a crown or headpiece representing city walls or towers...identified tutelary deities-- a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place]: and accompanies Fortuna, whose draperies appear at the left, as twin patron deities of the Black Sea port of Tomis in Moesia (Romania).
Cybele enthroned, with lion, cornucopia, and mural crown. Roman marble, c. 50 AD. Getty Museum
Coat of arms of Constanța, ancient Tomis
Statue of Ovid in front of the Museum of National History (Tomis)
Ovid was exiled here...
Ovid (Metamorphoses) is their boi.
This is the cornucopia, or horn of plenty. It symbolizes both the male(the horn) and the female(the opening). And the harmony or fruitfulness due to the balance of the male and female
The Tyche of Antioch, foot on Pontus
The Norns spin the threads of fate at the foot of Yggdrasil, the tree of the world.
Macbeth and Banquo meeting the three weird sisters.
Ananke the personification of Necessity...Mother of the Moirai
Anaximander's models of the universe [spindles?]--summer and winter.
According to Plato, the Earth was a sphere, stationary at the center of the universe. The stars and planets were carried around the Earth on spheres or circles:
Geocentric celestial spheres; Peter Apian's Cosmographia (Antwerp, 1539)
In his "Myth of Er", a section of the Republic, Plato describes the cosmos as the Spindle of Necessity, attended by the Sirens and turned by the three Fates.
(Eudoxus of Cnidus, who worked with Plato, developed a less mythical, more mathematical explanation of the planets' motion based on Plato's dictum stating that all phenomena in the heavens can be explained with uniform circular motion. Aristotle elaborated on Eudoxus' system.)
Er was native of Pamphylia (literally "of mingled tribes or races"), he dies in battle.
...ten days after his death, Er remains undecomposed. Two days later he revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of reincarnation and the celestial spheres of the astral plane. The tale includes the idea that moral people are rewarded and immoral people punished after death.
After seven days in the meadow, the souls and Er were required to travel farther. After four days they reached a place where they could see a shaft of rainbow light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the Spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters, and the Sirens were present. The souls – except for Er – were then organized into rows and were each given a lottery token.
Representation of the goddess Ananke, goddess linked to orphanism. Also represented as fate, the Moiras were her daughters with the god Moros. Next to Kronos they took care of the primordial egg that would generate the universe. Your animal is the snake.
Spinning with a suspended spindle (below) and distaff (above)
With many other souls as his companions, Er had come across an awe-inspiring place with four openings – two into and out of the sky and two into and out of the ground. Judges sat between these openings and ordered the souls which path to follow: the good were guided into the path into the sky, the immoral were directed below. But when Er approached the judges, he was told to remain, listening and observing in order to report his experience to humankind.
After seven days in the meadow, the souls and Er were required to travel farther. After four days they reached a place where they could see a shaft of rainbow light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the Spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters, and the Sirens were present. The souls – except for Er – were then organized into rows and were each given a lottery token.
Magnum Chaos, wood-inlay by Giovan Francesco Capoferri at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, based on a design by Lorenzo Lotto.
Pherecydes of Syros, teacher of Pythagorus, pre-Socratic philosopher
...great significance in teaching on the subject of metempsychosis.
The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato. In the eschatological [the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind] myth which closes the Republic he tells the myth how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world.
The Waters of Lethe by the Plains of Elysium – John Spencer Stanhope
The Myth of Er in Book X of Plato's Republic tells of the dead arriving at a barren waste called the "plain of Lethe", through which the river Ameles ("careless") runs. "Of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity," Plato wrote, "and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things."
A few mystery religions taught the existence of another river, the Mnemosyne; those who drank from the Mnemosyne would remember everything and attain omniscience. Initiates were taught that they would receive a choice of rivers to drink from after death, and to drink from Mnemosyne instead of Lethe.
Trophonius
. There were rivers of Lethe and Mnemosyne at the oracular shrine of Trophonius in Boeotia, from which worshippers would drink before making oracular consultations with the god.
According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, he built Apollo's temple at the oracle at Delphi with his brother Agamedes. Once finished, the oracle told the brothers to do whatsoever they wished for six days and, on the seventh, their greatest wish would be granted. They did and were found dead on the seventh day. The maxim by Menander, "those whom the gods love die young", comes from this story.
Boetia--Its capital is Livadeia, and its largest city is Thebes...the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus, Heracles and others.
Jupiter and Antiope, by Antoine Watteau.
Amphion and Zethus subject Dirce to the bull (from the House of the Vettii, Pompeii)--builders of the seven walls of Thebes.
The Death of Hyacinth by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giorgio Vasari-- The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn (Cronus)
Rhea presenting Cronus the stone wrapped in cloth
Greek gods of Time and Fate Chronos and Ananke.
In Orphic mythology, Ananke is a self-formed being who emerged at the dawn of creation with an incorporeal, serpentine form, her outstretched arms encompassing the cosmos. Ananke and Chronos are mates, mingling together in serpent form as a tie around the universe. Together they have crushed the primal egg of creation of which constituent parts became earth, heaven and sea to form the ordered universe.
[No escape from] the lemniscate.
Fundamental polarity
The divine hierogamos or nuptial between God and His Creation (see Fundamentals of Symbolism
The doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece; the Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier.
Orpheus is said to have taught that soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner.
Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably.
Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals." To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as a God from whom it comes.
Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus.
...the Eleusinian mysteries, initiation into Orphic mysteries promised advantages in the afterlife.
Orphic mosaics were found in many "late-Roman" villas
The Orphic theogonies: Dionysus (in his incarnation as Zagreus) is the son of Zeus and Persephone; Zeus gives his inheritance of the throne to the child, as Zeus is to leave due to Hera's anger over a child being born by another mother; the Titans are enraged over the proclamation of attendance and, at Hera's instigation, decide to murder the child. Dionysus is then tricked with a mirror and children's toys by the Titans, who murder and consume him. Athena saves the heart and tells Zeus of the crime, who in turn hurls a thunderbolt on the Titans. The resulting soot, from which sinful mankind is born, contains the bodies of the Titans and Dionysus. The soul of man (the Dionysus part) is therefore divine, but the body (the Titan part) holds the soul in bondage. Thus, it was declared that the soul returns to a host ten times, bound to the wheel of rebirth.
There are two Orphic stories of the rebirth of Dionysus: in one it is the heart of Dionysus that is implanted into the thigh of Zeus; in the other Zeus has impregnated the mortal woman Semele, resulting in Dionysus's literal rebirth.
Dionysos was murdered, and then cannibalized. Only his heart was salvaged by Athena. A statue of gypsum (the same substance the Titans used to disguise themselves) was then made to look like Dionysos, and the heart placed within.
gypsom, "plaster of Paris", spar
Totenpass is a German term sometimes used for inscribed tablets or metal leaves found in burials primarily of those presumed to be initiates into Orphic, Dionysiac religions. The term may be understood in English as a "passport for the dead". The so-called Orphic gold tablets are perhaps the best-known example.
4th century BC gold orphic tablet from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Totenpässe in the form of lamellae (Latin, "thin metal sheets", singular lamella).
The Gorgon's head is a frequent numismatic icon (here with anchor on reverse) that may appear on a danake, danake, or "Charon's obol", the coin that pays the ferryman of the dead for passage; this particular coin depicted the head of a Gorgon.
The deceased is supposed to stand before Persephone, Queen of the Dead, and assert "I have been released by Bacchios himself."
...though according to Hyginus, Pontus is the son of Aether and Gaia.
Aether - The god of the upper air and light, the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals.
According to Hesiod, in the Theogony, Aether and Hemera were the son and daughter of Nyx and Erebus, the primordial gods of Night and Darkness. This of course means Aether and Hemera were almost the exact opposite of their parents.
In the Greek poet Hesiod's Theogony, c. 700 BC, Tartarus was the third of the primordial deities, following after Chaos and Gaia (Earth), and preceding Eros, and was the father, by Gaia, of the monster Typhon. According to Hyginus, Tartarus was the offspring of Aether and Gaia.
...considered to be a primordial force or deity alongside entities such as the Earth, Night and Time.
