The Hounds of Hel

Today we're going to be looking at several different mythologies: Egyptian, Greek/Roman, and Norse. All of these mythologies have their similarities, but the one I'm focusing on today is their portrayal of dogs. All of these cultures have myths associating dogs with the afterlife. In particular, all of them have named dogs who serve as guardians to the afterlife.

Ready? Let's get started.

The Egyptians worshiped a deity named Anubis.  Anubis has the body of a man and a canine head. The Egyptians often associated Anubis with graveyards. Although he is sometimes depicted as escorting dead souls to the afterlife, the deity's role is primarily that of a gatekeeper and judge. The Egyptian afterlife, ruled over by Osiris, is guarded by Anubis. To enter into the afterlife, a person's heart was placed on a scale opposite the feather of truth.

 

 

If the scales balanced out, or the heart was lighter, Anubis judged them worthy and allowed them into the afterlife. If the heart was heavier, however...well, then the person was unworthy. They were tossed aside to be devoured by a sort of hippo-crocodile-lion thing (it's as unpleasant as it sounds).

Let's change cultures, shall we?

Perhaps the best known Hound of Hel is the Greek Cerberus. Frequently depicted with three heads (though sometimes with only two), Cerberus is the fearsome hound who guards the entrance to the Greek afterlife. His master is Hades.

 

 

Cerberus prevents the living from entering or exiting the underworld, but there are a few times where he has failed in this task. Hercules himself bested Cerberus, and was therefore allowed to leave the underworld. Music is as effective on the hound as brawn, however. The great poet Orpheus was able to enter the underworld in search of his dead wife by playing his harp, lulling Cerberus into letting him pass.

 

(Three headed dog? Harp? Can't imagine why that sounds familiar!)

 

The Romans also included Cerberus in their myths, one of a few characters whose names did not change. Roman mythology adds another person to the list of those who have made it past the guard dog of the underworld: Aeneas. In this story by Virgil, Cerberus is bested not with strength or with music, but with treats. Every dog likes a good treat, right? Turns out a barley cake soaked in mead is the way to this giant puppy's heart.
 

So Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythologies all have dogs who guard the gates of the underworld. This could be explained by the proximities of the cultures to one another. After all, all three mythologies share quite a few similarities. But the Norse culture is pretty far from the Mediterranean. Because of this, I find it fascinating that they have:

Garm!

 

Garm is the guardian of Hel, the Norse underworld for those who did not die a valiant death. His mistress is Hel herself. Garm is described as a fearsome hound whose fur is coated in blood. When Ragnarok comes, Garm will do battle with Tyr, and both will die in battle.

Most interesting to me is the fact that Garm can be calmed...by being given a piece of bread. Sounds pretty similar to the Roman take on Cerberus! Dogs and their treats, right?

What do you guys think? Know of any other cultures that have dogs connected to the underworld?

Lucretia: Honor At All Costs

Hey all!  Today we're going to be taking a look at the story of Lucretia, one of the most important women in Roman mythology.

Please note that today's post is in no way supposed to glamorize suicide.  I actually struggled with writing this post because, while I love the story, I didn't want to send the wrong message to people.  The woman I'm discussing lived in a different time with different social mores.  She chose what she deemed the best option given her gender, her circumstances, and her sense of duty and honor.

Lucretia is actually not a mythological character.  She was an actual woman who lived in ancient Rome when it was still a monarchy.  Her story is so important that it has been told and retold until it became a part of the Roman myths - I first heard about it in a mythology college class, in fact.  Various embellishments and variances have been added to her story throughout the years, granting it the status of a legend, but the core history of it remains true.

Shall we begin?

I've mentioned before that the traits which were most valued in ancient Rome were duty and honor.  One had a duty to Rome, to their family, and to themselves.  Both the country, the family, and the person also had a sense of honor which they were expected to uphold at all times.  A lot of focus is put upon the male side of this; sacrifices made by military men for the good of Rome, politicians who chose to step down for the sake of their family's honor, things like that.

What doesn't get talked about often is the fact that the women were expected to do their duty and preserve both they and their family's honor every bit as much as the men were.  That is the primary theme of the story of Lucretia.

When our tale begins, Rome is ruled by a king.  She is also at war, and many of her men are on the front lines.  A group of these men, officers and nobles, begin to boast one day of their wives.  They each claim that their wife is the best, a paragon of virtue.  This goes on for a bit before the prince of Rome, Sextus, suggests that the men take a brief break from the front lines.  Why not return to the house of each man, and see what their wives are really up to while the head of the household is gone?

The men agree, and they ride back to the city straight away.  As a group they visit one another's homes.  Each man's wife is found to be unconcerned with the war, or their husbands' safety.  They are instead hosting parties, drinking, and in general being frivolous.

All, that is, save for Lucretia.

When Lucius takes the men to his house, he finds his wife Lucretia with the house lights dimmed.  By candlelight she and the servants are weaving bandages to send to the front lines.  (What she's doing varies depending on the version of the story, but this is my favorite.)  She greets her husband and his friends and serves as hostess to them, and everyone in the group is impressed by her.  After a while the group takes its leave, with Lucius' wife having won the bet for him.

Unfortunately, Prince Sextus was very impressed by Lucretia.

Within a few days the prince rides back to Lucretia's home, this time without anyone else present.  He enters her bedchambers and begins to make advances on Lucretia.

She refuses him flat out.  Sextus threatens to rape her, and Lucretia swears that she will die before allowing him to dishonor her husband's name in such a way.

Furious, Sextus becomes even more of a scumbag than he already is.  He tells Lucretia that if she will not allow him to have sex with her, he will kill her.  He will then also kill a slave within the house, and arrange the two of them in bed together to make it look like they were having sex.

Adultery was a terrible crime for women in ancient Rome, particularly with a slave.  To be found in such a way would bring great shame to Lucius' name and household.

To avoid this, Lucretia agrees to Sextus' demands.  She lets him rape her, and he leaves in the morning.

Lucretia then rises and sends a messenger to the front lines of the army.  She requests that her husband and her father return home, and that they each bring one man with them as a witness.  Concerned, the men do so.  When they arrive she tells them everything that occurred.  The men are horrified, and swear revenge for her.

Now, Lucretia earns my respect just for this.  Talking about sexual abuse is terrifying, and many victims (sadly and wrongly) feel a sense of shame.  To tell your husband and father immediately after the rape took place takes a lot of courage...but it is Lucretia's next actions for which she is famous.

Lucretia is a smart woman.  She knows that the tale will make its way around Rome.  She also knows that a lot of attention will fall on her family because of what happened to her.  If no punishment is dealt out for the adultery, Lucretia worries that women will use her as an example in the future.  Perhaps a woman will meet willingly with a lover, and then call it rape and point out that Lucretia went unpunished.

Because of this, Lucretia draws her dagger.  Before the eyes of the witnesses, she plunges it into her heart.  Her dying words are "Let no unchaste woman plead Lucretia's example to outlive her dishonor."

It seems horrifying in this day and age.  However, for that culture, Lucretia's suicide satisfied both her personal honor, the honor of her husband's, name, and the honor of Rome.  Her death served as punishment for her adultery.  No woman in the future would be able to cheat on her husband, brining dishonor to his name, without consequences.

This was what the Romans considered the ultimate duty of a woman to her family and to her country.

