Download PDF | A Byzantine Novel: Drosilla and Charikles, by Niketas Eugenianos , 2004.
241 Pages
FOREWORD
In recent years the study of the ancient Greek novel, a once neglected and fringe genre, has found reputable entry not only into the work of scholars, but also into the classroom. The five canonical novels, sophistic or not, are now studied as vehicles through which one can gain important insight into that turbulent period of the Graeco-Roman world that spans from the end of the first century BC to the fourth century A.D.
This bilingual edition of Niketas Eugenianos’ Drosilla and Charikles now similarly affords us sound access to the literary fictions of the twelfth-century Byzantine novels and the characters, events, myth, customs, ideas, social norms, and history in which this type of literature developed. Joan B. Burton has created a text that will help bring to completion the ongoing transformation of modern opinion on the Byzantine novel.
Previously, most views of these fictions were similar to the one famously expounded by Ben Edwin Perry, who stated that the authors of these novels were “miserable pedants . . . trying to write romance in what they thought was the ancient manner. Of these no account need be taken” (The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins [Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967, 103]).
This text shows that Roderick Beaton was right in writing that the “Byzantine romances of the twelfth century are works of remarkable, and surely deliberate, refinement . . . Rhetoric and the power of artifice (whether verbal or visual) become the central props of the stories” (“The Byzantine Revival of the Ancient Novel” in Gareth Schmeling’s The Novel in the Ancient World [Leiden, New York and Koln 1996, 716]).
This text, the only English translation of Niketas Eugenianos’ Drosilla and Charikles, faithfully adheres to the Greek narrative. Drosilla and Charikles is a story that includes “flight, wandering, storms at sea, abductions, violence, robbers, prisons, pirates, hunger, dreadful dark houses full of gloom under a bright sun, iron fetters wrought with the hammer, a pitiable, unlucky separation from one another, and in the end bridal chambers and nuptials” (Summary.2–8).
The plot is equal to or surpasses most modern stories of love, intrigue and adventure—Burton’s translation does an excellent job of conveying the action and pace of the Greek original. If one prefers to read the Greek, the explanatory notes help nudge the translator in the right direction. EDMUND P. CUEVA Xavier University
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is a pleasure to be able to thank the people who have helped me with this project. I am especially grateful to Dr. Ladislaus (Lou) J. Bolchazy for welcoming this project warmly and giving it a good home: Dr. Bolchazy has long been an important advocate for Classics in and beyond the classroom. Laurie Haight Keenan, my editor, provided support and thoughtful guidance throughout the publication process; her patience and good humor were much appreciated.
I should also like to thank Adam Phillip Velez and the anonymous reader for their enthusiasm, valuable suggestions, and care with the manuscript. Trinity University generously awarded me an academic leave to complete this project. I am grateful to my students for reading a preliminary draft of this translation and learning about the Byzantine novels with me, and to my colleagues and friends, particularly Victoria Aarons, Maud Gleason, Alida Metcalf, Laurie Taylor-Mitchell, Jenny Ring, Willis Salomon, Carolyn Valone, Amelia Van Vleck, and Colin Wells, for supporting and encouraging my move to study medieval Greek literature. I wish to thank David Stinchcomb and Amelia Van Vleck, who read through early drafts of this translation, and Carolyn Valone, who provided timely help at the end of this project.
I am also indebted to all the friends, colleagues, and anonymous readers of journal articles who urged me to publish this translation. Thanks are due to Edoardo Pia and Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese for their kind permission to append the Greek text from their volume Il romanzo bizantino del XII secolo, edited by Fabrizio Conca, whose excellent text smoothed the way for this translation. I wish to thank Ioulia Tzonou-Herbst and the American School of Classical Studies Corinth Excavations for allowing reproduction of the charming Byzantine plate c.34.54.
I am grateful beyond words to my family and friends for their kindness, understanding, and support (even through missed vacations). My love of reading and scholarship emerges directly from the rich and warm intellectual life provided by my parents, Nancy and Ben Burton. To my husband, David Stinchcomb, I owe more than I could ever say. This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother Clara P. Higgins and her "Duke of Dudley," who could have starred in their own romance novel.