Gaea, by Anselm Feuerbach, Personification of the Earth
Nyx, Primordial goddess of the night
Time Clipping Cupid's Wings (1694), by Pierre Mignard
Chronos is the personification of time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.
CHRONOS AEON (Khronos Aion)--"cyclical time" - Greek Primordial God of Time
He was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel.
The triumph of time; Chronos as a winged figure with two crutches riding on a cart drawn by two stags
HARPE
Chronos (the primordial god) vs. Cronus (the Titan)
Saturn (Cronus) is often depicted carrying a sickle like Father Time.
The Star of Remphan / Saturn is the 6 pointed star (3 +3)
Remphan is a figure described as "the star of your god whose images you made to worship" in Acts 7:43 (King James version).
...which reads in Hebrew as "Chiun", "Kewan". The Septuagint's reading of Amos is "raiphan" or "rephan". The Greek forms may be based on a transliteration of the Hebrew, k (qoppa) having been replaced by r (resh) and ph substituted for v (yod). "kewan", is the another pronunciation of the Old Persian word of Kayvan, meaning Saturn.
In the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was "engendered" by "earth and water", and produced Aether and Chaos, and an egg. It produced the hermaphroditic god Phanes who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the ultimate creator of the cosmos.
The Fall of the Titans, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, 1596-1598
Constellation of Perseus Woodcut From Gaius Julius Hyginus Poeticon Astronomicon
Agol, the Demon Star
Perseus frees Andromeda by Piero di Cosimo
Detail
In Greek mythology, Perseus was the son of Danaë, who was sent by King Polydectes to bring the head of Medusa the Gorgon—whose visage caused all who gazed upon her to turn to stone. Perseus slew Medusa in her sleep, and Pegasus and Chrysaor appeared from her body. Perseus continued to the realm of Cepheus whose daughter Andromeda was to be sacrificed to Cetus the sea monster.
Perseus rescued Andromeda from the monster by killing it with his diamond sword. He turned Polydectes and his followers to stone with Medusa's head and appointed Dictys the fisherman king. Perseus and Andromeda married and had six children. In the sky, Perseus lies near the constellations Andromeda, Cepheus, Cassiopeia (Andromeda's mother), Cetus, and Pegasus.
The Lion Gate at Mycenae.
Perseus slays Madusa averting his eyes
Athena instructed Perseus to find the Hesperides, who were entrusted with weapons needed to defeat the Gorgon. Following Athena's guidance, Perseus sought the Greae, sisters of the Gorgons, to demand the whereabouts of the Hesperides, the nymphs tending Hera's orchard.
Perseus and the Graeae by Edward Burne-Jones (1892)
The Graeae were three perpetually old women, who had to share a single eye. As the women passed the eye from one to another, Perseus snatched it from them, holding it for ransom in return for the location of the nymphs. When the sisters led him to the Hesperides, he returned what he had taken.
Minerva Giving her Shield to Perseus-René-Antoine Houasse
He slays Medusa by gazing at her reflection, not her directly.
Perseus and Medusa - Annibale Carracci - 1597
From the Hesperides he received a knapsack (kibisis) to safely contain Medusa's head. Zeus gave him an adamantine sword (a Harpe) and Hades' helm of darkness to hide. Hermes lent Perseus winged sandals to fly, and Athena gave him a polished shield. Perseus then proceeded to the Gorgons' cave.
Perseus holding the kibisis
The Head of Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens
From the blood that spurted from her neck and falling into the sea, sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor, her sons by Poseidon.
John Singer Sargent Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa
Perseus Liberating Andromeda Peter Paul Rubens
Detail, Medusa's reflection, Eros, Pegasus and Gorgon shield
Edward Burne-Jones, The Baleful Head, 1885
This part of the series plays with the theme of the reflected gaze, as Perseus has Andromeda look at the Gorgon's head, but only as reflected in the well.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini
Polydectes turned into stone by Perseus
The Gorgons, three sisters who had hair made of living, venomous snakes, as well as a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld her to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale, their sister Medusa was not and she was slain by the demigod and hero Perseus.
The daughters of Phorcys and Ceto...
The daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, born in the caverns beneath Mount Olympus [making them Chthonic beings ]. Stheno and her sister Euryale were both immortal, and the third sister, Medusa, was mortal.
Phorcys (middle) and Ceto (right), and Triton or Thaumas
Phorcys is a primordial sea god, generally cited (first in Hesiod) as the son of Pontus and Gaia (Earth). According to the Orphic hymns, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea were the eldest offspring of Oceanus and Tethys. His wife was Ceto, and he is most notable in myth for fathering by Ceto a host of monstrous children.
Pontus was the divinity of the sea, one of the Protogenoi or first born gods. He was the father of the most ancient of sea-gods by the earth-goddess by Gaia (Earth) including Nereus, Phorkys and Keto.
Pontus was Gaia's son and has no father; according to the Greek poet Hesiod, he was born without coupling.
[Pontifex Maximus--Pope!]
Greek: Πόντος, Póntos, "Sea", personification of the sea, ho pontos, "the Road", by which Hellenes signified the Mediterranean Sea. (Hesiod)
Tomis Fortuna with Pontos
Pontus, rising from seaweed, grasps a rudder with his right hand and leans on the prow of a ship. He wears a mural crown [a crown or headpiece representing city walls or towers...identified tutelary deities-- a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place]: and accompanies Fortuna, whose draperies appear at the left, as twin patron deities of the Black Sea port of Tomis in Moesia (Romania).
Cybele enthroned, with lion, cornucopia, and mural crown. Roman marble, c. 50 AD. Getty Museum
Coat of arms of Constanța, ancient Tomis
Statue of Ovid in front of the Museum of National History (Tomis)
Ovid was exiled here...
Ovid (Metamorphoses) is their boi.
This is the cornucopia, or horn of plenty. It symbolizes both the male(the horn) and the female(the opening). And the harmony or fruitfulness due to the balance of the male and female
The Tyche of Antioch, foot on Pontus
Tyche "luck"; Roman equivalent: Fortuna, was the presiding tutelary deity who governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. In Classical Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Aphrodite and Zeus or Hermes. (She's an Hermaphrodite)...
Tyche holding the infant Plutus
Plutus (literally "wealth") is the Greek god of wealth. In the Eleusinian Mysteries he is regarded as the "Divine Child." --initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece.
excavation site of Eleusis
...feeding infant Plutus from horn of plenty
At the marriage of Kadmos (Cudmus) and Harmonia, Demeter fell in love with Iasion, which was attended by all gods. Iasion was lured by Demeter away from marriage celebration. They had intercourse as Demeter lay on her back in thrice ploughed field. When they rejoined the marriage celebration, Zeus guessed what had happened because of the mud on Demeter backside and got angry. Zeus killed Iasion with a thunderbolt.
Hieros gamos of Hera (shown with Iris--the Rainbow goddess) and Zeus, Pompeii.
Hieros gamos or Hierogamy ("holy marriage") is a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess... the promotion of fertility: such an ancient union of Demeter with Iasion.
Dīs Pater was a Roman god of the underworld. Dis was originally associated with fertile agricultural land and mineral wealth (cthonic diety, Pluto).
Eirene (Peace) bearing Plutus (Wealth), Roman copy after a Greek votive statue by Kephisodotos (ca. 370 BC) which stood on the agora in Athens [yeah, right].
Eirene (lit. "Peace"), more commonly known in English as Peace, was one of the Horae, the personification of peace.
Dionysus leading the Horae
...the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. Eunomia (goddess of good order and lawful conduct) and her sisters Dike (goddess of Justice) and Eirene (goddess of Peace).
Pax was the personification of peace and wealth, and was depicted in art as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, scepter and a torch or rhyton.
Silver rhyton with goat protome and death of Orpheus
Shofar from Ram's horn
The last triad of Horae was identified by Hyginus:
Themis, Titaness of divine law and order
The Three Fates, tondo by Hans Vischer, c. 1530
Strudwick- A Golden Thread
They controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death.
In the Theogony of Hesiod, the three Moirai are personified, daughters of Nyx and are acting over the gods. Later they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, who was the embodiment of divine order and law. In Plato's Republicthe Three Fates are daughters of Ananke (necessity).