Lucretia's death makes those in the room weep and mourn...and it strikes a fire in the hearts of one, the witness brought by Lucretia's husband.  His name is Brutus, and he is a politician.  He stands and declares vengeance upon Sextus for his actions, and upon all of the royal family.

Following Brutus' lead, the other men all also swear to tear down the monarchy as justice for Lucretia.

Under Brutus' watch, the armies of Rome rise up against the royal family, who are eventually driven out of Rome.  It is in this way that the monarchy of Rome is abolished, and the Roman Republic established.

And all because of Lucretia.

It's a pretty depressing story, but it's also quite interesting to me that the overthrow of the nobility and the rise of the republic are all attributed to the actions of a female.

I found out while looking at images for this post that Shakespeare wrote a poem called The Rape of Lucrece about these events.  I haven't read it before, but I'm definitely planning on checking it out.

What did you guys think?

Janus: Looking Ahead and Looking Behind

Hey guys!  Today we're going to be taking a look at yet another character on the Roman pantheon: Janus, a god with two faces.

Now, calling someone two-faced in today's culture is definitely an insult.  It implies that they're liars.  It might bring to mind Harvey Dent, or perhaps Voldemort and Quirrell.  Because of this, one might assume that a god with two faces is a deity of liars, or at least a somewhat duplicitous god.

That is not the case with Janus.

In fact, Janus is one of the good gods.  He's also one of the most powerful within the Roman pantheon.  Because his two faces look in opposite directions, Janus is believed to be able to see both the beginning and the end of all things.

And I do mean all things.  As such, the name of Janus was traditionally invoked during all religious ceremonies, regardless of what was being prayed for or which other gods were receiving sacrifices.  You could go to the temple and pray for Juno's blessing on your family, but Janus would receive an offering at the beginning of the ceremony.  Want victory in war?  You'd go and pray to Mars, but in the process would also offer something to Janus.

Besides being a part of all of the religious rituals, Janus also had a few things associated with him specifically.  Doors and doorways were especially tied to the god, for it was believed that one of his heads saw through the front of the door and one through the back.  As such, he could see what lay ahead and what lay behind.  This applied to every doorway, ranging from the entrance/exit of your home to the main gate of Rome.

Other things associated with Janus included the beginning and end of a day, the transitions between peace and war, and life and death.  All of these things had one thing in common: change.

Perhaps most interesting (at least to me) was Janus' association with time.  His heads were said to allow him to see both the past and the future.  He had witnessed the beginning of all things, and could see ahead to the end.

I'll end with this: Though the term two-faced has nowadays come to be very negative, remnants of Janus can still be found.  There's a type of birth disorder called diprosopus, in which a creature is born with two faces.  When this occurs in a cat, the cat is termed a 'Janus cat'.

I hope you guys enjoyed the post!  I'll see you next week when we wrap up this series on Rome with a story about Lucretia.

Juno: The Wrathful Matron

Hello all!  I hope you had a lovely weekend.  The end of the semester is approaching, so I've been swamped with homework.  I wish all my fellow students luck - hang in there!  The end is in sight!

This week we're going to be talking about Juno, queen of the Roman gods.

Juno is a very interesting character, because she reigns in matters both domestic and militant.  She can be gentle and nurturing, or vengeful and warlike.  It all depends on her mood, and who is involved in any given situation.

Let's start with her gentle nature.

Juno is the wife of Jupiter, king of the gods.  She is viewed as a matron, because she is the mother of many of the rest of the pantheon.  Juno is also considered the goddess of marriage.  Women in particular worship her, and weddings were done with offerings to her in hopes of the goddess' blessing.

One of Juno's titles was "Regina", meaning "beautiful".  This automatically made me think of the character of the Evil Queen in Once Upon a Time...who actually has a lot in common with Juno!

She is also sometimes associated with the moon, considered a light deity.  Her sacred animal was the peacock - in fact, most images of her show her either accompanied by the bird or holding one of its feathers.

Of course, Juno isn't all sweet motherly affection.  The Roman epic The Aeneid refers to her as "baleful Juno in her sleepless rage", and it is accurate.  When vexed, Juno is the embodiment of wrath.  They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Juno is the proof of that!

The Roman equivalent of the Greek Hera, Juno shares her counterpart's vengeful schemes against her husband's mistresses.  However, Juno is also shown to seek revenge on those who have wronged her in other ways...and once her anger is provoked, it takes a lot to quell it.

I'll use the Aeneid as my example for this post.

The story of the Aeneid follows the Greek epic of The Iliad, which covers the events of the Trojan War.  The war began when a man named Paris was told to choose which of three goddesses was the most beautiful.  In the Greek Iliad, the goddesses are Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena.  Each goddess promised him great rewards if he chose her, and in the end Paris picked Aphrodite, for she had promised him the most beautiful woman in the world - Helen.

Now, most mortal women would be angry at a man who said another woman was more beautiful than they.  Take that anger and put it in godly proportions.  Hera was pissed, and she swore revenge upon Paris and all of his people.  Those people happened to be the Trojans, and her anger caused many problems throughout the Trojan War.

In fact, those problems persisted even after the end of the war.  The Aeneid follows a survivor of Troy, Aeneas, as he desperately tries to lead his people to safety and start a new home.  Aeneas was destined to settle a new home in Italy for his people, who would be the ancestors of Rome.  Hera's anger continues in her counterpart, Juno, who knows of his destiny but is determined to fight it out of spite for Aeneas.

His adventures are very long, and the trials Juno puts him through many.  She calls in a favor from a wind god and blows his ships far off course; she teams up with Venus, goddess of love, to make Aeneas fall for and 'marry' a queen in hopes of keeping him from making it to Italy; she incites thoughts of war in both his people and those already in the land he hopes to settle.  There's a lot more problems Juno sends his way, but you get the idea.  She made his life as miserable as she possibly could.

Eventually, Juno accepts the fact that she cannot change destiny.  She dissolves her grudge against Aeneas, on the condition that his people adopt a new name for themselves in their new land, therefore abolishing all traces of Troy and the Trojan people.

Her wish is granted.  Aeneas' descendants (including Romulus and Remus) go on to settle the land, found the city of Rome, and become the Roman people.

What do you guys think of Juno?  I find her dual loving/vengeful nature to be very interesting!

I'll end with this picture.  While it's actually of Zeus and Hera, not Jupiter and Juno, it was just too gorgeous to not share.

Take care, and I'll talk to you guys next week!

Bacchus/Dionysus: Wine and a Good Time...Mostly

Today's post is going to be about both a Roman god and a Greek one, because I realized belatedly that I hadn't talked before about Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.  Most of the stories I know for the Roman god Bacchus apply to his Greek personality, so I thought I'd do a post that covered both.

I believe I've mentioned Dionysus in a few posts, though I never actually talked about just him.  Dionysus is one of what I like to refer to as "the party gods".  My mythology teacher referred to he and Aphrodite as being gods of, essentially, "sex, drugs, and rock and roll."  What I hope you take from this is that Dionysus is primarily the god of a good time.  He rules over the vine and the grape...and, of course, the wine that comes from the grape.

Bacchus is the Roman form of Dionysus, and he is likewise the god of drinking and partying.  Celebrations and festivals in worship of Bacchus were called "bacchanalia", a word which translates to "a drunken revelry".  I've heard it used in various TV shows (usually British in nature) to describe carousing around college campuses.  Minus the hangover in the morning, Dionysus/Bacchus sounds like a pretty good god to worship...right?