INTRODUCTION
The popularity of the ancient Greek and Roman novels has increased greatly in recent years, and courses on the ancient novel are now becoming standard parts of undergraduate and graduate programs around the world. The rise of interest is in part due to the rich forum these novels offer for discussions of such topics of contemporary interest as gender relations, social customs, narrative technique, and ethnic diversity in the ancient world. Encouraging the growth of scholarly and classroom attention to the ancient novels are the many translations into modern languages, including English, available in affordable volumes for classroom and personal use.1
Western medieval romances, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, have long been part of school curricula. Yet in the upsurge of world interest in the ancient and medieval novels and romances, the twelfth-century Byzantine novels have received little notice. These four Byzantine novels represent a rebirth of the genre of the novel after a hiatus of eight centuries.
Written in Christian Constantinople under the Komnenian dynasty and during the time of the crusades, these remarkable novels both revive the pagan Greek world with its pagan gods and beliefs and also reflect customs and beliefs of their own time. Three of the four Byzantine novels survive in their entirety—Niketas Eugenianos’s Drosilla and Charikles, Theodore Prodromos’s Rhodanthe and Dosikles, and Eustathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias—and one survives in fragmentary form: Constantine Manasses’ Aristandros and Kallithea. 2 Recent scholarly publications reflect an increasing interest in these novels;3 heightened interest is also shown by their recent translations into French, German, Italian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish.4 But English translations of the Byzantine novels remain long overdue.
This English translation of Eugenianos’s Drosilla and Charikles is a first attempt to address that need. The translation is intended for use by students and teachers of ancient and medieval literature, the novel, as well as medieval culture and society. A Greek text is provided to make the volume also useful for students and teachers of ancient Greek who seek attractive alternative texts. I hope that this will be the first of a series of translations of the Byzantine novels. My aim is to make these exciting novels available for use in the classroom.
I have taught my own English translations of these novels repeatedly with great success in a course on the ancient novel at Trinity University. I have also taught these novels in an upper-division course in Greek language. Students in both courses have expressed delight to be reading a text outside the usual run of classical literature. They were entranced with the Byzantine novels in their own right and felt that these novels offered a fascinating bridge from the pagan to the Christian world and also to the Western medieval novel. Class discussions were lively and rich.
Ancient novels—extended, mostly prose narratives of fictional love and adventure—seem to have arisen in the late Hellenistic or early imperial periods (first century B.C.–first century A.D.). It is difficult to speculate about causes for the rise of the Greek novel. Chronology would be important to such a discussion; yet most of the novels cannot be definitively dated, some even to the century. Still, different factors have been emphasized in different discussions: for example, an increasingly privatized society, an increase in literacy, the rising visibility of women, a desire for escapist fiction.5 Persistent topics addressed in the novels include conflicts between love and society, social instability, the chance nature of the universe, dangers of travel, the loneliness of persons set loose in the world, the problems of adjusting to an expanded world.
Three of the ancient Greek novels (Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon, Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, and Heliodorus’s An Ethiopian Story) are commonly associated with the Second Sophistic (early centuries A.D.), a period known for rhetorical display and philhellenism.6 Although these novels share typical plot elements—young hero and heroine, love, abductions, pirates, sea storms, threats to chastity, separations, reunions, and marriage at the end— there are also striking differences. For example, Achilles Tatius’s comic novel, presented from the hero’s limited first-person perspective, features a hero who fails at first to win the girl’s love (she runs away with him to spite her mother).
In Longus’s pastoral novel, travel is not important; instead the novel focuses on the psychological process of sexual awakening in young adolescents. In Heliodorus’s novel, on the other hand, travel and differences of race, language, and ethnicity are central themes (the heroine is a white girl born of black Ethiopian parents). When the genre of the novel was revived in twelfth-century Constantinople, after an interval of some eight centuries, the Greek novels associated with the Second Sophistic were the primary models.
Along with basic themes and plot elements, the Byzantine novels’ literary inheritance from the sophistic novels included the use of Atticizing Greek (based on the Greek of fifth- and fourth-century B.C. Athens), an emphasis on rhetoric, experimentation in narrative form and techniques, as well as extended descriptive passages (ekphraseis) and allusions to ancient Greek literature of many kinds. Thus both the sophistic and Byzantine novels seem to have been aimed first at well-educated audiences, able to grasp literary allusions and comprehend Atticizing Greek. We have more information about the immediate context of the Byzantine novels than that of the ancient Greek novels.