The concept of a universal principle of natural order:
Maat
Maat was also the goddess who personified the concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice.
Clotho ("spinner")-- spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle. Her Roman equivalent was Nona ("the ninth"), who was originally a goddess called upon in the ninth month of pregnancy.
Lachesis ("allotter")-- or drawer of lots) measured the thread of life allotted to each person with her measuring rod. Her Roman equivalent was Decima ("the Tenth").
Graeco-Egyptian God Serapis with measuring rod
Measuring rod and coiled rope depicted in the Code of Hammarubi
Albrecht Dürer's engraving of Nemesis, c 1502
Nemesis is the goddess who enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods).
The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νέμειν némein, meaning "to give what is due" from Proto-Indo-European nem- "distribute".
...her epithet Erinys("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele.
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 8:
"Constellation Swan (Cygnus). When Jupiter [Zeus], moved by desire, had begun to love Nemesis, and couldn't persuade her to lie with him, he relieved his passion by the following plan. He bade Venus (Aphrodite), in the form of an eagle, pursue him; he, changed to a swan as if in flight from the eagle, took refuge with Nemesis and lighted in her lap. Nemesis did not thrust him away, but holding him in her arms, fell into a deep sleep. While she slept, Jupiter [Zeus] embraced her and then flew away. Because he was seen by men flying high in the sky, they said he was put in the stars. To make this really true, Jupiter put the swan flying and the eagle pursuing in the sky. But Nemesis, as if wedded to the tribe of birds, when her months were ended, bore an egg. Mercurius (Mercury) Hermes took it away and carried it to Sparta and threw it in Leda's lap. From it sprang Helen, who excelled all other girls in beauty."
Atropos ("the unturnable", a metaphor for death)--"inexorable" or "inevitable", (sometimes called Aisa) was the cutter of the thread of life. She chose the manner of each person's death; and when their time was come, she cut their life-thread with "her abhorred shears". Her Roman equivalent was Morta ("the dead one").
It seems that in Pre-Greek religion Aisa was a daemon. In Mycenean religion Aisa or Moira was originally a living power related with the limit and end of life. At the moment of birth she spins the destiny, because birth ordains death. Later Aisa is not alone, but she is accompanied by the "Spinners", who are the personifications of Fate. The act of spinning is also associated with the gods, who at birth and at marriage do not spin the thread of life, but individual events like destruction, return or good fortune. Everything which has been spun must be wound on the spindle, and this was considered a cloth, like a net or loop which captured man.
In ancient Roman religion and myth, the Parcae were the female personifications of destiny who directed the lives (and deaths) of humans and gods. They are often called the Fates in English, and their Greek equivalent were the Moirai.
The Three Parcae (1540-1550), by Marco Bigio
Nona, Decima, and Morta
The Norns spin the threads of fate at the foot of Yggdrasil, the tree of the world.
Macbeth and Banquo meeting the three weird sisters.
Ananke the personification of Necessity...Mother of the Moirai
Anaximander's models of the universe [spindles?]--summer and winter.
According to Plato, the Earth was a sphere, stationary at the center of the universe. The stars and planets were carried around the Earth on spheres or circles:
Geocentric celestial spheres; Peter Apian's Cosmographia (Antwerp, 1539)
In his "Myth of Er", a section of the Republic, Plato describes the cosmos as the Spindle of Necessity, attended by the Sirens and turned by the three Fates.
(Eudoxus of Cnidus, who worked with Plato, developed a less mythical, more mathematical explanation of the planets' motion based on Plato's dictum stating that all phenomena in the heavens can be explained with uniform circular motion. Aristotle elaborated on Eudoxus' system.)
Er was native of Pamphylia (literally "of mingled tribes or races"), he dies in battle.
...ten days after his death, Er remains undecomposed. Two days later he revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of reincarnation and the celestial spheres of the astral plane. The tale includes the idea that moral people are rewarded and immoral people punished after death.
After seven days in the meadow, the souls and Er were required to travel farther. After four days they reached a place where they could see a shaft of rainbow light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the Spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters, and the Sirens were present. The souls – except for Er – were then organized into rows and were each given a lottery token.
Representation of the goddess Ananke, goddess linked to orphanism. Also represented as fate, the Moiras were her daughters with the god Moros. Next to Kronos they took care of the primordial egg that would generate the universe. Your animal is the snake.
Spinning with a suspended spindle (below) and distaff (above)
With many other souls as his companions, Er had come across an awe-inspiring place with four openings – two into and out of the sky and two into and out of the ground. Judges sat between these openings and ordered the souls which path to follow: the good were guided into the path into the sky, the immoral were directed below. But when Er approached the judges, he was told to remain, listening and observing in order to report his experience to humankind.
After seven days in the meadow, the souls and Er were required to travel farther. After four days they reached a place where they could see a shaft of rainbow light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the Spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters, and the Sirens were present. The souls – except for Er – were then organized into rows and were each given a lottery token.
Traces of Ezekiel’s famous ‘merkabah’ vision of the wheels within wheels may perhaps be found towards the end of Plato’s Republic, in the mysterious Myth of Er.
As to the Glory of God and the wheels within wheels, a famous image from Ezekiel, Plato again tells of something very similar. It is what he calls the ‘spindle of Necessity’, and is eschatological like Ezekiel.
And the seven day period is there also, as in Ezekiel (Republic, Bk. 10, 615): 5,040 “days plus nights”
According to the classical Greek Cosmogony as initially propounded by Hesiod, Ouranos, the male sky god is above the female goddess, Gaia, Mother Earth. From the union of these two primitive cosmic principals come the Titans, or primal forces of nature. The union of the primal forces Chronos (m) time with Rhea(f) feminine charm produces Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the anthropomorphic gods, and through them Ares the god of war and Aphrodite the goddess of carnal love. The union of these two produces Harmonia, harmony, this latter considered an illicit union that would eventually lead to universal frenzy and chaos. By contrast, the union of the primal forces Chronos, time and Phoibe, brilliance, produce ultimately Apollo the brilliant sun god and Artemis the cool reflective moon goddess and through them, poetic inspiration. As can be seen, the mythopoetic understanding of the Greeks, starting from Oyranos and Gaia, works itself out methodically in the standard up-down, right-left, male-female dyadic reciprocity or zyzygy
Magnum Chaos, wood-inlay by Giovan Francesco Capoferri at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, based on a design by Lorenzo Lotto.
Pherecydes of Syros, teacher of Pythagorus, pre-Socratic philosopher
...great significance in teaching on the subject of metempsychosis.
The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato. In the eschatological [the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind] myth which closes the Republic he tells the myth how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world.
The Waters of Lethe by the Plains of Elysium – John Spencer Stanhope
The Myth of Er in Book X of Plato's Republic tells of the dead arriving at a barren waste called the "plain of Lethe", through which the river Ameles ("careless") runs. "Of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity," Plato wrote, "and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things."
A few mystery religions taught the existence of another river, the Mnemosyne; those who drank from the Mnemosyne would remember everything and attain omniscience. Initiates were taught that they would receive a choice of rivers to drink from after death, and to drink from Mnemosyne instead of Lethe.
Trophonius
. There were rivers of Lethe and Mnemosyne at the oracular shrine of Trophonius in Boeotia, from which worshippers would drink before making oracular consultations with the god.
According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, he built Apollo's temple at the oracle at Delphi with his brother Agamedes. Once finished, the oracle told the brothers to do whatsoever they wished for six days and, on the seventh, their greatest wish would be granted. They did and were found dead on the seventh day. The maxim by Menander, "those whom the gods love die young", comes from this story.
Boetia--Its capital is Livadeia, and its largest city is Thebes...the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus, Heracles and others.
Jupiter and Antiope, by Antoine Watteau.
Amphion and Zethus subject Dirce to the bull (from the House of the Vettii, Pompeii)--builders of the seven walls of Thebes.
The Death of Hyacinth by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giorgio Vasari-- The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn (Cronus)
Rhea presenting Cronus the stone wrapped in cloth
Greek gods of Time and Fate Chronos and Ananke.
