Showing posts with label Greeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greeks. Show all posts

Monday, January 16, 2017

The mythical story and history of Zeus and the Giants
























Zeus and his brothers, who, having gained a complete victory over their enemies, began to consider how the world, which they had conquered, should be divided between them. At last it was settled by lot that Zeus should reign supreme in Heaven, whilst Hades governed the Lower World, and Poseidon had full command over the Sea, but the supremacy of Zeus was recognized in all three kingdoms, in heaven, on earth (in which of course the sea was included), and under the earth. Zeus held his court on the top of Mount Olympus, whose summit was beyond the clouds; the dominions of Aides were the gloomy unknown regions below the earth; and Poseidon reigned over the sea.


 It will be seen that the realm of each of these gods was enveloped in mystery. Olympus was shrouded in mists, Hades was wrapt in gloomy darkness, and the sea was, and indeed still is, a source of wonder and deep interest. Hence we see that what to other nations were merely strange phenomena, served this poetical and imaginative people as a foundation upon which to build the wonderful stories of their mythology.


The division of the world being now satisfactorily arranged, it would seem that all things ought to have gone on smoothly, but such was not the case. Trouble arose in an unlooked-for quarter. The Giants, or Gigantes those hideous monsters (some with legs formed of serpents) who had sprung from the earth and the blood of Uranus, declared war against the triumphant deities of Olympus, and a struggle ensued, which, in consequence of Gaia having made these children of hers invincible as long as they kept their feet on the ground, was wearisome and protracted.

A bust of Zeus photo: Wikipedia

Their mother's precaution, however, was rendered unavailing by pieces of rock being hurled upon them, which threw them down, and their feet being no longer placed firmly on their mother-earth, they were overcome, and this tedious war (which was called the Gigantomachia) at last came to an end. Among the most daring of these earth-born giants were Enceladus, Rhoetus, and the valiant Mimas, who, with youthful fire and energy, hurled against heaven great masses of rock and burning oak-trees, and defied the lightnings of Zeus.

The serpent-footed giant Typhoeus, Chalcidian black-figure hydria C6th B.C., Staatliche Antikensammlungen photo: Theoi

One of the most powerful monsters who opposed Zeus in this war was called Typhon or Typhoeus. He was the youngest son of Tartarus and Gaia, and had a hundred heads, with eyes which struck terror to the beholders, and awe-inspiring voices frightful to hear. This dreadful monster resolved to conquer both gods and men, but his plans were at length defeated by Zeus, who, after a violent encounter, succeeded in destroying him with a thunderbolt, but not before he had so terrified the gods that they had fled for refuge to Egypt, where they metamorphosed themselves into different animals and thus escaped.


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Friday, December 16, 2016

10 Ancient Religions That Are Still Followed Today including: The Church Of Thor And Odin,Zoroastrianism,Tu’er Shen,Pagans Of Russia,followers Of The Greek Gods,Nahua Aztec religion and more.

"Atlantean figures" from the Nahua culture of the Toltecs at Tula. photo: wikipedia.org




Updated 23/04/2020

10 Ancient Religions That Are Still Followed Today

10 Asatruarfelagid . The Church Of Thor And Odin. 

Zoroastrianism. The Oldest Monotheistic Religion.

8 Tu'er Shen. The Chinese God Of Homosexuality.

7 Mari. The Pagans Of Russia.

6 The Return Of The Hellenes. Follower Of The Greek Gods.

5 Nahua. The Last Aztecs.

4 Romuva. The Religion Hidden For 1,000 Years.

The old beliefs have changed. Ancient religions have had to adapt to a new world and, in many cases, barely resemble the faiths that once covered the world. To their followers, though, they still have meaning, and connect them to a part of the world that’s been left behind.


10 Asatruarfelagid
The Church Of Thor And Odin
Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and other members of Ásatrúarfélagið walk to a blót at Þingvellir in the summer of 2009. photo: wikipedia.org

A church called Asatruarfelagid has been building up followers to bring back the worship of Thor and Odin. It’s bigger than you might imagine—currently, they had 2,400 followers. They even opened their own shrine, a circular temple overlooking Reykjavik. There, ordained priests of Nordic religion host weddings, funerals, and ancient rituals.