Well...kind of.

The devotees of this god are shown in the story to be a little crazy.  In fact, I seem to recall some comments in my mythology class about them acting like they were on PCP, and it's not far off.  This is best shown by an old Greek play about Dionysus called The Bacchae, which I shall try to highlight below.

Dionysus was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Semele.  Zeus, up to his usual tricks, had taken a different form when he bedded the human.  He was quite fond of Semele, and one day when she begged him for a favor he promised one to her without waiting to hear what it was.

Big mistake.

Semele desired to look upon Zeus' true face - a desire fanned by a jealous Hera, wife of Zeus, who was unamused to see her husband keeping yet another mistress.  The true forms of the gods are too much for any mortal to behold.  Zeus was compelled to keep his word, but doing so caused Semele to spontaneously burst into flame.

The child in Semele's womb, Dionysus, was saved, and Zeus sent him to be raised by a group of nymphs.  However, the boy god always remembered his mother fondly.

The main premise of The Bacchae is Dionysius returning for vengeance upon his mother's family, none of whom believed her when she said she had become pregnant by Zeus.

Now, the female followers of Dionysus are called maenads.  They are the ones who miiight be on drugs.  Their devotion to the god makes them insanely strong, fast, and willing to do anything in his name.

For the first part of his vengeance, Dionysus makes his three aunts his loyal servants, turning the naysayers into maenads.  These women are royalty, supposed to be quite haughty and civilized...but in the name of the god they quite literally tear animals to pieces with their bare hands.

But wait!  There's more!

The current king of the city is Pentheus, the son of one of Dionysus' aunts.  He doubts in the stories of Dionysus' divinity, and of the wooing of Semele (if it can be called that) by Zeus.

The story of vengeance is long and complicated, for Dionysus plays mind games with Pentheus throughout the play to attempt to make him recognize the god as divinity.  In the end, as Pentheus is beginning to realize that maybe Dionysus truly is a god, Dionysus sics his female relatives upon him.

Pentheus is torn limb from limb by his own mother, who then proudly carries her son's decapitated head back to her own father.  She presents her "trophy" to him and is confused when he is horrified instead of pleased - besotted in her devotion to Dionysus, the woman thinks the head is that of a mountain lion she has slain.

Still confused, she hangs it up on display and calls for Pentheus to come and marvel at her kill...at which point Dionysus allows his powers to wear off of her, so that the woman can see that she murdered her own son in the most violent fashion imaginable.

The story ends with Dionysus' three aunts being sent off into exile.  Dionysus declares that his grandfather and his wife shall be turned into snakes to complete their punishment.

The god's vengeance is complete.

Most people think of Dionysus - and, by extension, Bacchus - as being the god of a good time.  This is accurate.  However...neither one is a god you want to cross.

If you get a chance, I'd hugely recommend reading The Bacchae.  It's a fascinating play, very well written, and I quite enjoyed it.

I'll see you guys next week!

Vesta: The Fires of Rome

Hey all!  I hope you had a fantastic weekend!

This is somewhat off-topic for this blog, but I stumbled across a fantastic short science-fiction story today called The Governess with a Mechanical Womb, by Leena Likitalo.  It's a haunting story that I think will stick with me for some time.  If you're a sci-fi fan, I hugely recommend it.  You can read the whole thing here.

Now, on with my post!

One of my favorite gods in the Greek pantheon is Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home.  If you didn't read my post about her, Hestia is a rarely mentioned deity in the Greek myths who is nonetheless powerful enough to stand up to the gods.  She ruled over the hearth and the home, which sounds innocuous but was incredibly important.

Vesta is essentially Hestia made even more powerful.

I've mentioned that honor and duty were incredibly important to the Romans.  So too was home - in fact, those three were inexplicably intertwined, with a sense of duty to home, whose family's honor was to be preserved.

I'm doing a very lousy job of explaining this, but home was even more important to the Romans than it was to the Greeks.  The way they viewed home was also rather different.  Rome itself was viewed as the ultimate home, to which every person belonged.  Duty came first and foremost to Rome, and then to an individual's house.

Vesta represented Rome.

Much like her Greek counterpart, Vesta was represented by the hearth fire of every home.  One such fire was kept going at a temple in Rome, and was not extinguished all year.  Every year in March the fire was rekindled, and it was serviced all year long to keep the blaze going in honor of the goddess.  So long as it burned, Vesta was thought to be protecting Rome.

This fire was tended to by a group called the Vestal Virgins.  Vesta herself was a virgin goddess, and so any women who were sworn to her servitude were to be virgins as well.  It was a very powerful position for a woman to have, but the consequences could be deadly if they went back on their oaths.  A woman found to have lost her virginity while a servant of Vesta could be buried alive as punishment.

One famous Vestal Virgin was Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus - another way in which the two men were tied to the deities of Rome.

Now, Vesta is often represented in mythology as an unimportant, domestically centered goddess.  After all, her domain was the fireplace - a place around which cooking was done, meals were eaten, and family time was spent.  How powerful could such a goddess truly be?  Isn't she more of a deity for women?

Let me clear this up for you:  everyone in Rome worshipped Vesta.  I do mean everyone.  One of the most famous characters in Roman literature is Aeneas, hero of the Aenead.  Aeneas is one of the great heroes of Roman history/mythology - he is the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, one of the survivors of the battle of Troy.  He has been called the Roman equivalent of Odysseus and Achilles.

Aeneas offered prayers to Vesta.

A male, a strong, virile warrior, prayed to the goddess many think of as being domestic.

I'll end with a quote from one of my source books, which also refers to Vesta as a guardian deity of the Roman state:

"...this goddess of the family hearth-fire was adopted as guardian of the holy fire in the city of Rome...the holy fire of Vesta was the hearth-fire of the city and, indeed of the Empire.  Eventually temples in her honour, containing her undying fire, were set up in cities throughout the Roman world.  If the fire ever went out the Romans recognized it as a very serious portent and expected disaster to follow, for her cult came to symbolize the undying power of Rome."

Take care, and I'll see you guys next week!

Pluto (The God, Not the Planet)

Pluto is an interesting character in Roman mythology.  He has been equated to Hades, the Greek god of the dead - and, while the two certainly have similarities and tales in common, there are also quite a few distinctions.  For starters, Hades is usually portrayed as solely the god of the dead in the Greek myths.  Pluto maintains this duty, but is also given rule over all things beneath the earth...which includes a lot of gemstones and precious minerals.  As such, Pluto is the god of wealth.

 

 

Pluto shares Hades' story of taking a bride.  You can read the full Greek version here, but the Roman myths change the names to Pluto, who takes Proserpina (Greek: Persephone) for his wife, whose mother Ceres (Greek: Demeter) then searches the world for her.

One of the things that intrigues me the most about Pluto are the number of names he bears in Roman mythology.  Pluto is also often referred to as Dis, or as Orcus.  I have read works that state that these are actually three distinctive gods, with each ruling over a certain thing - Pluto ruling over the underworld, Dis the god of wealth, and Orcus the bringer of death.  Others say that these three names each refer to the same being, simply representing a different aspect of the god.