In Orphic mythology, Ananke is a self-formed being who emerged at the dawn of creation with an incorporeal, serpentine form, her outstretched arms encompassing the cosmos. Ananke and Chronos are mates, mingling together in serpent form as a tie around the universe. Together they have crushed the primal egg of creation of which constituent parts became earth, heaven and sea to form the ordered universe.
A final pre - Christian example of this right/left, up/down analogy of paired opposites is presented by Plato's Myth of Er which concerns the plight of the dead souls. When the shades of the fallen arrive at the plain of judgment they are confronted by judges who must decide whether they merit the "right hand" road of the just "upward" or the "left hand" road of the ignoble "downward." The just place a placard listing their virtues in front while the ignoble carry a placard of their misdeeds behind. Interestingly, neither the just nor the ignoble receive eternal judgment as they are reborn every aeon or thousand years. The journey of the human soul, according to Plato, follows an endless cycle of reincarnations according to the eternal "figure eight," 8 the cosmic "Lemniscate" or "infinity" symbol. 8
[No escape from] the lemniscate.
Fundamental polarity
The divine hierogamos or nuptial between God and His Creation (see Fundamentals of Symbolism
By Hamilton
The doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece; the Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier.
Orpheus is said to have taught that soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner.
Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably.
Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals." To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as a God from whom it comes.
Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus.
...the Eleusinian mysteries, initiation into Orphic mysteries promised advantages in the afterlife.
Orphic mosaics were found in many "late-Roman" villas
The Orphic theogonies: Dionysus (in his incarnation as Zagreus) is the son of Zeus and Persephone; Zeus gives his inheritance of the throne to the child, as Zeus is to leave due to Hera's anger over a child being born by another mother; the Titans are enraged over the proclamation of attendance and, at Hera's instigation, decide to murder the child. Dionysus is then tricked with a mirror and children's toys by the Titans, who murder and consume him. Athena saves the heart and tells Zeus of the crime, who in turn hurls a thunderbolt on the Titans. The resulting soot, from which sinful mankind is born, contains the bodies of the Titans and Dionysus. The soul of man (the Dionysus part) is therefore divine, but the body (the Titan part) holds the soul in bondage. Thus, it was declared that the soul returns to a host ten times, bound to the wheel of rebirth.
There are two Orphic stories of the rebirth of Dionysus: in one it is the heart of Dionysus that is implanted into the thigh of Zeus; in the other Zeus has impregnated the mortal woman Semele, resulting in Dionysus's literal rebirth.
Dionysos was murdered, and then cannibalized. Only his heart was salvaged by Athena. A statue of gypsum (the same substance the Titans used to disguise themselves) was then made to look like Dionysos, and the heart placed within.
gypsom, "plaster of Paris", spar
Totenpass is a German term sometimes used for inscribed tablets or metal leaves found in burials primarily of those presumed to be initiates into Orphic, Dionysiac religions. The term may be understood in English as a "passport for the dead". The so-called Orphic gold tablets are perhaps the best-known example.
4th century BC gold orphic tablet from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Totenpässe in the form of lamellae (Latin, "thin metal sheets", singular lamella).
The Gorgon's head is a frequent numismatic icon (here with anchor on reverse) that may appear on a danake, danake, or "Charon's obol", the coin that pays the ferryman of the dead for passage; this particular coin depicted the head of a Gorgon.
The deceased is supposed to stand before Persephone, Queen of the Dead, and assert "I have been released by Bacchios himself."
...though according to Hyginus, Pontus is the son of Aether and Gaia.
Aether - The god of the upper air and light, the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals.
According to Hesiod, in the Theogony, Aether and Hemera were the son and daughter of Nyx and Erebus, the primordial gods of Night and Darkness. This of course means Aether and Hemera were almost the exact opposite of their parents.
In the Greek poet Hesiod's Theogony, c. 700 BC, Tartarus was the third of the primordial deities, following after Chaos and Gaia (Earth), and preceding Eros, and was the father, by Gaia, of the monster Typhon. According to Hyginus, Tartarus was the offspring of Aether and Gaia.
...considered to be a primordial force or deity alongside entities such as the Earth, Night and Time.
Gaea, by Anselm Feuerbach, Personification of the Earth
Nyx, Primordial goddess of the night
Time Clipping Cupid's Wings (1694), by Pierre Mignard
Chronos is the personification of time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.
CHRONOS AEON (Khronos Aion)--"cyclical time" - Greek Primordial God of Time
He was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel.
The triumph of time; Chronos as a winged figure with two crutches riding on a cart drawn by two stags
HARPE
Chronos (the primordial god) vs. Cronus (the Titan)
Saturn (Cronus) is often depicted carrying a sickle like Father Time.
The Star of Remphan / Saturn is the 6 pointed star (3 +3)
Remphan is a figure described as "the star of your god whose images you made to worship" in Acts 7:43 (King James version).
...which reads in Hebrew as "Chiun", "Kewan". The Septuagint's reading of Amos is "raiphan" or "rephan". The Greek forms may be based on a transliteration of the Hebrew, k (qoppa) having been replaced by r (resh) and ph substituted for v (yod). "kewan", is the another pronunciation of the Old Persian word of Kayvan, meaning Saturn.
In the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was "engendered" by "earth and water", and produced Aether and Chaos, and an egg. It produced the hermaphroditic god Phanes who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the ultimate creator of the cosmos.
The Fall of the Titans, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, 1596-1598
Auriga
Auriga
Its brightest star, Capella, is an unusual multiple star system among the brightest stars in the night sky.
...its name is the Latin word for “the charioteer”[with the Kids]
Auriga is often identified as the mythological Greek hero Erichthonius of Athens, the chthonic son of Hephaestus who was raised by the goddess Athena.
Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. He caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off. During the struggle, his semen fell on her thigh, and Athena, in disgust, wiped it away with a scrap of wool (ἔριον, erion) and flung it to the earth (χθών, chthôn). As she fled, Erichthonius was born from the semen that fell to the earth. Athena, wishing to raise the child in secret, placed him in a small box. And then made sure no one would ever find out by giving him away.
Athena gave the box to the three daughters (Herse, Aglaurus and Pandrosus) of Cecrops, the king of Athens, and warned them never to look inside. Pandrosus obeyed, but Herse and Aglaurus were overcome with curiosity and opened the box, which contained the infant and future-king, Erichthonius ("troubles born from the earth," following another etymology). The sisters were terrified by what they saw in the box: either a snake coiled around an infant, or an infant that was half-human and half-serpent. They went insane and threw themselves off the Acropolis. Other accounts state that they were killed by the snake.
Cecrops I
...was a mythical king of Attica which derived from him its name Cecropia, having previously borne the name of Acte or Actice . He was the founder and the first king of Athens itself though preceded in the region by the earth-born king Actaeus of Attica. Cecrops was a culture hero, teaching the Athenians marriage, reading and writing, and ceremonial burial.
...described as having his top half shaped like a man and the bottom half in serpent or fish-tail form. Hence he was called διφυής (diphues) or of two natures.
He was said to have been the first who deified Zeus, and ordained sacrifices to be offered to him as the supreme Deity. Cecrops was likewise affirmed to have been the first who built altars and statues of the gods, offered sacrifices, and instituted marriage among the Athenians.
The Acropolis was also known as the Cecropia in his honor.
Athena became the patron goddess of the city of Athens in a competition with Poseidon as judged by Cecrops. Zeus parted them and appointed arbiters, the twelve gods. And in accordance with their verdict the country was adjudged to Athena, because Cecrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive...a competition with the god Poseidon where they were to win the favor of the Athenian people by offering the people gifts.
Finding of Erichthonius by Peter Paul Rubens (between 1632 and 1633)
When he grew up, Erichthonius drove out Amphictyon, who had usurped the throne from Cranaus twelve years earlier, and became king of Athens. He married Praxithea, a naiad, and had a son, Pandion I. During this time, Athena frequently protected him. He founded the Panathenaic Festival in the honor of Athena.
Poseidon and Athena on a Panathenic amphora
Award ceremonies included the giving of Panathenaic amphorae which were the large ceramic vessels that contained the oil given as prizes. The winner of the chariot race received as a prize one-hundred and forty Panathenaic amphorae full of olive oil.