The Ásatrú graveyard in Reykjavík photo: wikipedia.org

Their rituals are a bit different from how the Vikings did it. For one thing, they don’t sacrifice children anymore. They do, however, hold craft nights and social get-togethers that are a great way to make new friends. Oh, and they give out a lot of free coffee and snacks. 
Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson at a blót in 1991 photo: wikipedia.org

The new religion has little in common with the vicious pagan beliefs that inspired it. To the followers, though, it’s more about connecting to their culture than about believing in ancient myths. They see the myths as “poetic metaphors,” not as something to be taken literally, and their worship as a celebration of the culture they came from.


9 Zoroastrianism
The Oldest Monotheistic Religion
Sadeh in Tehran, 2011) photo: wikipedia.org

Zoroastrianism has been traced back to the sixth century BC, and it’s been called the first monotheistic religion on earth. The faith has never been completely wiped out, but it’s certainly not as strong as it once was. 
Parsi Navjote ceremony (rites of admission into the Zoroastrian faith) photo: wikipedia.org

They don’t believe in evangelizing or converting others over to their faith, and so its followers have whittled down. Today, there only 190,000 left, most of them in India and Iran.


Faravahar (or Ferohar), one of the primary symbols of Zoroastrianism, believed to be the depiction of a Fravashi (guardian spirit) photo: wikipedia.org

They still keep their faith alive by holding religious classes and celebrations and by sharing ancient poetry. They also do their best to keep a fascinating burial ritual intact: sky burials. Dead Zoroastrians are not supposed to contaminate the earth with their bodies. 
A scene from the Hamzanama where Hamza ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib Burns Zarthust’s Chest and Shatters the Urn with his Ashesphoto: wikipedia.org

Instead, they are to be left in funerary towers where vultures are free to eat their remains.Today, though, there is only one funerary tower left in the world, located in Yazd, Iran. And so the body of a Zoroastrian who wants to be buried according to his faith has to make a long trek from wherever they may live to Iran.


8 Tu’er Shen
The Chinese God Of Homosexuality

According to legends, Tu’Er Shen started life as a mortal man named Hu Tianbao, who fell in love with a man above his station. Hu Tianbao was too afraid to speak to the object of his affections and instead secretly spied on him in the bath. He was caught. The man he loved, enraged, beat Hu Tianbao to death.


According to Zi Bu Yu (子不語), a book written by Yuan Mei (袁枚, a Qing dynasty writer), Tu Er Shen (兔兒神 or 兔神) was a mortal man called Hu Tianbao photo: antinousgaygod.blogspot.com
A month later, Hu Tianbao came to another man in his dreams, now in the form of a rabbit. He had become the god of same-sex lovers, he announced, and needed mortal men to build his shrine. Soon, it evolved into a whole religion dedicated to Tu’Er Shen—until the government stamped it out on charges of being a “licentious cult.”Today, a Taoist priest is trying to bring Tu’Er Shen back. 


photo: antinousgaygod.blogspot.com

He believes that homosexual Taoists need a god for their prayers, and so he has built a shrine to the rabbit god of homosexuality. There, he officiates gay weddings and encourages people to pray for help in love.


7 Mari
The Pagans Of Russia
Mari orthodox monks and novices. 1894 photo: wikipedia.org
The Mari are a Russian ethnic group who, long ago, followed a pagan religion based on the worship of nature. Nature, they believed, was a powerful source of good that worked to help humanity—as long as humanity did not harm it.

When Christianity took over, the Mari were all but stamped out. Following their old faith became forbidden, but a few kept up the rituals in the cover of night. After midnight, they would go out to the glades and pray, risking detention and death if they were caught.Since the fall of the Soviet Union, they’ve been free to follow their faith in the open


Proportion of Mari in the population of Bashkortostan as of the 2002 census. photo: wikipedia.org
There are some, mostly in rural areas, who still practice the old rituals. It has been changed over time, though, working in several Christian traditions. Some of the worshipers still have pictures of saints up in their homes, and a few have been spotted unconsciously making the sign of the cross as they leave the grove


6 The Return Of The Hellenes
Follower Of The Greek Gods
Prometheus depicted in a sculpture by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, 1762 (Louvre) photo: wikipedia.org

Since 1996, a group of people called The Return of the Hellenes have been trying to bring the Geek gods back. The movement started with a philosophy professor named Tryphon Olympios. Today, though, he’s gathered a whole number of followers and holds full Greek festivals. One is the Prometheia Festival, dedicated to the celebration of Prometheus bring fire to humanity. Whole groups of people, some dressed in modern clothes and some in togas, come out to celebrate


Prometheus Brings Fire by Heinrich Friedrich Füger. Prometheus brings fire to mankind as told by Hesiod, with its having been hidden as revenge for the trick at Mecone. photo: wikipedia.org

It’s not exactly the most historically accurate religion. For one thing, their key festival—the Prometheia Festival—didn’t exist in ancient Greece. 