I have also read theories that Pluto was not actually the name of the god of the underworld, but the name people applied to him so that they could speak it out loud.  You see, talking about the god of death by name was considered very unlucky.

 

 

 

(Not particularly relevant to the post, but I had to.)

 

This is part of why there are not as many depictions of Pluto - or of Hades, for that matter - in ancient art.  Death was something that people didn't want to talk about and didn't want to depict.  It's entirely possible that Pluto was a name they used to refer to death without actually using his name...in modern terms, much like saying "You-Know-Who" instead of "Voldemort".

Whatever the case, Pluto is definitely intriguing.

One of my favorite stories about Pluto is actually shared in both Greek and Roman mythology.  It involves the poet Orpheus, who was the finest musician of his age.

Orpheus had recently been married to a beautiful woman named Eurydice, with whom he was very much in love.  All was well for a short time, but one day while out in the woods she happened to step on a snake.  She was bitten, and the poison very quickly killed her.

The man was crushed by the death of his beloved.  He mourned her through his music, and soon an idea struck him.  Orpheus sought out the gates of the underworld and descended to the palace of Pluto.  He took up his lyre and began to play and sing, beseeching Pluto to release his beloved's spirit and return her to life.

 



I'll let Ovid take over:

"These words, accompanied on the plucked string, so moved the bloodless spirits that they wept...Then, for the first time ever, overcome by the effects of the song, the Furies wept, nor could Persephone reject his prayer, nor he who rules the underworld deny him; Eurydice was called up from her place among the newly dead..."

(I find it very interesting to note that Pluto is not mentioned by name.  Instead, he is "he who rules the underworld".)

The story ends in tragedy, of course.  It's actually quite similar to the Japanese tale of Izanagi and Izanami.  Orpheus was given strict instructions to not look back at his wife's spirit until they had ascended from the underworld.  Right before they exited he began to doubt and glanced back, and she was forced to remain dead due to his lack of faith.

 

Still, I think it's a beautiful story. I love that Pluto, god of the dead, a deity most people find fearful, was moved to tears by the power of love and willing to return a woman to life to be with her beloved.

I'll end my post with that, and see you guys next week!

Romulus and Remus: Renegade Royalty

Hello all!  Spring break is over, and I've just had an 8-week Science Fiction Literature class begin.  I'm really excited for it, and it gives me the perfect lead-in for this reference!

My best friend is a Trekkie, so I feel obligated to put in a Romulan joke for this post.  As a fun side fact, a race called the Remans also exists in the Star Trek universe.  Much like the Romulans, they share a gene with the Vulcans.

Alright, sci-fi geekery aside, let's turn to mythology!

I talked briefly about the brothers Romulus and Remus in my post about Valentine's Day, but I wanted to delve further into their story.  The two are arguably some of the most important characters in Roman mythology, since their tale is the story of the founding of Rome itself.

The story begins with a king named Numitor, who had a beautiful daughter named Rhea Silvia.  Numitor ruled over a city in ancient Italy, and was a fair and wise king...but he had a jealous brother named Amulius who wanted that power for himself.

In a drastic coup, Amulius seized control of the city.  He overthrew and banished Numitor, and then killed his sons, leaving him with no rightful heir.  Knowing that any children born to Rhea Silvia would be descendants of Numitor with a legitimate claim to the throne, Amulius forced the young woman to take a vow of chastity, swearing to remain a virgin.

Enter the gods.

Now, I don't know if Mars was truly smitten with Rhea Silvia or if he took her vow of chastity as a challenge.  Knowing the gods, it might have been both.  At any rate, Mars (the god of war, and one of the most important deities in the Roman pantheon) visited Rhea Silvia and impregnated her.

Amulius was furious when he found out that his niece was pregnant - after all, the resulting sons would be a great threat to his reign.  As soon as Romulus and Remus (twin boys) were born he had them exposed, a term often used in mythology for leaving children out in the wilderness to die.  In this case, the boys were left naked next to the Tiber river.

(Rhea Silvia, for her part, was ordered to be drowned in the Tiber.  In some versions of the story she is killed, while in others she is saved by the god of the Tiber river and made his immortal wife.  One god wasn't enough for her, I guess?)

Exposing children is a very common theme in mythology...and those children often survive and come back to haunt those who exposed them.  Romulus and Remus were no exception.  Through a miraculous series of events, they survived exposure.  A female wolf who had recently given birth nursed the two boys and took care of them until they were found by a shepherd, who along with his wife adopted Romulus and Remus.

The two boys grew up happy and healthy, and served as shepherds alongside their adopted father.  They were strong, and soon proved to be natural leaders.  As young men they gathered other youths from the villages around them, and eventually took to adventures outside of shepherding.

In essence, the two young men became Robin Hoods, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.  I have wondered at times if they were the basis for the Robin Hood stories.

However, Romulus and Remus had one distinct difference from Robin Hood.  Instead of robbing from nobles, they robbed from other robbers and brigands.  The two brothers took great delight in robbing a group who had just committed successful robberies of their own, and then redistributing the goods to those who needed them most.

The robbers who were not part of our band of miscreants eventually grew tired of being mugged.  They plotted a trap for Romulus and Remus' group and sprang it one night while the young men were out drinking and partying at a festival.  In the confusion of the fight Remus was captured by the brigands.

Remus was taken by the bandits before King Amulius, though no one was aware of the duo's relationship.  The cunning thieves accused Remus and his band of the crimes that they themselves had committed - namely, robbing the lands of Numitor, who had begun to rule over a small section of land after his banishment.

Amulius was unconcerned with the accusations put forth against Remus - after all, it wasn't his lands that were being robbed.  He told the bandits to go and tell Numitor of the crimes, and so they dragged Remus to the lands of Numitor and brought him before the old man.

Numitor hardly paid attention as Remus was accused of robbing his lands.  The old man was too struck by something he saw within the young man.  Some stories I've read say he recognized his daughter Rhea Silvia in Remus.  Others say that he recognized something kingly in Remus' bearing.  Either way, Numitor began to wonder if perhaps the young man might be his grandson...particularly when he was told that Remus was a twin, since he had known of Rhea Silvia's having given birth to two sons.

Curious, Numitor ordered everyone except for Remus out of the room, desiring to question the lad alone.  His plans were foiled when Romulus burst into the room with his adopted father, both having come to save Remus.  Between the four of them the men managed to piece everything together, and Numitor was overjoyed to be united with his stepsons.

The youths had grown up without knowing of their royalty, or of their mother.  When Numitor told them of how Amulius had stolen his throne and had their mother killed, Romulus and Remus were furious.

To make a long story short, the two young men killed Amulius and retook his throne, avenging the death of their mother.  They bestowed his kingdom upon its rightful ruler, Numitor, and then left to found a city of their own.

Here is where tragedy enters the story.  Romulus and Remus could not decide who should be the rightful king of the city they were constructing.  They were twins, so neither had the definitive birthright to the throne.  They decided that they would each stand atop a hill and watch for a sign from the gods, and whoever received the sign would become king.

Unfortunately, both men received what they took to be signs, and so they began to argue about which sign was better.

Ahh, the joys of sibling rivalries.

In the end, Romulus decided that the city should be his and so began to construct a stone wall.  Remus, mocking his efforts, leapt over the wall to show how easily the city could be taken.  In a fit of anger Romulus struck his brother down, killing Remus for his insolence.

He then declared that such a fate would meet any who dared attempt to storm the gates of the city.

That city, named in his honor, was Rome.

I hope you guys enjoyed the story!  I'll be back next week with a special holiday post.  See you then!

Intro to Roman Mythology

Hey guys!  I hope you're doing well.  I'm currently on Spring break, so I am one happy camper.

I realized that although I added new links to side, I never mentioned them in a post, so now I shall!  If you're interested in either of my books, you can now buy them directly from me through my Etsy shop.  Hammerfall is available here, and Lovesick here.  (I currently only have shipping to the US, since I haven't had an order from outside of the country yet.  If you're one of my readers from outside the US and you'd like a copy, please feel free to shoot me a message!  We'll work things out.)

And with that out of the way, let's begin!

In this series of posts we'll be taking a look at some of the core stories and deities in Roman mythology.

I think one of the most common misconceptions about the Roman myths is that "They're just the Greek gods with different names."  Many of the books I've seen for Greek or Roman myths, and several of the mythology classes I've taken, have included cheat sheets showing the Roman name of Greek gods.

This irritates the heck out of me.

To be sure, there are a lot of similarities between the two.  The Romans did adopt a lot of the gods they liked from other religions.  However, this adoption was not limited to the Greek gods (worship of Isis, an Egyptian goddess, was quite prominent in Rome, amongst others).  There are characters in the Roman myths who are entirely unique to Rome (Romulus and Remus, for example, who we'll talk about next week).

Even for those gods who are very, very similar to those from Greek mythology, there tend to be differences that make the gods distinctive from what a lot of people consider to be their counterpart.  (Though this is not always true - Dionysus and Bacchus are almost exactly the same.)

Take, for instance, the goddess Minerva.  She is often equated to the Greek goddess Athena.  Now, Athena is a powerful, intelligent warrior goddess who rules over intellectual warfare.  She is cunning and clever, but also is the goddess of several more feminine aspects such as weaving and virginity.

Minerva, on the other hand, loses the attributes of war and is made almost entirely a domestic goddess.

Another example would be the comparison between the Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter.  If you read my posts on Greek mythology, you may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of Zeus.  He's a womanizing self-centered jerk who does whatever he wants in life no matter the consequences for anyone else.  He's fairly immature.  Jupiter, on the other hand, is a mature, level-headed god.

The maturity with which Jupiter regards his duties is actually one of the hallmarks of the Roman culture.  Their heroes embodied the ideals their culture held highest - loyalty and honor.  House Tully in Game of Thrones has for their saying "Family.  Duty.  Honor."  This exemplifies the ancient Roman mindset.  The duty of a man (actually, of any citizen, as we'll see when we get to my post about Lucretia) was first to Rome, then to his family, then to himself.  I find that quite beautiful and interesting.

In the coming weeks I plan to talk about several of the gods and goddesses I haven't mentioned here, as well as some of the demigods and heroes from Roman mythology.

One thing that I'll mention in this intro, though I won't do a post specifically about it: The Romans also sometimes worshipped their emperors.  There was a process through which an emperor could be deified.  Sometimes this was done during their life, and the people worshipped the emperor as a living god amongst them.  (Some early Christians actually got into a lot of trouble for refusing to worship a man over their God.)

At other times, this deification took place after an emperor had died.  The senate could vote on whether or not they thought the emperor was worthy of godhood.  If they decided that he was, the emperor was written into history as a living god who had ascended.

Imagine dying and having some of the people who knew you decide that you had actually been a god.  Kind of interesting, no?

I'll end this post there, and see you guys next week when I talk about Romulus and Remus, twin demigods and founders of Rome!  Take care.

Valentine's Day: Hearts, Wolves, and Christianity

Hey guys!  Given our proximity to Valentine's Day, I thought that I would interrupt our series on Egyptian mythology to take a look at the origins of the holiday.

 

To accomplish that, we'll have to take a look at several different things.  An ancient Roman festival called Lupercalia (a reference to which appears in Shakespeare's works), the story of Saint Valentine, the holidays of Candlemas/Groundhog Day, and the modern celebration distilled from all of those shall all be discussed in this post...along with several gods and goddesses from Roman mythology.

 

Interested?  Awesome!  Let's get started, then.

 

Lupercalia

 

Blood is crimson

Milk is white

Central to a holiday

Long out of sight.

 

Sorry.  I tried, alright?  Poetry and I are not close associates.

 

Alright!  So, Lupercalia.  Lupercalia was an ancient festival in Rome, celebrated around February 15th.  I know I haven't begun my series on Roman mythology yet, but the celebration was closely tied to several figures from the myths.  The most prominent of these are Romulus and Remus.

 

I'll talk more about the duo when I do a post about them, but let me give you the basics.  Romulus and Remus were born the children of Mars, god of war, and a woman who was sworn to be a virgin.  These twins were the rightful heir to the throne.  Enraged by their birth, the relative who had seized the throne and forced their mother to take the oaths of virginity in the first place had the babies abandoned, exposed by a river to die.

 

Instead, the two boys were found by a female wolf, one who had recently had pups of her own and was lactating.  She suckled the boys and raised them until they were taken in by a human shepherd.  The cave where she is said to have cared for them is called the Lupercal.

 

Romulus and Remus went on to become the founders of Rome (though one of them was killed by the other).  They were exceptionally powerful, virile young men, and this aspect of their personality is glorified in the celebration of Lupercalia.

 

The religious rituals during the celebration of Lupercalia are quite interesting to me.  At the beginning of the festival priests would gather in the Lupercal and sacrifice both a goat and a dog.  Two young males would then strip down to loincloths.  The blood of the goat and the dog was smeared onto their foreheads, and then wiped away by a cloth dipped in milk.

 

The use of the goat and the dog as the sacrificial animals interests me.  The goat was associated with both virility and lust.  The dog was seen as a protector of fields and herds.  Lupercalia was both a fertility festival, and a festival of protection - the young men who had blood and milk both smeared across their foreheads ran around the boundary of Rome to place a circle of protection around the city.

 

(I feel that here I should point out the two dominant colors of the holiday so far - red and white.  Both colors are often seen on modern Valentine's Day cards, but I was quite amused to find the reason behind those colors while researching for this post.  As one sourcebook I have says, assuming that Valentine's Day has its origins in Lupercalia...

"If this is the case, then the red that dominates so many modern Valentine cards may have derived from the sacrificial blood of the Lupercalia."

Think of that the next time you send a card to your sweetheart!)

 

The sacrificial goat was used for another purpose.  It was skinned, and its hide was used to make whips for both of the young men.  The men would then run through the city, still clad only in loincloths, and whip everyone that they saw.  These whips were called februa, and women very much wanted to be whipped, as it was believed that a lashing from the goat-skin could make them more fertile.

 

 

This practice in referenced in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, in which Antony is advised to whip his wife during the holiday to cure her barren womb.  I thought that was a very interesting reference.

 

A few more tidbits of information about Lupercalia, and then we'll move on:

 

I discussed in a post about Greek mythology the story of Hades, Demeter, and Persephone.  The same tale can be found in Roman mythology, with the names replaced as Pluto, Ceres, and Proserpina.  A very brief rundown of the story is that Proserpina represents spring, while her mother Ceres is goddess of the harvest.  When Proserpina is carried to the Underworld to be the bride of Pluto, Ceres mourns for her and refuses to tend to her divine duties, allowing all plant life to die - thus causing winter.  Ceres wanders the earth in search of Proserpina, eventually managing to find her and return her to the earth for part of each year.

 

This tale is celebrated during Lupercalia, since it is a fertility festival and harvest deities are generally associated with fertility.  The celebration revolved around a torchlight procession, meant to represent Ceres searching for her daughter.  We'll talk a bit more about that in the next section of this post.

 

Lastly: Before the beginning of the festival it was common for a box to go around with the names of all of the young women.  The men would each pick a name from this box, and the girl whose name they chose would be paired with them for the celebration of Lupercalia.  This becomes a very important link between holidays as we move to:

 

Candlemas/Groundhog Day

 

Candlemas has its origins in the feast of Lupercalia.  It is intricately tied to the procession representing Ceres' search.  When Christianity and the church arrived in Rome they took issue with the pagan rituals they found in Lupercalia and sought to change them to something more appropriate to the church.

 

This led to the creation of Candlemas.

 

There is a tradition in Jewish culture that the firstborn son of a family is taken to the Temple to be dedicated to God 40 days after his birth, with a sacrificial offering taking place.  After the birth of Jesus, Mary took Him to be dedicated 40 days after His birth.

 

Candlemas is celebrated on February 2nd - 40 days after Christmas.  The celebration is marked by a procession in which the people all hold candles - replacing the torches used in Lupercalia.

 

(While this doesn't necessarily tie into Valentine's Day, I thought it was interesting to note that Candlemas eventually became Groundhog Day.  On this day in the US a groundhog is checked upon.  Whether or not it can see its shadow determines whether winter is still in swing or if spring is coming.  This tradition can be found in many countries, though groundhogs are not always the animals used - sometimes they are a hedgehog, a badger, or "the Candlemas Bear".  Kind of cool, right?)

 

You might be wondering why I'm mentioning Candlemas and Groundhog Day in a post about Valentine's Day - after all, wasn't Groundhog Day on February 2nd?  Well, according to what I've read Groundhog Day was originally held around February 14th, before shenanigans occurred as the type of calendar used was changed in some parts of the world.

All of this ties together to bring us to the original reason for the post...

Valentine's Day

As is the case with so many holidays, a lot changed once the church arrived.  The Christian leaders of the early part of this millennia looked at the pagan rituals of Lupercalia and were horrified by what they saw.  The Pope at that time (469AD), one Pope Gelasius, decided to set aside the day of February 14th to honor a Saint who had been martyred on the same day centuries earlier.  That Saint was Valentine.

There are a lot of stories attached to Valentine.  He was a Christian living in Rome who refused to renounce his faith in God, and so was executed as punishment.  This was enough to make him a martyr, and he was later made a saint because of it.

However, stories also say that Valentine was associated with several romantic legends.  According to some he married young couples in love during a time when marriages were forbidden by the emperor (don't ask me why).

 

 

In others Valentine fell in love with a young woman who was blind.  His faith allowed her sight to be restored, and before he was executed he left her a note signed "From your Valentine."

This last story particularly suits Valentine's Day, though I have no idea how accurate it is.

Regardless of his accomplishments in life, Valentine was the saint tied to February 14th.  The day was declared the Feast of St. Valentine, later shortened to Valentine's Day.

The way Valentine's Day was celebrated changed throughout the centuries, but it retained many links to its earlier origins.  The Lupercalia tradition of drawing names from a jar to assign sweethearts remained, though those who were drawn were now dubbed valentines.

The cards which we now call valentines actually did not appear commercially until sometime around the 1800s, though records exist of individuals creating them long before - for instance, a Duke named Charles who was imprisoned over Valentine's Day wrote poems and sent them to his wife around the holiday.

Speaking of valentines...let's complicate matters a little more and throw in some:

Roman Mythology

Now, today a lot of valentines have ties to modern pop culture.  I myself gave out Star Wars valentines this holiday.  In the past I've handed out Avengers ones, Harry Potter ones, Pirates of the Caribbean valentines, additional Star Wars ones...you get the picture.  Tiny pieces of paper with geeky images and bad, vaguely flirtatious jokes are the norm now.

(I rest my case.)

 

But older valentines (and some of the classier ones, in addition to cards, that are around today), along with the thematic images still associated with the holiday, have their roots in Roman mythology.  Let's take a look at two things: doves and Cupid.

Doves are also called lovebirds.  These birds can be seen on many cards, balloons, and valentines around Valentine's Day.  Doves mate for life, and so are considered very romantic.  This is part of why they're tied to the holiday of Valentine's Day, but the other reason has to do with Roman mythology.  You see, doves were considered a sacred symbol of Venus, the goddess of love, and were offered to her as sacrifices.

Speaking of Venus...the Roman goddess of love is the mother of Cupid, god of love.  You can read more about Cupid in my post about him, but suffice it to say that he was not always depicted as the chubby winged baby with a bow and arrow that now graces many a card.  I've read theories that the god gained this appearance as Valentine's Day grew more commercial in order to better market to women, and that may or may not be so.

Still, a chubby baby he remains on most cards.  Cupid was famous in mythology for his skills with a bow and arrow - not because he was a fantastic archer, but because of what his shots could do.  Anyone struck with an arrow fired by Cupid would fall in love with the next person they saw.

This is another symbol commonly associated with Valentine's Day - that of a heart, pierced by an arrow.

(Behold!  Doves, heart, and Cupid!)

 

I hope you all enjoyed this post!  Did you enjoy your Valentine's Day?  What did you think of the origins of the holiday?

I'll see you next week with a return to the myths of Egypt!

Solstice and Christmas: Old Traditions Made New

Hey guys!

First off: oh my dear sweet goodness Star Wars!!!!  SO.  GOOD.
(If you're interested, you can check out two posts I've done in the past about the mythology behind Star Wars here and here.)

Now that I've got my fangirling out of the way, let's take a look at today's post!

I have a tradition of looking at different holidays in this blog - you can check out my Christmas post from last year here.  Due to that, I want to move away from Jewish folk tales to look at some of the ancient traditions and celebrations that have influenced the modern holiday of Christmas.  The holidays I've chosen to discuss today primarily come from Celtic, Norse, and Roman traditions, but if you're curious and go looking you might find that the mythologies of a lot of different cultures have influenced the current celebration of Christmas.  Should you do so, please shoot me a message - I'd be interested in seeing what you find!

Let us begin with the celebration of Yule.

Mention of Yule appears frequently in the celebration of Christmas.  A certain song immediately comes to my mind:

If, like me, you've sung this song while caroling, the words Yuletide carols being sung by a choir might have made you question their meaning.  After years of cheerfully singing along I began to wonder...just what is Yule?  The mention of a Yule log in several older books also piqued my curiosity, and so I began to research.

Yule is an old Norse holiday celebrating the end of the cold season.  Many cultures have festivities to celebrate the turning of the seasons (we'll talk more about another in a minute), and the Norse were no exception.  Yule was marked by feasting (particularly upon boar, which was hunted during the season), drinking, and praising Odin (called the Yule father at times) for victories and Freyr and his father Niord for successful harvests.



 

(Of course there was drinking at the feasts!)