This oil came from the sacred grove of Athena at Akademia.
Academus
The Athenian king Theseus (the slayer of the Minotaur) says that, after being widowed and reaching age 50, the king abducted the beautiful 12-year-old Helen.
Due to this outrage, her twin brothers Castor and Pollux invaded Attica to liberate their sister and threatened to destroy Athens. Academus spared the city by telling them where she was (hidden at Aphidnae). For this, Academus was venerated by the city as a savior.
This grove of trees on the northwest side of the city, held to be his burial place, was ever after dedicated to his memory. Within this grove Plato gave his lectures, and thus arose the phrase "the groves of Academe"...six stadia from Athens.
Its sacred grove furnished the olive oil that was distributed as prizes in the Panathenaic Games.
Erichthonius set up a wooden statue of her on the Acropolis
Athena Promachos-- later a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias.
Detail of an apobates race on a Panathenic amphora
Apobates Base,the scene of an Apobates competition or chariot race.
A modern recreation of chariot racing in Puy du Fou, featuring the quadriga.
He taught his people to yoke horses and use them to pull chariots, to smelt silver, and to till the earth with a plough. It was said that Erichthonius was lame of his feet and that he consequently invented the quadriga, or four-horse chariot, to get around more easily. He is said to have competed often as a chariot driver in games. Zeus was said to have been so impressed with his skill that he raised him to the heavens to become the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) after his death.
Roman hippodrome in the ancient city of Aphrodisias, Turkey
The races themselves were held in the hippodrome, situated at the south-east corner of the sanctuary of Olympia...hippos (ἵππος; "horse") and dromos(δρόμος; "course")
Central Moscow Hippodrome (with quadriga)
Hippodrome of Constantinople
The tethrippon consisted of twelve laps around the hippodrome. [four-horse (tethrippon, Greek: τέθριππον) and two-horse (synoris, Greek: συνωρὶς). Various mechanical devices were used, including the starting gates (hyspleges, Greek: ὕσπληγγες; singular: hysplex, Greek: ὕσπληγξ) which were lowered to start the race.
...invented by the architect Cleoitas, and staggered so that the chariots on the outside began the race earlier than those on the inside.
Other mechanical devices known as the "eagle" and the "dolphin" were raised to signify that the race had begun, and were lowered as the race went on to signify the number of laps remaining.
The owner and the driver of the chariot were different persons. meant that women could win the race through ownership, despite the fact that women were not allowed to participate in or even watch the Games.
...a notable example is the Spartan Cynisca, daughter of Archidamus II, who won the chariot race twice(as owner of the horses)
Cynisca
Archidamus, father of Cynisca, son of Cyniscos.
Puy du Fou (n°4) -- La Cinéscénie
The Cinéscénie boasts the largest stage in the world, 1,200 actors, all village local volunteers.
Unlike the other Olympic events, charioteers did not perform in the nude. Racers wore a sleeved garment called a xystis. It fell to the ankles and was fastened high at the waist with a plain belt. Two straps that crossed high at the upper back prevented the xystis from "ballooning" during the race.
The Charioteer from Delphi wears a xystis... in an Ionic chiton.
"Mrs." Condé Nast wearing one of the famous Fortuny tea gowns.
The Delphos gown inspired by, and named after the Charioteer of Delphi.
Mercury, Herse and Aglauros by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1763)
Erichthonius was generally credited to be the inventor of the quadriga, the four-horse chariot, which he used in the battle against the usurper Amphictyon, the event that made Erichthonius the king of Athens. His chariot was created in the image of the Sun's chariot, the reason Zeus placed him in the heavens. The Athenian hero then dedicated himself to Athena and, soon after, Zeus raised him into the night sky in honor of his ingenuity and heroic deeds.
Auriga, however, is sometimes described as Myrtilus, who was Hermes's son and the charioteer of Oenomaus
Death of Myrtilus depicted on a cinerary urn
Myrtilus was the charioteer of King Oenomaus of Pisa in Elis, on the northwest coast of the Peloponnesus. On the eve of the fateful horse race that would decide the marriage between Pelops and Hippodamia, Myrtilus was approached by Pelops (or in some accounts, by Hippodamia) who wanted him to hinder the efforts of his master, Oenamaus, to win the race. Myrtilus was offered as bribe the privilege of the first night with Hippodamia.
Phedre by Alexandre Cabanel
Hippolytus Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema
An incidental appearance of Auriga in Greek mythology is as the limbs of Medea's brother. In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, as they journeyed home, Medea killed her brother and dismembered him, flinging the parts of his body into the sea, represented by the Milky Way. Each individual star represents a different limb.
Absyrtus´ limbs presented in a wrapped cloth to his father, Aeetes.
MEDEA SCATTERS THE LIMBS OF ABSYRTUS IN THE WAY, TO RETARD THE PURSUIT OF AETES, WHO WOULD NATURALLY STOP TO PICK UP THE FRAGMENTS OF HIS CHILD [MEDEA, FLYING WITH JASON]
Tomi, the place where this occurred, was believed to have derived its name from temno (τέμνω, "cut").
Ruins of Tomis, ancient Constanța, Romania
Capella is associated with the mythological she-goat Amalthea, who breast-fed the infant Zeus. It forms an asterism with the stars Epsilon Aurigae, Zeta Aurigae, and Eta Aurigae, the latter two of which are known as the Haedi (the Kids).Though most often associated with Amalthea, Capella has sometimes been associated with Amalthea's owner, a nymph. The myth of the nymph says that the goat's hideous appearance, resembling a Gorgon, was partially responsible for the Titans' defeat, because Zeus skinned the goat and wore it as his aegis.
The Infant Zeus Nurtured by the Goat Amalthea - Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
Capella traditionally marks the left shoulder of the constellation's eponymous charioteer. In Bayer's 1603 work Uranometria, Capella marks the charioteer's back.The three Haedi had been identified as a separate constellation by Pliny the Elder and Manilius, and were called Capra, Caper, or Hircus, all of which relate to its status as the "goat star". Ptolemy merged the Charioteer and the Goats in the 2nd century Almagest.
...the star represented the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus.
Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea
Zeus Nourished by the Goat Amalthea ("tender goddess")
There were different traditions regarding Amaltheia. Amaltheia is sometimes represented as the goat who nurtured the infant-god in a cave in Cretan Mount Aigaion ("Goat Mountain"), sometimes as a goat-tending nymph. daughter of —according to Lactantius—Melisseus.
It was this goat whose horn, after accidentally being broken off by Zeus, was transformed into the Cornucopia, or "horn of plenty", which would be filled with whatever its owner desired.
The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1615
Coat of arms of Kharkiv, Ukraine
Amalthea was the first "unicorn".
Other names, like Adrasteia, Ide, the nymph of Mount Ida, or Adamanthea, which appear in mythology handbooks, are simply duplicates of Amaltheia.
Melisseus ( means "bee-man"), a "king of Crete," the father of the nymphs Adrasteia, Ida and Althaea who were nurses of the infant Zeus on Crete.
Priestesses of the Bee, The Melissae
The Melissae, also known as The Thriae (also Thriai), a triad of divinatory Priestesses in ancient Greece, were originally Nymphs. The Thriae were able to see the future, interpret signs and omens provided by Nature and the Earth. They taught the God Apollo this art. Their names are Daphnis (Laurel), Kleodora (Famed for Her Gift) and Melaina (The Black).
Priestesses of the Bee-- The Melissae
Melisseus was the eldest and leader of the nine Kuretes of Crete... Kouretes, spirit-youths (kouroi) who acted as guardians of the infant Zeus...on Mount Ida...chthonic daimones of Mount Ida, who clashed their spears and shields to drown out the wails of infant Zeus, whom they received from the Great Goddess, Rhea, his mother. The infant-god was hidden from his cannibal father and was raised in the cave that was sacred to the Goddess (Da) celebrated by the Kuretes, whose name it bore and still bears. The names of the two daughters of Melisseus, one called the "inevitable" (Adrasteia) and the other simply "goddess" (Ida, de) are names used for the Great Mother Rhea herself.
These honey-kings consorting with the Goddess...
