fn16 And ‘prescience’ or ‘forethought’ is just what the name Prometheus means …
THE THIRD ORDER
fn1 Hospitality, or xenia, was so extraordinarily esteemed in the Greek world that Hestia shared the care of it with Zeus himself, who was on occasion given the name Zeus Xenios. Sometimes the gods tested human ‘guest friendship’, as we shall see in the story of Philemon and Baucis. This was known as theoxenia. Xenophobes, of course, do not extend the hand of friendship to strangers …
fn2 You will sometimes see the name DIS (a Latin word for ‘rich’) used for him or his Judaeo-Christian descendant, LUCIFER. Dante in his Inferno called the city of hell Dis. Today only cryptic crossword setters use the name with any frequency.
fn3 Or ‘dwarf planet’ as it is now disrespectfully designated. The moons of Pluto are Styx, Nyx (or Nix), Charon, Kerberos and Hydra.
fn4 Which is strange, as naiads, of course, were freshwater nymphs, unlike the salty Nereids and Oceanids. Perhaps the astronomers in this case failed to consult a classicist before allocating names.
fn5 PROTEUS, the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea, herded sea-beasts and knew much. To get information from him you had to wrestle him, which was tricky as he could quickly and frustratingly change himself into any number of new shapes – from lizard to leopard, from dolphin to dormouse. From this slippery ability we get the word ‘protean’.
fn6 Not to be confused with ARION the singer songwriter, whom we will meet later.
fn7 De-meter is often translated as ‘barley mother’ or ‘corn mother’, although it is now thought more likely that it originally signified ‘earth mother’, showing just how thoroughly Zeus’s generation of gods had wrested the reins from Gaia.
fn8 Anagrammatically ‘Rhea’ does indeed come out of ‘Hera’; at least so I hear, but we won’t chase that hare.
fn9 We shouldn’t forget that Gaia is a planet too: she is our home world. Latinized as Tellus or Terra Mater she is Saxonized for us as ‘Earth’ (cognate with the Germanic goddess Erde, Erda, Joeth or Urd).
fn10 I would suggest that Marie Dressler, Lady Bracknell and Aunt Agatha, to name three great examples, can all trace their lineage back to Hera.
fn11 Since Zeus took that decision the number twelve seems to have taken on important properties. It is divisible by two, three, four and six of course, making it twice as composite as the stupid number ten. The dozen can still be seen around us in the Zodiac, the day’s hours, in months and inches and pennies (well, when I was a boy, it was twelve pennies to the shilling, anyway) not to mention the Tribes of Israel, Disciples of Jesus, Days of Christmas and the Asian twelve-year cycle. It’s a duodecimal world.
fn12 The gods were – if you think it through – Aphrodite’s nephews and nieces. They were born of Kronos and she was the direct issue of the ejaculate of Ouranos.
fn13 An important principal is demonstrated here, one that we will encounter many times. No god can undo the spells, transformations, curses or enchantments of another.
fn14 Vulcan the planet and its people – notably Commander Spock – are not connected, so far as I can establish. The Romans sometimes referred to Vulcan as MULCIBER, smelter, in recognition either of his power to soften metal for working or his ability to soothe the anger of volcanoes.
fn15 The Greeks still add pine resin to wine, call it retsina and offer it to visitors. No one knows why a normally kind and hospitable people should do such a thing. It tastes like what it essentially is, the kind of turpentine artists use to thin their oil paints. I love it.
fn16 Of course, this is not the last time we shall witness Zeus playing with oaths and wriggling out of commitments.
fn17 Or Cos, home of the type of romaine lettuce that bears its name and is one of the essential ingredients of a Caesar salad.
fn18 Actually the gods did not have blood in their veins but a beautiful silvery-gold liquid called ICHOR. It was a paradoxical fluid because, while it retained all the eternal life-giving qualities of ambrosia and nectar, it was lethally and instantaneously poisonous to mortals.
fn19 Also Athene – there doesn’t seem to be any shade of meaning attached to the variant spelling.
fn20 Sea power, and the trade that it allowed, was to be the saving of Athens (it won them a startling victory over the Persians at Salamis). But the cultivation of the olive and the other crafts, arts and techniques that were the domain of Athena were arguably of even greater importance.
fn21 Besides her armour, Athena was always depicted with an AEGIS. No one is quite agreed as to precisely what an aegis looked like. It is sometimes described as an animal skin (originally goat: aiga is a word for ‘goat’ in Greek), though pelts of lion or leopard can later be seen in sculpture and ceramic representations. Zeus’s aegis is generally held to have been a shield, perhaps covered with goatskin and often showing the face of a Gorgon. Human kings and emperors keen to suggest semi-divine status would throw an aegis over their shoulders as a mark of their right to rule. The word these days suggests a badge of leadership or authority. Acts are performed and proclamations made ‘under the aegis’ of such and such a person, principle or institution.
fn22 Parthenos, the Greek word for virgin, was often attached to her name – hence ‘the Parthenon’, her temple on the Acropolis.
fn23 We are permitted the use of that tired word here – it is Greek after all and allows us to picture Athena as embued with the grace of the Charities.
fn24 I looked it up in a thesaurus and was offered: ‘unassuming, meek, mild, reserved, retiring, quiet, shy, bashful, diffident, reticent, timid, shrinking, coy; decorous, decent, seemly, ladylike, respectable, proper, virtuous, pure, innocent, chaste; sober, sedate, staid, prim, goody-goody, strait-laced’. I don’t suppose many women would jump up and down in delight if those words were used of them.
fn25 In today’s Thrace, bounded by Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
fn26 Aphrodite and Athena, who equalled her in beauty, were neither of them in the strict sense born, so the claim is good.
fn27 Why Apollo turned the raven black, and why the laurel also became sacred to him, we shall discover later on.
fn28 Along with the regular Nemean and Isthmian Games, the Pythian and Olympic meetings made up the four so-called ‘Panhellenic Games’. The prizes do not really compare with today’s lucrative purses and endorsements. An olive wreath for the winners of the Olympics, laurel for the Pythian, pine for the Isthmian and – most thrilling of all – wild celery for the lucky victor of the Nemean Games.