Prometheus (1909) by Otto Greiner photo: wikipedia.org
And when the ancient Greeks made sacrifices to the gods, they usually didn’t place a few flowers and fruits on the ground—they butchered live animals.Still, to the people who follow it, it’s a way to connect to their past. “It’s going back to the roots,” one follower said. “It makes me feel the continuation through the millennia.”


5 Nahua
The Last Aztecs
The Aztec sun calendar is a circular stone with pictures representing how the Aztecs measured days, months, and cosmic cycles. photo: wikipedia.org

One of the surviving Aztecs groups, called the Nahua, are a blend of a lot of different indigenous tribes and believes, all mixed together to make something new. 


"Atlantean figures" from the Nahua culture of the Toltecs at Tula.. photo: wikipedia.org

Some of these people still use traditional healers, who treat their illnesses with herbs, incense, and sometimes even the blood of sacrificed chickens.They keep some of the rituals alive, too—although they tend to stick with ones that involve dancing and skip over the ones that involve human sacrifice. 


Number of Nahuatl speakers per state (Mexico only) photo: wikipedia.org
One ritual, the Dance of the Aerialists, has five men attached to ropes climb a very tall pole. One stays at the top, playing a drum and a reed flute, while the others leap down and let the ropes spin them around the pole. They make 52 turns around it, representing the 52-year cycle of the ancient Aztec calendar.


4 Romuva
The Religion Hidden For 1,000 Years
Romuvan ceremony photo: wikipedia.or

A thousand years ago, the Balts lived in modern Lithuania, worshiping fire as something sacred and eternal. Their tribes built sanctuaries upon the highest hills, where their priests protected an eternally burning fire.


The late Romuvan krivis (high priest), Jonas Trinkūnas, at 2009 feast of ancient martial arts Apuolė-854 photo: wikipedia.org
Each home had an eternal fire of its own, lit inside of a sacred hearth.The religion came back in 1967, while Lithuania was under Soviet rule. It was called the Romuva movement, a call to connect Lithuanians back to their roots. The Soviets didn’t like it—they tried to smother and extinguish it.

Žemaičių Alka photo: wikipedia.org

When the Union fell, though, they were once again free to practice their religion in the open.Today, Romuva has grown big enough that it’s now recognized as a “non-traditional religion” in Lithuania. It’s spread to other countries, as well. 


The official symbol of the Romuvan Church of Lithuania on a flag. photo: wikipedia.org

Congregations have opened around the world, some as far as Chicago, Boston, and Toronto.


3 Tengriism
The Religion Of Genghis Khan
Ai-Churek, a Tuvan shaman, during a ceremony at the fire in Kyzyl, Tuva, Russiaphoto: wikipedia.org

The most famous Tengriist is probably Genghis Khan, who stayed true to his Tengriist principles and granted freedom of religion across the land. 


Kurşun dökme (Turkey) photo: wikipedia.org

Today, followers use the religion to connect themselves to their nation’s past. It’s been revived as a way to create a national identity that resists the influences of globalization. But it’s still inclusive, and the followers often practice other faiths at the same time.One Tengriist, Dastan Sarygulov, says that his faith is technically not a religion at all. “It’s a worldview,” he says, “which has become a lifestyle.


Ötüken yïš is regarded as the residence of Tengri and capital city of Turks in Irk Bitig. photo: wikipedia.org

Followers of Tengriism don’t have a holy religious book, but they follow all the spiritual and moral commandments accumulated in major religions.”Another explains that he is “half-Muslim” as well as a Tengriist, saying, “I don’t fully follow Islam, I just partially follow some Muslim rituals.”


2 Nova Roman
The Modern Roman Pantheon
The flag of Nova Roma, based on the colours and symbols of the Roman Empire. photo: wikipedia.org

In the 1960s, a movement calling itself the “Roman Traditionalist Movement” sparked in Italy, fighting to bring back the traditions of their Roman ancestors—including the worship of Jupiter. The effort to bring back an ancient faith has taken a lot of different forms. 