Adrasteia, "inescapable" (or Nemesis)
Adrasteia, along with the ash-tree nymphs, the Meliae, laid Zeus "to rest in a cradle of gold", and fed him with honeycomb, and the milk of the goat Amaltheia. Hyginus says that Adrasteia, along with her sisters Ida and Amalthea, were daughters of Oceanus, or that according to "others" they were Zeus's nurses, "the ones that are called Dodonian Nymphys (others call them the Naiads)"
Robert Graves in asserting that Melliseus "Adrasteia and Io's reputed father, is really their mother, Melissa— the goddess as Queen-bee, who annually killed her male consort."
[The land of milk and honey...]
The infant god Zeus was fed on milk and honey, the milk of the goat-nymph Amaltheia.
When he came to maturity, Zeus rewarded his nymph nurses with the horn of Amaltheia, the cornucopia or horn of plenty that is always full of food and drink.
Amaltheia's skin, or that of her goat, taken by Zeus in honor of her when she died, became the protective aegis in some traditions.
Amaltheia was placed amongst the stars as the constellation Capra, not to confuse her with the male sea-goat of the Zodiac, Capricorn, who bears no relation to Amaltheia.
Catasterismi (Greek Καταστερισμοί Katasterismoi, "placings among the stars") is an Alexandrian prose retelling of the mythic originsof stars and constellations, as they were interpreted in Hellenistic culture...possible relation to the work of Eratosthenes of Cyrene; thus the author is alluded to as Pseudo-Eratosthenes.
it is more concerned with the mythological narrative attached to each than with the mathematical tradition of astronomy... the application of Greek mythic nomenclature to designate individual stars, both asterisms like the Pleiades and Hyades, and the constellations.
International Astronomical Union (IAU) Union astronomique internationale (UAI)
An asterism is a popularly-known pattern or group of stars that can be seen in the night sky...a constellation is an officially recognized area of the sky, while an asterism is a visually obvious collection of stars and the lines used to mentally connect them.
Catasterismi was illustrated by woodcuts in the first illustrated edition by Erhard Ratdolt, (Venice 1482)
catasterism--The transformation of a hero or mythological creature, after death, into a star or constellation.
Hyginus describes this catasterism in the Poetic Astronomy, in speaking of Auriga, the Charioteer:
"Parmeniscus says that a certain Melisseus was king in Crete, and to his daughters Jove was brought to nurse. Since they did not have milk, they furnished him a she-goat, Amaltheia by name, who is said to have reared him. She often bore twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed among the constellations. Cleostratus of Tenedos is said to have first pointed out these kids among the stars."
An Amazon with her shield bearing the Gorgon head image
The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology. [Under the aegis of the goat.]
Athena's aegis, bearing the Gorgon, here resembles closely the skin of the great serpent who guards the golden fleece (regurgitating Jason)
Virgil imagines the Cyclopes in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athena wears in her angry moods—a fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and the linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess's breast—a severed head rolling its eyes"; they are the brothers: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who provided Zeus with his weapon the thunderbolt.
Cyclopes, the sons of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and the brothers of the Titans and Hundred-Handers, and who had a single eye set in the middle of their foreheads.
The Hundred-Handed Giants, Hecatoncheires to the Greeks.
Athena wears the ancient form of the Gorgon head on her aegis, as the huge serpent who guards the golden fleece regurgitates Jason.
Euripides (Ion, 995) states that the aegis borne by Athena was the skin of the slain Gorgon.
Aex, a daughter of Helios, represented as a great fire-breathing chthonic serpent similar to the Chimera, was slain and flayed by Athena, who afterwards wore its skin, the aegis, as a cuirass (see above).
Chimera, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle
Chímaira "she-goat".
...a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal.
...one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.
Used to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling. [like a tranny?]
...but the ears were always visible (that does not occur with depictions of male lions).
Pegasus and Bellerophon killing the Chimera, from Rhodes archaeological museum
...he finished her off by equipping his spear with a lump of lead that melted when exposed to the Chimera's fiery breath and consequently killed her, an image drawn from metalworking.
"The Manticore, or Martigora was described by Pliny and Aristotle as a creature with the face and ears of a human, with grey eyes and a red body; a tail with a sting like that of a scorpion, and being the size of a lion, and with a lion’s paws, a triple row of teeth and an appetite for human flesh."
It eats its victims whole, using its triple rows of teeth, and leaves no bones behind.
...the body of a lion, the horns and tail of an antelope, the claws of a dragon, and the face of an old man with tusks.
Augustus is shown with an aegis thrown over his shoulder as a divine attribute
The Greek αἰγίς aigis, has many meanings including: "violent windstorm"; the shield of a deity;
"goatskin coat", from treating the word as meaning "something grammatically feminine pertaining to goat": Greek αἴξ aix (stem αἰγ- aig-) = "goat", + suffix -ίς -is (stem -ίδ- -id-).
Shield of Zeus, crafted by Haepheastos
Its brightest star, Capella, is an unusual multiple star system among the brightest stars in the night sky.
...its name is the Latin word for “the charioteer”[with the Kids]
Auriga is often identified as the mythological Greek hero Erichthonius of Athens, the chthonic son of Hephaestus who was raised by the goddess Athena.
Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. He caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off. During the struggle, his semen fell on her thigh, and Athena, in disgust, wiped it away with a scrap of wool (ἔριον, erion) and flung it to the earth (χθών, chthôn). As she fled, Erichthonius was born from the semen that fell to the earth. Athena, wishing to raise the child in secret, placed him in a small box. And then made sure no one would ever find out by giving him away.
Athena gave the box to the three daughters (Herse, Aglaurus and Pandrosus) of Cecrops, the king of Athens, and warned them never to look inside. Pandrosus obeyed, but Herse and Aglaurus were overcome with curiosity and opened the box, which contained the infant and future-king, Erichthonius ("troubles born from the earth," following another etymology). The sisters were terrified by what they saw in the box: either a snake coiled around an infant, or an infant that was half-human and half-serpent. They went insane and threw themselves off the Acropolis. Other accounts state that they were killed by the snake.
Cecrops I
...was a mythical king of Attica which derived from him its name Cecropia, having previously borne the name of Acte or Actice . He was the founder and the first king of Athens itself though preceded in the region by the earth-born king Actaeus of Attica. Cecrops was a culture hero, teaching the Athenians marriage, reading and writing, and ceremonial burial.
...described as having his top half shaped like a man and the bottom half in serpent or fish-tail form. Hence he was called διφυής (diphues) or of two natures.
He was said to have been the first who deified Zeus, and ordained sacrifices to be offered to him as the supreme Deity. Cecrops was likewise affirmed to have been the first who built altars and statues of the gods, offered sacrifices, and instituted marriage among the Athenians.
The Acropolis was also known as the Cecropia in his honor.
Athena became the patron goddess of the city of Athens in a competition with Poseidon as judged by Cecrops. Zeus parted them and appointed arbiters, the twelve gods. And in accordance with their verdict the country was adjudged to Athena, because Cecrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive...a competition with the god Poseidon where they were to win the favor of the Athenian people by offering the people gifts.
The Erechtheion, a shrine dedicated to the legendary Greek hero Erichthonius, and dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon.
Finding of Erichthonius by Peter Paul Rubens (between 1632 and 1633)
When he grew up, Erichthonius drove out Amphictyon, who had usurped the throne from Cranaus twelve years earlier, and became king of Athens. He married Praxithea, a naiad, and had a son, Pandion I. During this time, Athena frequently protected him. He founded the Panathenaic Festival in the honor of Athena.
Poseidon and Athena on a Panathenic amphora
Award ceremonies included the giving of Panathenaic amphorae which were the large ceramic vessels that contained the oil given as prizes. The winner of the chariot race received as a prize one-hundred and forty Panathenaic amphorae full of olive oil.
This oil came from the sacred grove of Athena at Akademia.
Academus
The Athenian king Theseus (the slayer of the Minotaur) says that, after being widowed and reaching age 50, the king abducted the beautiful 12-year-old Helen.
Due to this outrage, her twin brothers Castor and Pollux invaded Attica to liberate their sister and threatened to destroy Athens. Academus spared the city by telling them where she was (hidden at Aphidnae). For this, Academus was venerated by the city as a savior.