At least three of the four authors— Theodore Prodromos, Constantine Manasses, and Niketas Eugenianos—were closely associated with the Komnenian court at Constantinople.7 Although Makrembolites’ novel has been variously placed in the relative chronology, there is general agreement that all four novels were written around the midtwelfth century.8 Perhaps the comparative political stability and economic prosperity of the Komnenian period (A.D. 1081–1185)9 helped encourage the blossoming of literary activity during the mid-twelfth century. This period also saw the rise of professional literati—Theodore Prodromos and John Tzetzes being prominent examples—as well as a rise in Hellenism, as shown by the resurgence of ancient genres such as the satire and novel.10
The fact that all four novels were written in a strong Atticising Greek reflects a desire at court to uphold high standards of purity of speech, a desire exemplified by Anna Komnene, daughter of Alexios I Komnenos and a distinguished writer herself.11 The women of the Komnenian family, prominent figures in the cultural world of the twelfth century, may also have played a part in the revival of the genre of the novel. Eirene Doukaina (wife of Alexios I Komnenos, the founder of the Komnenian dynasty) was a patron of Theodore Prodromos; her daughter, Anna Komnene, encouraged the writing of new commentaries on Aristotle.12
The sebastokratorissa Eirene Komnene was also patron of at least two of the four Byzantine novelists, Theodore Prodromos and Konstantinos Manasses.13 Thus it is not unlikely that educated, elite women were part of the Byzantine novel’s early readership. Direct flattery may also have played a role in a novel’s reception: for example, in a wedding poem Eugenianos uses the same lines to describe the beauty of a bride usually identified as the wife of the sebastos Stephen Komnenos that he uses in his novel to describe the beauty of the fictive heroine Drosilla.14
The proliferation of commentaries in the twelfth century suggests that members of the aristocracy may have been seeking more accessible routes to culture. For example, Manuel I’s first wife and an outlander (formerly Bertha of Sulzbach) commissioned John Tzetzes to write a verse summary of Homer’s Iliad which would have helped her appear educated among the Byzantine aristocracy.15 The romance novel would also have offered easier avenues to Attic culture than Aristotle and Demosthenes. Increased contact with the West also characterized the twelfth century, in particular through the crusades, which could have caused some Byzantines to want to assert their Greek identity against the Latins.
Further, the West was also experiencing an intellectual renaissance in the twelfth century, and romance fictions were being written there too by the mid-century.16 Elizabeth Jeffreys has proposed the interesting thesis that the novels of Prodromos and Manasses were already written at the time Eleanor of Aquitaine came to Constantinople in 1147 with the Second Crusade and that through Eleanor these novels could have influenced the rise of the French romances of antiquity.17 Literary influence might have moved in the other direction as well.
Manuel I Komnenos (emperor 1143–80), during whose reign some if not all of these novels may have been written, was highly influenced by the West: for example, he married two Western princesses, jousted, and hired Western military fighters. The Byzantine novels sometimes seem to reflect Western customs as well, for example, the trial by fire at the start of Prodromos’s novel (a Western not Byzantine practice in the twelfth century) (1.372–404).18 In any case, the court of the notoriously amorous Manuel I Komnenos would have offered a welcoming context for the new novels with their focus on erotic love.19
Perhaps too, among sophisticated writers, the revival of the genre of the novel reflected a sense of literary rivalry with the old Hellenic world. Although ancient novels apparently ceased to be written after Heliodorus’s An Ethiopian Story (third or fourth century A.D.), they continued to be read and discussed.
Byzantine writers from the fifth century on attest to the enduring popularity of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, both of whom were transformed into Christian bishops, perhaps to make them more acceptable to a Christian reading public.20 Even less “ideal” ancient novels, such as Iamblichos’s Babyloniaka, continued to be read, as shown by the patriarch Photios (ninth century) in his Bibliotheca, a summary of his reading (for Iamblichos, see codex 94).21 There seems to have been an ongoing debate regarding the relative merits of Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius; both Photios in the ninth century and Michael Psellos in the eleventh express a preference for Heliodorus but admire Achilles Tatius’s style.22
Psellos attests to the continued popularity of Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius while stressing the importance also of more serious writings in the education of a writer. Again, in the twelfth century, Gregory Pardos (who becomes metropolitanbishop at Corinth) features these novels among his suggested readings for beginning writers.23 But if the ancient novel per se seems to have stopped being written in the fourth century, if not sooner, nonetheless the themes and motifs of the Greek “ideal” novel—ordeals, travel, chastity, trials, separations, reunions, miracle rescues—continued to thrive in writings of saints’ lives and the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (for example, Paul and Thecla).24
By the twelfth century, however, there had been a significant decline in the writing of saints’ lives in Byzantium, and this decline may in part have provided an opening for the novel to reemerge and reclaim those themes.25 Archaizing fiction, particularly if it shared themes with saints’ lives, might also have seemed to offer a safer forum than philosophy per se for approaching issues of love, friendship, war, morality, and religion. Despite the sophistication of the Komnenian court, prominent heresy trials would have provided cautionary examples for Hellenizing intellectuals, particularly regarding philosophical inquiry.