Nova Romans performing a Roman religious ceremony in Aquincum (Budapest), 2008. photo: wikipedia.org

There are organizations all around the world with distinct ideologies, all starting their own movements to bring back the Roman gods. In the United States, the group’s called Nova Roma. They celebrate ancient Roman holidays and boast that they “try to be as historically accurate of a recreation of the religion as possible.”


1 Kemetism
The Pharaohs Of Harlem
Private altar of a practitioner in the Czech Republic, with a statue representing Thoth featured prominently. photo: wikipedia.org

The Egyptian gods are making a comeback in the last place you’d expect: Harlem. The religion is called Kemetism, taking its name from an ancient name for Egypt, and it already has thousands of followers.These people show up to ceremonies dressed in traditional Egyptian clothes. 
Eye of Horus photo: wikipedia.org

They have rules dictating what clothes they can wear on each day of the week. They even have their own school that teaches their ideology.To the Kemetists, this is a chance to celebrate their African ancestry. “The people who need it the most were taken away from Africa, taken away from who they are,” one Kemetist priestess says. “We aren’t meant to be in the projects. We are meant to be in the pyramids.”


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Thursday, December 15, 2016

A new treasure has been discovered in Greece it was found in the ruins of an ancient city dating back 2,500 years

A piece of pottery dating to the late 6th century B.C photo: atlasobscura.com
You would think that every single bit of archaeological evidence for ancient life in Greece would have been uncovered by now. But there are still discoveries to be made. A team of archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and the University of Bournemouth in England took a deeper look at a site that had been dismissed as unimportant and found the ruins of an ancient city dating back 2,500 years, reports the Local.The city was located on a hillside near Vlochós, five hours north of Athens


Mysterious lost Greek city photo: DailyMail.co.uk
Part of the ruins there had been previously known, but since this area of Greece was thought to be a backwater in ancient times, this place was thought to be a small settlement of little interest.

To this team, though, “the fact that nobody has ever explored the hill before is a mystery,” said Robin Rönnlund, the Ph.D student who led the fieldwork.


From the air, the walls are visible photo: atlasobscura.com

Since they started exploring the city, the archaeologists have found the city’s walls, gates, and towers, along with pottery and coins, dating as far back as 500 B.C. The team is using ground-penetrating radar to map the city and avoid disturbing the site through excavation. It’s “quite a large city,” says Rönnlund, and could reveal more about ancient life in this overlooked part of Greece—at least about life up until about 300 B.C., when the city looks to have been abandoned.


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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

From Greek and Roman times to the present day: A brief history of the English Rose

York Minster, south transept rose window, 16th-century Tudor Roses white on red (left) and Lancastrian Roses red. The Tudor Rose became known as “the flower of England” and is today the country’s national flower. (Angelo Hornak/Alamy Stock Photo)



Updated
Updated today 20/05/2020

From Greek and Roman times to the present day, the rose has been a timeless symbol of beauty, transience and love. The rose’s romantic connections are thought to originate from Egypt, where Cleopatra famously carpeted the floor of her boudoir with mounds of rose petals to seduce Mark Antony.

In courtly love, for example, the rose was the iconic symbol of the beloved lady – or of the prize of her love itself – a personification that found its most exquisite representation in the 13th-century French epic poem Le Roman de La Rose, a medieval illustrated allegory that documents the art of chivalric love and its many facets. Written by Guillaume de Lorris, it was completed 40 years later by Jean de Meun.

The characters Mirth and Gladness lead a dance, in a miniature image from a manuscript of The Romance of the Rose in the Bodleian Library (MS Douce 364, folio 8r). wikipedia
Genius of love, Meister des Rosenromans, 1420-1430 - wikipedia


The Virgin Mary

In medieval devotional verse (religious verse devoted to subjects such as Jesus Christ), the Virgin Mary is often referred to as a “rose without thorns”, since she was free of original sin. In fact, the five petals of the wild rose are often equated with the five joys of Mary (the five key moments that gave Mary joy, which were the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Assumption) and the five letters in her full name, Maria. At this time, the rose as the queen of flowers was a privileged symbol for Mary, as seen in this lyric dated 1420:



There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;
Alleluia.

For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space;
Res Miranda.