Perhaps the most important aspect of Yule was the burning of the Yule log.  Yule is celebrated from November to January, which are the darkest and coldest parts of the year (in the region in which it is celebrated, at least).  Many cultures from around the world have celebrations during those months that revolve around light and fire.  A few older examples come to mind - the Egyptians praying for Ra, god of the sun, to rise again - but there are a considerable number of modernly celebrated festivals as well.  We talked about Hanukkah last week, which celebrates the miracle of light.  Kwanzaa begins later this week, and also revolves around the lighting of candles.  The Yule log, still commonly used in some parts of the modern world, is lit and then allowed to smolder for 12 days.  Should the fire go out, bad luck is signified.  The remnants of the log are then saved for a year and used to light the Yule log the following year.

(Modern versions of the Yule log tend to include the burning of candles instead of the actual log.  As such, they can be very beautifully decorated!)

Certain aspects of Yule can be seen in modern Christmas celebrations.  I know that ham is one of my favorite holiday foods, and while I don't pray to Odin, Freyr, or Niord I do tend to give thanks around Christmas.  My heater is currently broken, so fires in the fireplace have been a huge blessing this year...though I tend to look forward to a blazing fire every Christmas season.  What about you guys?  Do any of the practices of Yule show up in your own celebrations?

Lastly, we have the tradition of mistletoe.  While not specifically tied to Yule, mistletoe nonetheless has strong ties to both Norse and Celtic mythology.  When Loki goes full-on Dark Side and arranges the death of Baldr, it is mistletoe that ends the god.  As such, it was regarded as a very powerful plant.

 

 

(Death by mistletoe...gotta be an embarrassing way to go!)

 

Mistletoe was also considered sacred by the Celts and druids; enemies who met under it were required to stop fighting and make a temporary peace.

I'm not sure how we went from that to kissing under the mistletoe, but hey.  Whatever works?

If you're interested in learning more about Yule, I found this quick guide quite interesting, especially since it focuses more on the modern celebration of the holiday and some of its Celtic influences.  For a truly fantastic in-depth look at the Norse origins of Yule, check out this article.

We'll move now to a Roman holiday called Saturnalia.

Saturnalia is celebrated towards the middle/end of December - another solstice festival.  It is named for the Roman god Saturn, god of the harvest.  Candles were commonly used as both home decorations and gifts during this time - for it was a time of gift giving.  Sweets and goodies were exchanged, and both holly and ivy were used as decorations given their being sacred plants to Saturn.  All of these things show up in modern Christmas celebrations.

What I find most interesting about Saturnalia is the common reversal of roles, including the election of a Mock King.  During Saturnalia slaves and masters swapped places for a time, allowing the slaves to give the commands to their masters.  Of course, to quote Terry Pratchett: "We suspect that the slaves were magnanimous in office, though; tomorrow the masters would be the masters again."  After all, it isn't wise to antagonize the person who will soon rule over your life once again!

This custom of swapping roles is still alive in some places of the world.  It was adapted into Christianity in the form of the Boy Bishop.  Around the feast of Saint Nicholas (the patron saint of children), a church would elect a boy to be temporary bishop.  He would then elect many of his fellows to aid him in his duties.  The boy was allowed to give the sermons and lead the church for a time, before the actual bishop resumed his duties.  This practice is still held, primarily in Europe.

I hope you found this post interesting!  I was very intrigued to see just how much of what I celebrate has been influenced by past holidays.  If you're interested in learning more I recommend checking out a book on holidays symbols (if your library has one) - the one I flipped through is called Holiday Symbols and Customs.

If you haven't read anything by Terry Pratchett, I highly recommend all of his works.  I usually reread Hogfather during this time of year, which blends all of the traditions mentioned above with many others to create an entirely unique take on holidays - plus, Death is Santa!

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas, and whatever other holidays you might celebrate.  I'll leave you with a cheerfully burning Yule log of sorts, and I'll see you next week!

Cupid and Psyche

Hey everyone! This week I’m back to talking about mythology. I promised back when I did this post that I’d tell the story of Cupid and Psyche, due to its similarities to East of the Sun, West of the Moon. It also has a lot in common with Beauty and the Beast. The story of Cupid and Psyche is found within a Latin book called The Golden Ass; as(s) such, the gods are called by their Roman names. However, scholars think that the work was inspired by a similar Greek book that has been lost to time. Despite their Roman names, the gods within the story seem to resemble more their Greek counterparts.

Let me explain that a little more before I start the story. When you hear the name Cupid, you probably picture something like this, right?

 

I mean, those things are called cupids. Of course Cupid looks like a cupid!

In fact, the cupids modern society is familiar with bear little resemblance to the Cupid within this story. While later Greek art (mostly beginning in the Hellenistic period) and most Roman art depicts Cupid in a child-like, cherubic manner, that was not always the case. Instead of looking like this sissy thing:

Cupid in fact originally looked a lot more like this:

The Greek version of Cupid is called Eros; like Cupid, he is the god of love. In early mythology, Eros was depicted as being one of the first gods to crawl out of a swirling mass of chaos. He pre-dates Zeus, king of the gods. Later on the Greeks changed his origin story and made him far less powerful. They assigned Aphrodite (her Roman name is Venus) as his mother, and made her the goddess of love. Eros was left to be her glorified errand boy. It is this figure which is depicted as being a fat baby with a bow, and which carried over into Roman mythology.

As to the story of Cupid and Psyche - well, the Cupid it depicts looks an awful lot like the original Eros. If you go looking for additional pictures, you’ll no doubt find some really creepy ones with a cherub-like Cupid seducing an adult Psyche (spare yourself the horror. Don’t go looking!). However, most pictures show the adult form of Cupid.

With all of that out of the way, I’ll tell you the story! Despite the Greek similarities, I’ll stick with the Roman names for the gods found within The Golden Ass.

Once there lived a king and queen who had three beautiful daughters. Two of them were married, but the third - Psyche, the most beautiful - remained single. Her beauty was so great that the people of her parents’ kingdom began to worship her. They thought she was the reincarnation of Venus, or a child of that goddess. While they worshipped the daughter, they neglected to worship Venus. This did not escape the goddess’ notice...

Venus was filled with wrath at being ignored in favor of a mortal. Her son, Cupid, possessed a bow whose arrows made whoever he struck fall in love with the first thing they saw. Venus ordered Cupid to take his bow and shoot Psyche, forcing her to fall in love with a hideous creature.

Cupid hastened to fulfill his mother’s command. He traveled to where Psyche lived and prepared to shoot her - but the sight of her beauty stunned him, and the god accidentally cut his finger on the tip of his arrow. This small nick caused Cupid to fall in love with Psyche. He ignored his mother’s order and left without shooting Psyche.

Terrible events within her kingdom lead Psyche’s parents to believe that the gods are angry with them. Part of this conclusion comes from the fact that Psyche remains unmarried. They consult an oracle (a prophet who delivered messages from the gods) and are horrified by what they are told: Psyche will not bear a human son, but rather a strange, dragon-like creature that will be feared by even the gods and the dead. (Sounds like Daenerys’ child in Game of Thrones!)

To prevent this from happening, the king and queen make the only choice they feel they have. Psyche is dressed for a funeral and led to the nearby cliffs. There, she is exposed - tied to a stake and left to die. (While horrible, this was not at all uncommon in Greek or Roman mythology. Most heroes in the myths were exposed as babies, including Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.)