In 1082, near the start of the reign of Alexios I Komnenos, founder of the dynasty, the distinguished philosopher John Italos (director of Constantinople’s school of philosophy) was condemned for paganism and heresy.26 Then in 1117, another philosopher, Eustratios of Nicaea, who wrote commentaries on Aristotle under Anna Komnene’s encouragement, was also convicted of heresy. Later, the reign of Manuel I Komnenos, the period when most (if not all) of the novels may well have been written, was particularly marked by heresy trials.27
In Theodore Prodromos’s novel, when the hero Dosikles declaims upon the nature of Eros to his friends, they admonish him to stop talking that way, “for philosophy is dangerous just now” (a' prÒsforow gaÅ r êrti filosof¤a, 2.434). Dosikles’ friends interrupt the hero’s philosophizing to urge him to proceed with the business of abduction (a safer enterprise).28
Similarities between the Byzantine and ancient novels include plot, character, themes, descriptions, gods, geography, and narrative technique. Just as the ancient Greek novels are set in an older (pagan) Greek world, so too the Byzantine novels recall the older, pagan Greek world, and Tyche (Fortune) and Eros (Love) continue to play prominent roles. Differences include the use of verse rather than prose29 and topical elements in characterization and incident: for example, in Theodore Prodromos’s novel, the “frogmen” who attack enemy ships from underwater (6.7–38),30 the impressive throne scene among the pirates (esp. 4.16–29), the trial by fire mentioned above (1.372–404), and the heroine’s heavily guarded bath (2.178–87, 440–48).
So too contemporary social and political issues color the exploration of certain themes in the novels. For example, Prodromos’s and Eugenianos’s striking introduction of the theme of the hero’s forcible, non-consensual abduction of the heroine is related to a contemporary controversy between church and state regarding control over the institution of marriage.31 An important difference between the ancient and the Byzantine novels, of course, is the primary target audience. Although the Byzantine novelists still wrote of pagan gods and pagan themes, their contemporary audience was, for the most part, deeply Christian, and the writers too were steeped in Christian modes of thinking and reading.
Thus in addition to the tremendous number of allusions to ancient literature—Homer, Euripides, Plato, Theocritus, Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus, and so forth—there are also allusions to Christian writings and themes.32 In addition, the striking emphasis on male gods as patrons and guarantors of weddings in the Byzantine novels may be a reflection of the Christian environment in which the novels were written. In the ancient novels female divinities predominantly serve in these roles. Eugenianos’s insistence on describing Dionysus, the patron of his hero and heroine’s marriage, simply as “son of Zeus” (as if Zeus had no other sons) also seems to bring the pagan deities closer to the Father/Son of Christian theology.
Further, the weddings in both Prodromos’s and Eugenianos’s novels take place inside temples with priests presiding, which reflects common Christian practice in Byzantium.33 Sometimes the novels are described as parody. Like Achilles Tatius, Longus, etc., the Byzantine novelists had fun with the genre. But their novels were also able to broach serious and sensitive topics, such as the resurrection and the Eucharist, with a degree of freedom that might not have been possible if the writers were not reviving an ancient genre, imitating the ancient Greeks in a safely distanced world.34 Niketas Eugenianos was either Prodromos’s pupil or friend; his writings, particularly his monody on Prodromos’s death, show his indebtedness to his predecessor.35 Like Prodromos, Eugenianos wrote his novel in twelve-syllable verse and nine books. Eugenianos too began his novel in medias res with an attack on townspeople celebrating a festival outside the town walls.