This grove of trees on the northwest side of the city, held to be his burial place, was ever after dedicated to his memory. Within this grove Plato gave his lectures, and thus arose the phrase "the groves of Academe"...six stadia from Athens.
Its sacred grove furnished the olive oil that was distributed as prizes in the Panathenaic Games.
Erichthonius set up a wooden statue of her on the Acropolis
Athena Promachos-- later a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias.
Detail of an apobates race on a Panathenic amphora
Apobates Base,the scene of an Apobates competition or chariot race.
A modern recreation of chariot racing in Puy du Fou, featuring the quadriga.
He taught his people to yoke horses and use them to pull chariots, to smelt silver, and to till the earth with a plough. It was said that Erichthonius was lame of his feet and that he consequently invented the quadriga, or four-horse chariot, to get around more easily. He is said to have competed often as a chariot driver in games. Zeus was said to have been so impressed with his skill that he raised him to the heavens to become the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) after his death.
Roman hippodrome in the ancient city of Aphrodisias, Turkey
The races themselves were held in the hippodrome, situated at the south-east corner of the sanctuary of Olympia...hippos (ἵππος; "horse") and dromos(δρόμος; "course")
Central Moscow Hippodrome (with quadriga)
Hippodrome of Constantinople
The tethrippon consisted of twelve laps around the hippodrome. [four-horse (tethrippon, Greek: τέθριππον) and two-horse (synoris, Greek: συνωρὶς). Various mechanical devices were used, including the starting gates (hyspleges, Greek: ὕσπληγγες; singular: hysplex, Greek: ὕσπληγξ) which were lowered to start the race.
...invented by the architect Cleoitas, and staggered so that the chariots on the outside began the race earlier than those on the inside.
Other mechanical devices known as the "eagle" and the "dolphin" were raised to signify that the race had begun, and were lowered as the race went on to signify the number of laps remaining.
The owner and the driver of the chariot were different persons. meant that women could win the race through ownership, despite the fact that women were not allowed to participate in or even watch the Games.
...a notable example is the Spartan Cynisca, daughter of Archidamus II, who won the chariot race twice(as owner of the horses)
Cynisca
Archidamus, father of Cynisca, son of Cyniscos.
Puy du Fou (n°4) -- La Cinéscénie
The Cinéscénie boasts the largest stage in the world, 1,200 actors, all village local volunteers.
Unlike the other Olympic events, charioteers did not perform in the nude. Racers wore a sleeved garment called a xystis. It fell to the ankles and was fastened high at the waist with a plain belt. Two straps that crossed high at the upper back prevented the xystis from "ballooning" during the race.
The Charioteer from Delphi wears a xystis... in an Ionic chiton.
"Mrs." Condé Nast wearing one of the famous Fortuny tea gowns.
The Delphos gown inspired by, and named after the Charioteer of Delphi.
Mercury, Herse and Aglauros by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1763)
Erichthonius was generally credited to be the inventor of the quadriga, the four-horse chariot, which he used in the battle against the usurper Amphictyon, the event that made Erichthonius the king of Athens. His chariot was created in the image of the Sun's chariot, the reason Zeus placed him in the heavens. The Athenian hero then dedicated himself to Athena and, soon after, Zeus raised him into the night sky in honor of his ingenuity and heroic deeds.
Auriga, however, is sometimes described as Myrtilus, who was Hermes's son and the charioteer of Oenomaus
Death of Myrtilus depicted on a cinerary urn
Myrtilus was the charioteer of King Oenomaus of Pisa in Elis, on the northwest coast of the Peloponnesus. On the eve of the fateful horse race that would decide the marriage between Pelops and Hippodamia, Myrtilus was approached by Pelops (or in some accounts, by Hippodamia) who wanted him to hinder the efforts of his master, Oenamaus, to win the race. Myrtilus was offered as bribe the privilege of the first night with Hippodamia.
He sabotaged the king's chariot by replacing the bronze linchpins with fake ones made of bees' wax. In the ensuing accident Oenomaus lost his life, cursing Myrtilus as he died.
Some say that Myrtilus was transformed into the constellation of Auriga. [This is the birth of the olympics].
Yet another mythological association of Auriga is Theseus's son Hippolytus. He was ejected from Athens after he refused the romantic advances of his stepmother Phaedra, who committed suicide as a result. He was killed when his chariot was wrecked, but revived by Asclepius.
Phedre by Alexandre Cabanel
Hippolytus Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema
An incidental appearance of Auriga in Greek mythology is as the limbs of Medea's brother. In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, as they journeyed home, Medea killed her brother and dismembered him, flinging the parts of his body into the sea, represented by the Milky Way. Each individual star represents a different limb.
Absyrtus´ limbs presented in a wrapped cloth to his father, Aeetes.
MEDEA SCATTERS THE LIMBS OF ABSYRTUS IN THE WAY, TO RETARD THE PURSUIT OF AETES, WHO WOULD NATURALLY STOP TO PICK UP THE FRAGMENTS OF HIS CHILD [MEDEA, FLYING WITH JASON]
Tomi, the place where this occurred, was believed to have derived its name from temno (τέμνω, "cut").
Ruins of Tomis, ancient Constanța, Romania
Capella is associated with the mythological she-goat Amalthea, who breast-fed the infant Zeus. It forms an asterism with the stars Epsilon Aurigae, Zeta Aurigae, and Eta Aurigae, the latter two of which are known as the Haedi (the Kids).Though most often associated with Amalthea, Capella has sometimes been associated with Amalthea's owner, a nymph. The myth of the nymph says that the goat's hideous appearance, resembling a Gorgon, was partially responsible for the Titans' defeat, because Zeus skinned the goat and wore it as his aegis.
The Infant Zeus Nurtured by the Goat Amalthea - Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
Capella traditionally marks the left shoulder of the constellation's eponymous charioteer. In Bayer's 1603 work Uranometria, Capella marks the charioteer's back.The three Haedi had been identified as a separate constellation by Pliny the Elder and Manilius, and were called Capra, Caper, or Hircus, all of which relate to its status as the "goat star". Ptolemy merged the Charioteer and the Goats in the 2nd century Almagest.
...the star represented the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus.
Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea
Zeus Nourished by the Goat Amalthea ("tender goddess")
There were different traditions regarding Amaltheia. Amaltheia is sometimes represented as the goat who nurtured the infant-god in a cave in Cretan Mount Aigaion ("Goat Mountain"), sometimes as a goat-tending nymph. daughter of —according to Lactantius—Melisseus.
It was this goat whose horn, after accidentally being broken off by Zeus, was transformed into the Cornucopia, or "horn of plenty", which would be filled with whatever its owner desired.
The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1615
Coat of arms of Kharkiv, Ukraine
Amalthea was the first "unicorn".
Other names, like Adrasteia, Ide, the nymph of Mount Ida, or Adamanthea, which appear in mythology handbooks, are simply duplicates of Amaltheia.
Melisseus ( means "bee-man"), a "king of Crete," the father of the nymphs Adrasteia, Ida and Althaea who were nurses of the infant Zeus on Crete.
Priestesses of the Bee, The Melissae
The Melissae, also known as The Thriae (also Thriai), a triad of divinatory Priestesses in ancient Greece, were originally Nymphs. The Thriae were able to see the future, interpret signs and omens provided by Nature and the Earth. They taught the God Apollo this art. Their names are Daphnis (Laurel), Kleodora (Famed for Her Gift) and Melaina (The Black).
Priestesses of the Bee-- The Melissae
Melisseus was the eldest and leader of the nine Kuretes of Crete... Kouretes, spirit-youths (kouroi) who acted as guardians of the infant Zeus...on Mount Ida...chthonic daimones of Mount Ida, who clashed their spears and shields to drown out the wails of infant Zeus, whom they received from the Great Goddess, Rhea, his mother. The infant-god was hidden from his cannibal father and was raised in the cave that was sacred to the Goddess (Da) celebrated by the Kuretes, whose name it bore and still bears. The names of the two daughters of Melisseus, one called the "inevitable" (Adrasteia) and the other simply "goddess" (Ida, de) are names used for the Great Mother Rhea herself.