Medieval art often depicts the Virgin Mary in an enclosed rose garden – a representation of Eden, but also a place where courtly lovers could retire. The Christmas rose – a hardy white flower with five petals that blooms at Christmas time – is a symbol of the Nativity and appears in medieval carols and seasonal hymns to the Virgin.

Glenbeigh St. James' Church Nave  Centre light of the triple window in the north-west gable, depicting the Immaculata. Photo: wikipedia.org
The Madonna of the Rose Garden’ (Madonna del Roseto) by Michelino da Besozzo, c1425. Found in the collection of Musei Civici, Verona. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

It is said that the rose’s thorny stems were twined around Christ’s head during his Passion, and its red flowers are a symbol both of worldly love and of martyrdom, which is possibly why they have, over time, become associated with St Valentine’s Day.

Madonna of the Rose Garden - Wikipedia

From the 12th century, rose imagery exploded across Europe with the spread of religious devotion to Mary. The medieval rose, laden with Christian symbolism of love and sacrifice, was now such a strong religious idea that it bloomed into architecture and became incorporated into the building of Gothic churches in the form of rose windows.

Madonna of the Rosegarden (Madonna del Roseto) by BOTTICELLI
The rose continued to be revered into the 13th century, where we have the major appearance of the rosary (Latin: rosarium), a set of prayer beads created as a garland of roses.


The Christian tradition took the rose as representative of the Virgin, and secular literature celebrated the rose as a symbol of earthly love and beauty, so it is little surprise that the canny queen Elizabeth I – fully aware of the rose’s associations with virginity – took this flower as her emblem. In so doing she tied the strands of courtly love and holy virginity together in her own queenly identity.

The "Darnley Portrait" of Elizabeth I of England. It was named after a previous owner. Probably painted from life, this portrait is the source of the face pattern called "The Mask of Youth" which would be used for authorized portraits of Elizabeth for decades to come. Recent research has shown the colours have faded. The oranges and browns would have been crimson red in Elizabeth's time. Photo: wikipedia.org

In portraits of Elizabeth I we sometimes also see the white eglantine, known as the queen’s rose. This was used to symbolise the queen’s chastity and make associations between the queen of England and the queen of heaven (the Virgin Mary).

Kings and queens

The rose is also part of the heraldic imagery of the kings and queens of England. The liveries of the houses of York and Lancaster, for example, were represented by white and red roses respectively, and the civil war that broke out between these two houses between 1455 and 1485 was later termed the Wars of the Roses.

In Henry VI Part I Act II Scene IV, Shakespeare depicts a small gathering of lords plucking different coloured roses from the Temple-garden as a way of choosing sides in the upcoming conflict. The Earl of Warwick, who chooses a white rose, remarks:

And here I prophesy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the Red Rose and the White,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

Interestingly, the term ‘the Wars of the Roses’ was only used after 1829 when Sir Walter Scott referred to that conflict as such in his novel, Anne of Geierstein.

The Wars of the Roses ended with the clever and strategic Henry VII being crowned king of England. In marrying Elizabeth of York in 1486 he combined two dynasties and two roses, giving birth to the famous Tudor Rose, which was both white and red. This became known as “the flower of England”, and is today the country’s national flower.

The ancient world

Further back in time, we find the same veneration and symbolism surrounding the rose, with a strong emphasis on its powers of seduction and associations with mortality.

The scent of roses permeated the ancient world, where petals were scattered across the floor, the bed or the dinner table. Rose oil was distilled for use as a perfume, breath sweetener or medicine, and rose water was popular for cosmetic use and in food. The Romans offered roses to statues of the gods and used roses to wreathe tombs.

The rose was sacred to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, and to her Greek equivalent, Aphrodite. Botticelli’s famous 15th-century painting The Birth of Venus shows the goddess on her scallop shell, blown in by Zephyrus, being showered in pale pink roses.

The Birth of Venus' 1486. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The Greek poet Sappho, meanwhile, praises the flower in a poem entitled Song of the Rose, which has been attributed to her:

If Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,
He would call to the rose, and would royally crown it;
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,
Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it!

The rose had other more complex symbolism for the Romans, however. The Rosalia was a Roman feast to remember the dead in which roses played a significant part, and the Roman custom of hanging a rose overhead (or painting or carving one on the ceiling) in confidential meetings was a reminder that nothing that was discussed could be repeated outside the room where the meeting had taken place. The term sub rosa is today used to describe such meetings and means ‘under the rose’. Henry VIII made this practice more widespread, and the carving of roses into ceilings is a design which we still see today.