Other elements, familiar from the ancient novels, include stern parents, pirates who capture and separate the lovers, and a best friend with his own tragic love story. But the sheer density of literary allusions as well as the prevalence of love songs, letters, and pastoral motifs set Eugenianos’s novel apart from the rest. In fact, for the first time in the history of the Greek novel, a novel has a character directly refer to other novels. An inn-keeper’s son attempts to woo the heroine with a courtship speech that names as models of reciprocated love such couples as Heliodorus’s Arsake and Theagenes, and Achaimenes and Charikleia (highly unsuitable choices), Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, Musaeus’s Hero and Leander, and Theocritus’s Cyclops and Galateia (Eug. 6.382–551). Like Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the amorous inn-keeper’s son looks toward a store of romantic fiction for models of courtship and decorum.36
Christian themes and imagery also come into play in Eugenianos’s novel. For example, a kindly old woman’s description of the lovers’ embrace (“Who could separate those whom a god has joined?” 7.264) echoes Jesus’s response to the Pharisees regarding the issue of divorce: “Therefore what God has joined, let no one separate” (Matthew 19.6, Mark 10.9).37 So too passages of dense, extended imagery of erotic consumption seem to recall the Song of Solomon. For an abbreviated example, compare the blandishment of an amorous woman in Eugenianos (4.285–288): I am the tree; come cling to me, for you have my arms in place of branches.
I am the tree; climb me and pluck my fruit, which is sweeter than honey. with a lover’s description of his beloved in the Song of Solomon (7.7–8): You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches.38 Dense webs of allusion throughout Eugenianos’s novel provide forums for meaningful dialogues with earlier Greek literature and culture as well as the biblical tradition. Eugenianos places his hero, Charikles, in the midst of a vibrant song culture: he and his comrades cavalierly tease promenading women with impromptu songs at a festival; when courting, lovers send letters and sing serenades; enslaved, Charikles beguiles his master with the story of a nymphomaniac gardener.
The heroine, a lissome dancer when the hero first sees her, later falls from a cliff into the sea and makes her way alone through a wilderness. Other notable characters include an amorous Parthian queen and her willful son, a gracious Arab king, a kindly old woman who dances raucously at the lovers’ reunion, a rival suitor who takes the Cyclops as a model for wooing, a traveling salesman who offers salvation, a “best friend” who turns out to be the most “romantic” character of all. But an introduction should not preempt the joy of discovery for its readers. Enter the adventure world of the Byzantine romance novel. Discover its special pleasures for yourself.
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
The modern edition of the Greek by Fabrizio Conca (1990) served as the basis for my translation. I also consulted the Greek texts of Boissonade (1819, 1856) and (rarely) Hercher (1859), as well as Boissonade’s commentary and translation (1819, Latin) and Conca’s translation (1994, Italian).1 My aim was to translate the Greek into a natural, readable English that also preserves the spirit, style, and thought of the original Greek. I also aimed at an accuracy of translation that might help readers of the Greek.2 As for the spelling of names, I use Greek forms unless a name is already in common usage in its Latin form.
SELECT PLACES AND PEOPLES
Arabs (5.279). The Arabs, having conquered the Persian Sasanids in the midseventh century A.D., became major military rivals of the Byzantines until the eleventh century when the Seljuq Turks took over that antagonistic role. Rather than disparage the Arabs as savage barbarians, Eugenianos characterizes his fictive Arab leader, Chagos, as generous, brave, and kindly. Barzon (1.6). The novel opens with a fierce Parthian attack on the unknown city of Barzon. Lesbos (2.57). This large Aegean island, close to northwest Asia Minor, was home to the Greek poets Sappho and Alcaeus, and the setting of Longus’s novel, Daphnis and Chloe. In Eugenianos’s novel, Lesbos is Kleandros and Kalligone’s home. Parthians (1.6). Parthia, an ancient realm in southwest Asia, boasted fine horsemen and archers.
The Parthian empire, traditionally dated from 247 B.C. to the early third century A.D. (when replaced by the Persian Sasanids), at its height extended from the Euphrates to the Indus and was a major rival to the Roman empire in the East. Eugenianos characterizes his fictive Parthians as savage and intemperate. For the suggestion that Eugenianos could be using an archaizing name to refer to the Seljuq Turks, major rivals of the Byzantines from the eleventh century A.D., see Corinne Jouanno, “Les barbares dans le roman byzantin du XIIe siècle: Fonction d’un topos,” Byzantion 62 (1992): 266. Phthia (3.52). A city of this name in southeast Thessaly was home to Achilles, hero of Homer’s Iliad. In Eugenianos’s novel, Phthia is Drosilla and Charikles’ home.