These honey-kings consorting with the Goddess...
Adrasteia, "inescapable" (or Nemesis)
Adrasteia, along with the ash-tree nymphs, the Meliae, laid Zeus "to rest in a cradle of gold", and fed him with honeycomb, and the milk of the goat Amaltheia. Hyginus says that Adrasteia, along with her sisters Ida and Amalthea, were daughters of Oceanus, or that according to "others" they were Zeus's nurses, "the ones that are called Dodonian Nymphys (others call them the Naiads)"
According to Apollonius Rhodius1 she gave Zeus a beautiful globe (σφαῖρα) sphaira to play with... which was described as if it were the cosmos.
Robert Graves in asserting that Melliseus "Adrasteia and Io's reputed father, is really their mother, Melissa— the goddess as Queen-bee, who annually killed her male consort."
[The land of milk and honey...]
The infant god Zeus was fed on milk and honey, the milk of the goat-nymph Amaltheia.
When he came to maturity, Zeus rewarded his nymph nurses with the horn of Amaltheia, the cornucopia or horn of plenty that is always full of food and drink.
Amaltheia's skin, or that of her goat, taken by Zeus in honor of her when she died, became the protective aegis in some traditions.
Amaltheia was placed amongst the stars as the constellation Capra, not to confuse her with the male sea-goat of the Zodiac, Capricorn, who bears no relation to Amaltheia.
Catasterismi (Greek Καταστερισμοί Katasterismoi, "placings among the stars") is an Alexandrian prose retelling of the mythic originsof stars and constellations, as they were interpreted in Hellenistic culture...possible relation to the work of Eratosthenes of Cyrene; thus the author is alluded to as Pseudo-Eratosthenes.
it is more concerned with the mythological narrative attached to each than with the mathematical tradition of astronomy... the application of Greek mythic nomenclature to designate individual stars, both asterisms like the Pleiades and Hyades, and the constellations.
International Astronomical Union (IAU) Union astronomique internationale (UAI)
An asterism is a popularly-known pattern or group of stars that can be seen in the night sky...a constellation is an officially recognized area of the sky, while an asterism is a visually obvious collection of stars and the lines used to mentally connect them.
Catasterismi was illustrated by woodcuts in the first illustrated edition by Erhard Ratdolt, (Venice 1482)
catasterism--The transformation of a hero or mythological creature, after death, into a star or constellation.
"Parmeniscus says that a certain Melisseus was king in Crete, and to his daughters Jove was brought to nurse. Since they did not have milk, they furnished him a she-goat, Amaltheia by name, who is said to have reared him. She often bore twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed among the constellations. Cleostratus of Tenedos is said to have first pointed out these kids among the stars."
An Amazon with her shield bearing the Gorgon head image
The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology. [Under the aegis of the goat.]
Athena's aegis, bearing the Gorgon, here resembles closely the skin of the great serpent who guards the golden fleece (regurgitating Jason)
Virgil imagines the Cyclopes in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athena wears in her angry moods—a fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and the linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess's breast—a severed head rolling its eyes"; they are the brothers: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who provided Zeus with his weapon the thunderbolt.
Cyclopes, the sons of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and the brothers of the Titans and Hundred-Handers, and who had a single eye set in the middle of their foreheads.
The Hundred-Handed Giants, Hecatoncheires to the Greeks.
The CYCLOPES were bound and cast into Tartarus by Uranus, to make there company to their brethren the HECATONCHEIRES. In this way, their father expected to get rid of the terrible generations he was procreating. WYet when the Titan Cronos revolted against his father Uranus(see also Castration of Uranus), he delivered both the CYCLOPES and the HECATONCHEIRES. And then again, following the example of his father and predecessor, Cronos shut them up in Tartarus once more. Later on, when Zeus attacked the TITANS (see Titanomachy), Gaiaprophesied victory to him if he would have both the CYCLOPES and the HECATONCHEIRES as allies. So he slew their jaileress Campe (see Underworld), and set them free.The CYCLOPES then gave Zeus the thunderbolt, Hades a helmet, and Poseidon the trident. And armed with these weapons, the Olympian gods overcame the TITANS.
Now Cronos, having coveted his father's chair more than he was disgusted at his deeds, hurled the HECATONCHEIRES down to Tartarus again, as soon as he had gained power. For he, some suggest, was jealous of their manhood and comeliness. In Tartarus, where Night spreads about in triple line, they were guarded by Campe, a gigantic jaileress with clusters of poisonous serpents for hair, who was covered with sea-monster's scales from the chest to the parting-point of the thighs.
Castration of Uranus
Apollo Killing The Cyclopes, in retribution for Zeus killing Asclepius with his forged thunderbolt.
After dispatching Uranus, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatoncheires, and the Cyclopes and set the dragon Campe to guard them. He and his sister Rhea took the throne of the world as king and queen. The period in which Cronus ruled was called the Golden Age, as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules; everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent.
Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own sons, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon by Rhea, he devoured them all as soon as they were born to prevent the prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus, was born Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children.
Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his son. Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes.
Once he had grown up, Zeus used an emetic given to him by Gaia to force Cronus to disgorge the contents of his stomach in reverse order: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Mount Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, and then his two brothers and three sisters.
When the Olympian shakes the aegis, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are struck down with fear. "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome aegis to Athena.
When the Olympian shakes the aegis, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are struck down with fear. "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome aegis to Athena.
According to Pseudo-Hyginus the "Gorgo Aix" (Γοργώ Aιξ), daughter of Helios, was killed by Zeus during the Titanomachy. From her skin, a goat-like hide rimmed with serpents, he made his famous aegis, and placed her fearsome visage upon it. This he gave to Athena. Then Aix became the goat Capra (Greek: Aix), on the left shoulder of the constellation Auriga.
Aix was a daughter of the sun-god Helios. Like the aigis-shield itself, she symbolised the storm-cloud. Her name means both "Terrible Goat" and "Fierce Storm" for the Greek word aigis contains the double-meaning of "stormy" and "goatish".
An elder Gorgon was also sometimes described as the father of the Gorgon Medousa. This figure may be the same as Aix, for the primal Gorgon was a creature of indeterminable gender--a bearded woman or a man with womanly attributes.
The Gorgo Aix, was also described as the nurse of Zeus, and in this case she was a monstrous counterpart of the goat Amaltheia.
An archaic Gorgon (around 580 BC), as depicted on a pediment from the temple of Artemis in Corfu
The aegis on the Lemnian Athena of Phidias
Euripides (Ion, 995) states that the aegis borne by Athena was the skin of the slain Gorgon.
Aex, a daughter of Helios, represented as a great fire-breathing chthonic serpent similar to the Chimera, was slain and flayed by Athena, who afterwards wore its skin, the aegis, as a cuirass (see above).
Chimera, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle
Chímaira "she-goat".
...a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal.
...one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.
Used to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling. [like a tranny?]
...but the ears were always visible (that does not occur with depictions of male lions).
Pegasus and Bellerophon killing the Chimera, from Rhodes archaeological museum
...he finished her off by equipping his spear with a lump of lead that melted when exposed to the Chimera's fiery breath and consequently killed her, an image drawn from metalworking.
"The Manticore, or Martigora was described by Pliny and Aristotle as a creature with the face and ears of a human, with grey eyes and a red body; a tail with a sting like that of a scorpion, and being the size of a lion, and with a lion’s paws, a triple row of teeth and an appetite for human flesh."
It eats its victims whole, using its triple rows of teeth, and leaves no bones behind.
The horned mantyger
...of Persian origin, where its name was "man-eater"...the body of a lion, the horns and tail of an antelope, the claws of a dragon, and the face of an old man with tusks.
Augustus is shown with an aegis thrown over his shoulder as a divine attribute
The Greek αἰγίς aigis, has many meanings including: "violent windstorm"; the shield of a deity;
"goatskin coat", from treating the word as meaning "something grammatically feminine pertaining to goat": Greek αἴξ aix (stem αἰγ- aig-) = "goat", + suffix -ίς -is (stem -ίδ- -id-).
Shield of Zeus, crafted by Haepheastos
Ophiuchus
Serpens
Sagitta
Aquila
Delphinus
Equuleus
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