Across the centuries the rose retained its privileged position as queen of flowers, gaining new varieties and meanings through the centuries. We find the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace (1617–57) calling upon the rose to adorn his lover’s chamber in much the way that Cleopatra adorned hers many centuries earlier:

Rosie is her Bower,
Her floore is all this Flower;
Her Bed a Rosie nest,
By a Bed of Roses prest.

Adored by the Romantics and particularly by the Victorians, who created a complex language of flowers, new symbolism attached itself in ever more layers to the different colours and styles of roses. It was the red rose, however, that pushed ahead of the rest to become a towering symbol of beauty, transience and sexual love. One of the nation’s best-loved and most-quoted poems is A Red, Red Rose by the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–96), written in 1794:

O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.

Robert Burns, c1785. Original artwork is a drawing by Skirving. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Another of the most famous rose poems in the English language, Go, Lovely Rose, was written by the rather unwholesome poet and politician Edmund Waller (1606–87) and later set to music by composer Roger Quilter. It was written in a frenzy of unrequited longing for Lady Dorothy Sidney, a beautiful and very clever young woman of 18.

Waller was the originator of the failed Waller’s Plot of 1643 – to seize London for Charles I – in which he was shown to be a coward after betraying his friends and brother-in-law to save his own neck. After the death of his first wife, Waller became romantically obsessed with Lady Dorothy Sidney. She rejected his advances and in 1639 married Henry Spencer, later to become the Earl of Sunderland. This struck such a blow to Waller’s heart that he went insane for a short period of time. Go, Lovely Rose was most likely addressed to Lady Dorothy during this period of infatuation on one of numerous visits to her house, when she would probably have refused to see him. Much later in life Waller visited Lady Dorothy again, and she asked him: “When, Mr Waller, will you write such fine verses upon me again?” And he replied: “O Madam, when your ladyship is as young again.”

Waller’s poem uses the idea of the rose as a love messenger. The poet speaks directly to it, as if to a person, and commands the flower to go to his beloved, speak to her and then die in her hands, thus reminding her of how fragile beauty is, how brief life is, and that beauty unseen is worthless. It is a most elegant version of the ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ theme, meaning live life for now and live it to the full, which comes from a line in the poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Cavalier poet Robert Herrick (1591–1674). The stylishly romantic understatement in Go, Lovely Rose would have appealed greatly to Quilter’s musical sensibility, resulting in one of the most beautiful songs ever to be written in English. Indeed, Quilter’s masterpiece is arguably as iconic as Waller’s verse.

Roger Quilter (1877–1953) was a composer much taken with roses, and one who was drawn to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods in his choice of poetry adaptations. He was a great fan of Shakespeare’s songs, for example, and set all of the words he chose with exquisite care.

Roger Quilter. (Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo)
At heart a romantic, Quilter set to music at least five poems that reference the rose: the renowned Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, a poem by Tennyson from The Princess, A Medley (1847); A Last Year’s Rose (William Henley 1849–1903); The Time of Roses (Thomas Hood 1799–1845); Damask Roses (a lovely conceit on lips and roses written by an anonymous Elizabethan poet); and arguably the composer’s most famous song, Go, Lovely Rose:

Go, lovely Rose –
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung,
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth,
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die – that she,
The common fate of all things rare,
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share,
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!


Today the red rose has become an emblem of romantic love to the point of cliché, while we still see the white rose, along with the lily, as a symbol of innocence, grace and purity. Yet, coiled within the lovely, scented petals of this adored flower are centuries of fascinating meaning. For, even in the cynical 21st century, roses continue to delight our senses whenever we come across them – in poetry, art, song, or twined around a trellis in the garden.

Author and Oxford University lecturer Nicola Harrison specialises in the interpretation of song. Her new series of books, The Wordsmith’s Guide to English Song (Compton, 2016), explores the literary, historical, mythological and artistic background to the poetry set to music by two British composers, Roger Quilter and Ivor Gurney.








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Friday, December 9, 2016

A brief History of sex and sexuality in Ancient Greece

Michelangelo’s ‘Leda and the Swan’. Found in the collection of Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)


Updated today 21/05/2020

The sexual habits of people in Ancient Greece – from prostitution to pillow talk – are explored in a new book written by Paul Chrystal. Exploring the many layers of sex and sexuality in various Greek societies – from the Minoan civilisation through to Sparta and Hellenistic Greece – In Bed with the Ancient Greeks examines homosexuality, pederasty, mythological sex and sex in Greek philosophy and religion.

In the beginning was sex. To the ancient Greek mythologisers, sexuality, love and sex were inextricably connected with the creation of the earth, the heavens and the underworld. Greek myth was a theogony of incest, murder, polygamy and intermarriage in which eroticism and fertility were elemental; they were there right from the start, demonstrating woman’s essential reproductive role in securing the cosmos, extending the human race and ensuring the fecundity of nature.


CLSX 374: Gender & Sexuality, Ancient & Modern University of Kansas.

Simultaneously, Zeus, the top god, wasted no time in asserting his dominance over the other gods (both male and female). His cavalier attitude towards female sexuality, as manifested in serial rape and seduction (Zeus raped Leda, daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, in the guise of a swan; raped Danae, a princess of Argos, disguised as the rain, and raped Ganymede, a male mortal) set a precedent for centuries of mortal male domination and female subservience. 


Leda and the Swan — Amanta Scott
A BERLIN (K.P.M.) PORCELAIN RECTANGULAR PLAQUE, LEDA AND THE SWAN Christie's

The depiction of Hera ( wife of Zeus and queen of the ancient Greek gods) as a distracting, duplicitous and deceptive woman opened the door for centuries of male insecurity about women, and misogyny.



Our earliest evidence for ancient Greek sexuality comes with the Minoans (approximately 3650 to 1400 BC). Women at this time were only partly dressed – the main items of clothing were short-sleeved robes that had layered, flounced skirts; these were open to the navel, leaving the breasts exposed. Women also wore a strapless fitted bodice, the first fitted garments known in history.
The realm of Minos Minoan art, Minoan, Ancient - Pinteres
Minoan civilization, 2nd millennium BC. Reconstruction of the fresco of the procession, found in the Palace of Knossos. Detail of young men carrying offerings to a goddess. (Photo by DEA/G DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

Women were typically depicted as having a tiny waist, full breasts, long hair and full hips: to our eyes and ears this is sexually charged and provocative, but to a Minoan probably not so. On the contrary, the voluptuous figure may have been a means by which women, and their artists, expressed their gender and status rather than male artists simply idealising female sexuality for their own delectation, satisfying a prurient male voyeurism. Women in Minoan Crete, it seems, were able to celebrate their femininity.

Fresco showing Minoan three women. photo: wikipedia.org

The body shape described above re-emerged during the mid-late 1800s, when women laced themselves into tight corsets to make their waists small and wore hoops under their skirts to exaggerate the proportions of their lower body.




Pederasty in Greece probably originated with the Cretans. Cretan pederasty was an early form of paedophilia that involved the ritual kidnapping ( harpagmos ) of a boy from an elite background by an aristocratic adult male, with the consent of the boy's father. This adult male was known as philetor, befriender; the boy was kleinos, glorious.
Pederastic couples at a symposium, as depicted on a tomb fresco from the Greek colony of Paestum in Italy. The man on the right tries to kiss the youth with whom he is sharing a couch. - Wikipedia
Cretan pederasty. photo: wikipedia.org

The man took the boy out into the wilderness, where they spent two months hunting and feasting with friends learning life skills, respect and responsibility. It is generally assumed that the philetor would begin having sex with the boy soon after taking him out into the wilds.

If the boy was pleased with how this went he changed his status from kleinos to parastates, or comrade, signifying that he had metaphorically fought in battle alongside his philetor; he then went back to society and lived with him.

Man and youth. Cretan ex-voto from Hermes and Aphrodite shrine at Kato Syme; Bronze, c. 670–650 BCE. photo: wikipedia.org

The philetor would shower the boy with expensive gifts, including an army uniform, an ox to be sacrificed to Zeus, and a drinking goblet – a symbol of spiritual accomplishment. At the same time, according to the geographer Strabo, the boy then had to choose between continuing with or putting an end to the relationship with his abductor, and whether to denounce the man if he had misbehaved in any way.


Satyrs and satyriasis

Satyrs, depicted in Greek mythology as beast-like men with a horse’s tail, donkey’s ears, upturned pug nose, receding hairline and erect penis, have a reputation for being inveterate masturbators with a penchant for rape, sodomy and necrophilia. A satyr was a true party animal with an insatiable passion for dancing, women and wine.

 Satyrs were experts on the aulos, a phallic-shaped double reed instrument; some vase paintings show satyrs ejaculating while playing, and one even shows a bee deftly avoiding the discharge in mid-flight. Another vase illustrates a hirsute satyr masturbating while shoving a dildo of sorts into his anus.


Statue of Silenus, a satyr and minor god of drunkenness, dated from 540-530 BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. (Photo by Prisma/UIG/Getty Images)


Apart from inspiring some wonderful depictions on ceramics, satyrs have left us the word satyriasis, which means hypersexuality – classified today in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as satyriasis in men and as nymphomania in women (in 1951 it was still listed as a “sexual deviation”). 

Soranus of Ephesus - Wikipedia
Figure 1 from The effect of Soranus of Ephesus (98-138) Semantic Scholar

The word satyriasis appears frequently in the works of medical authors of the Roman empire who describe a condition no doubt prevalent for centuries previously. For example, Soranus contends that the “itching” felt in the genitals that makes women “touch themselves” increases their sexual urge and causes “mental derangement” and an immodest desire for a man. Greek physician Galen called it “uterine fury”, furor uterinus.



Achilles and Briseis

Epic [the Iliad] gives us one of our earliest surviving expressions of heterosexual love; it comes from a rather surprising source – from battle-hardened, Homeric war hero, alpha male Achilles.


Achilles and the Nereid Cymothoe: Attic red-figure kantharos from Volci (Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris) photo: wikipedia.org

Achilles uncharacteristically wears his heart on his sleeve when he reveals how much he loves Briseis in Book 9 of the Iliad, referring to her as if she were his wife. The beautiful and intelligent Briseis first encountered Achilles when he ruthlessly slaughtered her father, mother, three brothers and husband during a Greek assault on Troy, before taking her as war booty. Achilles wiped out Briseis’ family so that she was utterly bereft and had only him to focus on.


Who Was Briseis in The Iliad? ThoughtCo


Briseis and Phoenix, red-figure kylix, ca. 490 BC, Louvre photo: wikipedia.org


To Achilles it was simply the right and decent thing to do to love your woman – an attitude, of course, that may have been at odds with some of the male audience members of Homer’s epic over the years. 


Effeminacy and cross-dressing

Effeminacy in men was considered beyond the pale – para phusin or “outside nature”. It implied passivity and receptiveness, epithumein paschein – both weaknesses contrary to the proper sexual conduct of the Greek male who ought to be virile, dominant, penetrating and thrusting.


Hercules and Omphale. Hercules was sold as a slave to Omphale, queen of Lydia, to atone for the murder of Iphitos. Hercules was forced to wear Omphale's clothes and jewellery. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)


Cross-dressing had some surprising advocates. The heroic alpha-male Hercules, according to the Roman poet Ovid, indulged in a bout of cross-dressing with Omphale [queen of Lydia to whom Hercules was enslaved] Hercules put on Omphale’s clothes and Omphale dressed up in typically Herculean lion skin and wealded his club, which was symbolic of manhood and power. Surprisingly, perhaps, “lion-hearted” Achilles too was not averse to a spot of dressing up in women’s clothes, if it saved him from the call-up for the Trojan war.

Pseudo-Apollodorus, in the Bibliotheca [a compendium of Greek myths and heroic legends], tells us that to help her son dodge the draft Thetis [Achilles’ mother] concealed him at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. Disguised as a girl Achilles lived among Lycomedes' daughters under the pseudonym Pyrrha, the red-haired girl. Achilles raped one of the daughters, Deidamia, and with her fathered a son, Neoptolemus.

Odysseus was told by the prophet Calchas that the Greeks would not capture Troy without Achilles' support, so he went to Skyros masquerading as a peddler selling women's clothes and jewellery with a shield and spear secreted in his wares. Achilles instantly took up the spear; Odysseus saw through his disguise as Pyrrha and persuaded him to join the Greek forces.


Another famous alpha male, Julius Caesar, was also involved in cross-dressing: apparently, aged 20, he lived the life of a girl in the court of King Nicomedes IV and was later referred to behind his back as the 'queen of Bithynia', and “every woman's man and every man's woman”. Suetonius described his long-fringed sleeves and loose belt as a bit odd, prompting statesman and dictator Sulla to warn everyone to “beware of the boy with the loose belt”.


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