Luckily for Psyche, Cupid is watching out for her. He arranges for the West Wind, a being called Zephyr, to carry Psyche away from the cliffs and up to his home. Psyche falls asleep in beautiful meadows, and awakens to find a well-kept forest nearby. She explores it and soon finds a mansion made of fine woods, stones, and precious metals. A voice with no discernable source welcomes her and tells her to make herself at home. That night, a meal serves itself to Psyche while a lyre plays by itself.

After dinner Psyche is led to a bedchamber kept so dark that she cannot see. A man enters and introduces himself as her host - and her husband. They sleep together, and he departs before the sun rises. This happens every night, and Psyche is told that she can never look upon him. Soon she becomes pregnant.

Eventually Psyche’s sisters- who know that she did not die from exposure - begin to long to see her. After listening to many prayers, Cupid finally relents. Zephyr carries Psyche down to see her sisters. When they see the splendor of her clothing and jewelry they are struck by jealousy. In an attempt to ruin her happiness, they try to convince Psyche that her mysterious husband is a terrible winged serpent. She is unsympathetic to their pleas to look upon him during the night, until her sisters point out that the terrible serpent-thing might devour her child when it is born.

Psyche returns to Cupid not long after. One night, while he sleeps, she takes a dagger and a lamp from where she has hidden them in her room. She lights the lamp and moves to the bed, ready to kill her husband if he truly is a monster. Instead, she sees the most beautiful being she has ever beheld. Psyche is so distracted by his beauty that she accidentally cuts herself on an arrow from Cupid’s quiver, flung aside carelessly when he first entered her chamber. Struck with passion for her husband, Psyche accidentally spills hot oil from the lamp onto his skin.

Oddly enough, this wakes Cupid up! When he sees that Psyche has seen him he runs away. She tries to pursue him, but he flies away from her, leaving her alone in the wilderness.

Eventually Psyche goes to see her sisters. She tells them the identity of her husband, and they become even more envious than before. After Psyche leaves, the sisters separately try to offer themselves as replacements for her to Cupid. They go to the cliffs where Psyche was exposed and fling themselves off, counting on the mercy of Zephyr.

Zephyr doesn’t catch them.
They fall to their deaths.
Do we pity them?
Nah!

Back to the main story - Psyche wanders around the earth in search of Cupid. She comes to a temple of Ceres and finds its offerings in disarray. Psyche straightens things up and cleans the temple. Ceres takes note and visits her. Though she is moved by Psyche’s prayers for help finding Cupid, Ceres tells her that she cannot aid her against another goddess - Venus.

Psyche leaves Ceres’ temple and soon comes across a temple of Juno. Similar things occur, and Psyche is told once again that she will not find help against Venus from another goddess. Seeing no other recourse, Psyche decides to go and offer herself in service to Venus.

Venus is thrilled when the girl who was worshipped more than her comes into the goddess’ power. She orders Psyche whipped and beaten, and humiliates her over and over. (Remember, Psyche is pregnant at this point. Gotta hate Venus, right?) Eventually Venus declares that if Psyche can complete her tasks she will be reunited with Cupid.

The girl is thrilled at this promise, but horrified when she is given the first task. A hodgepodge of various grains and seeds are spilled around her. As Venus leaves for a party she orders Psyche to have them all separated by the time she comes back.

The goddess departs, and Psyche is filled with despair at the seemingly hopeless task. Luckily for her, a nearby ant takes pity on her. It offers to help, and summons its brethren to assist it in separating the grains from one another. By the time Venus returns, the ants have cleared out - leaving Psyche alone with neat, separated piles.

Enraged at Psyche having somehow completed her task, Venus assigns an even more impossible one the next day. She tells Psyche that she must collect the wool from sheep across a river. These sheep are the flock of Sol, god of the sun, and are carnivorous man-killers. Psyche knows that she cannot complete the task, and intends to drown herself in the river.

Again, outside forces intervene on her behalf. A reed within the river stops her from drowning herself, and tells her of an area where the wool of the sheep has been caught on nearby thorny plants. She is able to collect this wool, and it is enough to satisfy Venus’ demands - much to the rage of the goddess!

The third task is the most impossible of all. Psyche is given a container and told to go to a cliff from which pours two of the rivers of the Underworld. She is to gather their water and return to Venus. Inevitably, the task is more complicated than that. The waters are guarded by dragon-like creatures. Psyche climbs the cliff, but is unable to fend them off.

Jupiter steps in, sending an eagle that fights off the dragons. (Apparently a god can meddle in the affairs of a goddess!) Psyche returns to Venus with the waters of the rivers. The goddess then decides to make her last task truly unattainable.

If you’re familiar with the story, this is probably the task you best know. Psyche is sent to the Underworld with a box and told to ask Proserpina (the Roman version of Persephone) for some of her beauty. It is revealed that Cupid is within Venus’ house, and that she has spent so much of her energy tending to curing his “wound” (the burn from the hot oil) that she cannot replenish her own beauty. Since she must appear beautiful for a party, she needs to borrow some of Proserpina’s beauty.

Psyche knows that she doesn’t stand a chance of getting into the Underworld. She climbs a tower with the intention of flinging herself off of the top, but the tower speaks up and stops her. It tells her how to get to the Underworld, and to bring honeyed cakes and coins in order to survive the journey.

She travels to the place the tower told her of. Sure enough, therein lies the entrance to the Underworld. The honeyed cakes allow her to slip past Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance. The coins pay for a boat ride with Charon the ferryman.

(Among the tower’s instructions is one important rule - Psyche must not talk to several people she encounters. One of these people is an old woman with a spinning wheel. This amuses me, since in East of the Sun, West of the Moon the heroine does talk to a woman with a spinning wheel!)

Psyche pleads her case to Proserpina, explaining what Venus requests of her. Proserpina willingly puts some of her beauty into the box, but warns Psyche that she must not open it. Psyche is then able to leave the Underworld without any problems.

She becomes quite excited as she travels back to Venus, for she knows that this is her last task before she’ll be reunited with Cupid. Then Psyche realizes that everything she’s gone through has her looking a little haggard. Not wanting to appear less than her best for her husband, Psyche decides that sneaking a little bit of Proserpina’s beauty couldn’t hurt. She cracks open the box - only to find that it contains not beauty, but a death-like sleep!

At this point in the story Cupid’s wounds have finally healed. He flees from his mother’s house and goes to find Psyche. When the god finds her lying on the ground he removes the sleep from her and puts it back into the box.

Cupid then takes her back to Venus’ house, where she presents the “unopened” box to the goddess.

Meanwhile, Cupid goes to visit Jupiter and strikes a bargain with him. In exchange for helping Jupiter with any future romantic conquests, Psyche will be freed from Venus, reunited with Cupid, and given immortal life. The story ends with Jupiter telling Venus to lay off of Psyche, and a wedding feast being given for the immortal pair of Cupid and Psyche.

That’s the story! I hope you guys enjoyed it. It’s amazing how similar the story is to East of the Sun, West of the Moon!

I’m still taking requests for different tales from mythology you guys want to hear. I’m open to any mythology! Please feel free to post below or email me with suggestions, or with questions/comments.

See you guys next week!

(Oh, and as a fun side note - Psyche is often depicted in art with either butterfly wings or a butterfly above her.  This was to symbolize her innocence.)