Tag: mythology
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The Seven Against the Seven Hills: The Ancient-Medieval Mashup of the Roman de Thèbes & the Roman d’Eneas
“If lord Homer and lord Plato, and Virgil and Cicero, had concealed their knowledge, there would never have been any talk of them. For this reason I do not wish to keep my intelligence hidden, or to suppress my knowledge, rather does it please me to recount something worthy to be remembered.” — Roman de…
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Travels with Hadrian: Julia Balbilla, Her Poetry, and Ancient Tourism
In my entry about the two(?) Sulpicias, I said that she/them were the only Roman women poets that we have a record of—but that’s not strictly true. We have one more, the equally sketchily-known Julia Balbilla (72 – after 130 CE), but perhaps what we can mean is that the Sulpicias are the only Italian…
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Heavenly Advice: Christine de Pizan’s Othéa and Mythology as Morality
“Do not resemble Jason.” – Othéa to Hector (Allegory 54), giving out the single best piece of advice in the entire epistle We have discussed how the ancients often had an adversarial relationship to their own cosmogony, especially when it came to the truthfulness or utility of mythological stories that painted the gods in a…
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A Bug’s Life: Khepri & the Many Faces of Ra
“Khepri in the morning, Ra at midday, and Atum in the evening.” – ancient Egyptian saying “Khepri clicks his mandibles sympathetically. ‘I would, child, but I am not a god of death. I am here to create you from the ashes of your resurrection. Be who you were destined to be and be reborn before…
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Vives Annos: Foreign Influences on the Saturnalia
“Well (since our ancestors would have it so), use the freedom of December [and] speak on.” – Horace to his slave, Davus, on the Saturnalia (Satires, II, 7.4) I’m writing this up on the Sigillaria (December 23rd), the last day of the best known of the Roman festivals, the Saturnalia. The Sigillaria was devoted to…
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One For the Girls: The Daughters of Heracles
Daughters are so easy to forget — Catherine of Aragon, Six: The Musical While hunting about for a good topic for this week’s entry, I ended up falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about the Heracleidae, the children of the Greek hero Heracles (Roman: Hercules). While Heracles is generally given four official wives (Megara, Omphale, Deianira, and…
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Rumor, Roses, and Revenants: Ten Unusual and Obscure Greek Deities
“Fabulous party. You know, I haven’t seen this much love in a room since Narcissus discovered himself.” – Hermes, Hercules All of you probably thought I had forgotten about the Greeks when I did my entries on lesser-known Egyptian and Roman gods and goddesses, but never you fret, dear readers. You might think you know all…
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More Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 2)
Last week, we talked about myths as half-remembered histories and cultural origin stories through the lens of Egyptian myth. This week we’re going to shift more thoroughly to the Greeks and dissect Plato’s idea that myths-as-stories that are based on the gods having passions and struggles — what he calls false myths — and try…
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Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 1)
Because I spend too much time (i.e., any time) lurking on classical-centric social media, and in this case, especially Twitter, I’ve been thinking a lot about mythology, third-wave feminism, and contemporary scholarship. Mostly, I love the direction of modern academia in the classical world and history in general, where it’s moving towards being more inclusive…
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The Law of Unintended Sequels: Ten Unusual and Obscure Roman Deities
“[E]vidently Forculus [the god of the threshold] can’t watch the hinge and the threshold at the same time.” – St. Augustine Nobody enjoys mocking the Egyptian pantheon for its weirdness than the supposedly straight-laced Romans, so I thought as a companion to last week’s entry, we’d give them a taste of their own medicine and…
Sarah Holz 