GODS AND LEGENDARY FIGURES MENTIONED MORE THAN ONCE
Aphrodite, goddess of love, was married to Hephaestus, the crippled god of blacksmiths. The name “Aphrodite” appears in the Greek text only once, 4.314. Instead, Eugenianos commonly uses the names “Cypris” (13 times) and “Paphia” (2 times) to refer to this goddess (see below). Ares, god of war, was also Aphrodite’s lover. Artemis, chaste goddess of the hunt, also served as a model of maidenly beauty. Charon was the ferryman who transported the dead across a lake or river into Hades.
Cypris, “the Cyprian,” is another name for Aphrodite; the large Mediterranean island Cyprus was a center for worship of Aphrodite. Dionysus, god of wine, was the son of Zeus and Semele (a mortal). In Eugenianos’s novel, Dionysus is often referred to by his parentage alone: seven times as “son of Zeus,” once as “son of Zeus and Semele,” and once as “son of Semele.” Eros, god of love, is often represented as a beautiful winged youth, with bow and arrows. He is sometimes regarded as Aphrodite’s son (as in our novel at 2.232–34, 4.157–83, 4.313–24 [cf. Moschus poem 1]; see also Apollonius Rhodius esp. 3.85–157, Simonides 575 PMG). For Eros as a primordial being, along with Chaos, Earth, and Tartarus, see Hesiod Theogony 116–22 (see also Longus 2.5.2–3); this is the tradition recalled at Eugenianos 3.115.
For the theme of a plurality of Erotes (Loves), see Eugenianos 5.135–45 (cf. Anacreontea 25; see also Theocritus 15.120–22; Apollonius Rhodius 3.452, 687, 765, 937; Herodas 7.94). Fortune (Tyche), goddess of luck, fate, or chance, is frequently invoked by characters in the ancient and Byzantine novels. To the heroes and heroines of the novels, she often seems unhappily fickle. Furies, primordial female creatures, often represented with snakes in their hair, pursued and punished wrongdoers. They were invoked in curses and linked with death.
Graces, usually three in number (after Hesiod Theogony 902-11), were minor goddesses often found in association with Eros and Aphrodite. They represent such qualities as charm and beauty. Helios was god of the sun. Herakles, the son of Zeus and Alkmene (a mortal woman), was perhaps the greatest of the Greek heroes. He was famous for his labors as well as his sexual potency and gluttony.
His second labor was to kill the Lernaian hydra, a many-headed water serpent (Eugenianos 5.315–19; for the story of this labor, see Apollodorus Bibliotheca 2.5.2). Niobe, a mortal woman proud of her many children (twelve or fourteen), boasted that she was better than Leto (who had only two). In response, Leto’s children, the gods Apollo and Artemis, killed Niobe’s children. Niobe turned into a stone in grief, but even as a stone she kept weeping. (For Niobe’s story see Homer Iliad 24.602–17, Ovid Metamorphoses 6.148–312, Apollodorus Bibliotheca 3.5.6.) Pallas Athena, goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts, was born from Zeus’s head. “Pallas” alone also refers to Athena (Eugenianos 6.629, 8.107). As a chaste goddess, she contrasts with Aphrodite, the goddess of love (6.629).
She also competed against Aphrodite and Hera in the famous beauty contest judged by Paris (6.622–25, 8.107–9). Pandion, a legendary Athenian king, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. He married Procne to King Tereus in exchange for his help in war, and Procne bore Tereus a son, Itys. Tereus, however, raped Procne’s sister, Philomela, and removed her tongue to keep her from telling anyone. Philomela informed Procne through a weaving, and in revenge the sisters killed Itys and served him to Tereus for dinner.
Tereus, Philomela, and Procne were all turned into birds afterwards, Tereus a hoopoe, and Philomela and Procne a swallow and a nightingale. For this version of their story, see Apollodorus Bibliotheca 3.14.8, Ovid Metamorphoses 6.424–674. Paphia, “the Paphian,” is another name for Aphrodite; the city Paphos, in southwest Cyprus, was the site of a famous sanctuary of Aphrodite (see Homer Odyssey 8.362–63). Selene was goddess of the moon. Semele, one of King Cadmus’s daughters, conceived Dionysus by Zeus. Zeus, ruler of the Olympian gods, is also called father of the gods. He begot many other important gods, including Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hermes, and Dionysus.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق