jesepii reblogged
Atreus angst is just AHHH. he's just a kid Maan. This song is so Atreus core I can't handle it.
(Don't mind how sketchy this is ╥﹏╥)
jesepii reblogged
Don’t fucking look away from Rafah, don’t look away, if you are willfully looking away then you should be ashamed of yourself.
Fuck the Met Gala, it means nothing but a distraction for those of you who are willingly looking away.
The Palestinians need our attention, they need our support, they need us to witness and remember and help when it is asked for and when we can.
All Eyes on Rafah, All Eyes on Palestine!
jesepii reblogged
oc ask game cuz im bored. ok to rb!!
🪷 what gives this character inner peace?
🪰 what is the worst thing this character has witnessed but not experienced?
🐁 how are this characters ethics?
🚬 smoking/drinking habits? signature brand or drink?
🌫️ how does this character feel about lying?
🐦⬛ fursona?
♟️describe how they would play chess, if they would.
🎲 are they lucky?
🐌 do they carry their home with them or is it a place?
🦤 are they particularly smart in any way? how so, or not?
🪽does this character believe in a higher power?
🦪 how would this character describe their gender, if asked?
🫁 yuri or yaoi?
👛 what is always with this character?
🦇 biggest material fear (ie heights, bugs etc)
🪱 would this character move a worm off the pavement or save it?
🐞 does this character have any notable accent or dialect? what about other languages?
🦑 any pets?
🛡️how does this character protect themself and others?
🪓 would they make it to the end in a horror movie?
⚖️ how do they seek justice?
jesepii reblogged
You should be furious that people trying to escape genocide in Gaza, Sudan, Congo all need raise an absurd amount of money just to survive
You should be furious at how these people went through atrocity after atrocity and still need raise tens of thousands of dollars to get away
You should be furious at this insidious thing that completely encapsulates how capitalism feeds off of blood
jesepii reblogged
After losing everything, I started to feel happy to receive a free food carton ..
Today I walked for two hours to get it to provide food for my parents 🥲
Please help me cover the travel costs for me and my family. War life is very tiring especially for my parents who is suffering everyday because lack of food, medicine and hospitals 😢
Please keep sharing and donatind as much as you can, every 5$ can help us to escape to a safe place and start a new life 🙏
jesepii reblogged
Happy International Museums Day to the following people:
- The guy who called me the Whore of Babylon for teaching kids about Ancient Egypt as I stood there and nodded.
- The woman who was deeply incensed that staff wouldn't open the cases so she could touch the organic objects.
- The one guy who made me translate hieroglyphs on a stele for him, then was mad because it didn't say what he wanted it to say, and reported me for 'lying' to the public.
- The parents who objected to the taxidermied animals having taxidermied genitalia because it was unseemly.
- Those kids on a school trip who got on the floor in front of a mummy and started chanting 'we worship Ra' as their teacher desperately tried to get them to leave.
- That one guy who...uh...really liked geodes. No, they were not a special interest. He really, really liked geodes.
jesepii reblogged
- This is continuation of this thread with great ideas that inspired the art: Post
- Zuko hasn't (yet??) blocked Azula, not even temporarily
- Iroh's photo is blurry because OF COURSE
- Zhao keeps editing his stuff
- I debated placing "Ozai: Seen" but it turns out he probably wouldn't even be looking at this social media
- Please help me name this lame Fire Nation social media for boomers
- Zuko's "On a quest" status is pure copium
jesepii reblogged
caffedinotte-deactivated2018020
not to be a nerd but it’s so crazy how he (Bernini) really did that from cold hard stone……. truly a spectacle, truly breathtaking, an honor to behold
callmejoey
I think you should know he was 23 when he finished this and the ass gets a lot of attention but the hand on Persepina’s side/tummy is also exquisite
before i saw the caption I knew that HAD to be bernini.
I try not to make sweeping statements but I think there’s a case to be made for bernini as the greater sculptor there’s ever been.
here’s his bust of costanza bonarelli
here’s apollo and daphne from the front, where she’s mostly human
from the back, where she’s mostly tree
and details
this is the one art form I genuinely just cannot get my brain to accept as real. I’ve watched sped-up videos of it being done, read about it, seen in-progress marble statues and I still just can’t get it to sink in or stick. My mind doesn’t want to believe that any person has ever been able to start with a big block and break little bits off of it until it looks like a finely detailed person. At some point it has no recognizable shape and they still know where and how deep they should take a chip out of it that’ll still be the right decision 50,000 fucking chips later?!?
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa has a hidden skylight for gold rays of actual light to shine down on their expressions and clothes and clouds.
jesepii reblogged
Dr. Reames,
Hello! I hope you are having a great day.
I have a bit of a specific question based on a topic I know you have discussed previously. I apologize if you have already answered this question. I know that it is widely accepted that Hephaistion was taller than Alexander, and that he may have been taller than average, as you have discussed. Are we able to estimate roughly how many feet and inches tall they each would have been, based on statistics, such as the average height for an Ancient Greek or Macedonian? Would the height difference have anything to do with Hephaistion and his family possibly hailing from a different region than Alexander, as you have also discussed previously? Thank you so much! I love reading your blog and posts; I find them very interesting and I love to learn about this history.
Food/Nutrition and Height in the Ancient World
A fair bit of ink has been split on the heights of ancient people, at different points in history, and different places. Nutrition is the obvious chief factor, especially the presence or absence of milk and meat in the diet on a regular basis—even more so than genetics. The differences in height between immigrant parents from one region of the world and their offspring raised in another region with differing diets (higher in milk and meat) shows just how much it matters.
I could go straight to approximate heights from archaeological skeletal evidence, but I want deal first with ancient Greek diets. That will give us a way to make some generalizations form skeletal evidence.
Milk: Greeks generally drank no milk after they were weaned as infants, although they did stay at the breast longer than most modern children. This was good not just for nutrition, but also health/antibodies.
Yogurt: While very popular in modern Greece, it was hard to keep in ancient Greece. That said, they did have some (mostly from goat or sheep’s milk), and the now-popular tzatziki appears to have been popular then, too.
Cheese: Greeks did eat a lot of cheese. A LOT of cheese. But much of it was hard cheese, which preserves better. And while yogurt and soft cheese are associated with greater height, hard cheeses aren’t as much. They’re better than no dairy, but aren’t going to make a huge difference. (Pretty cheese board, but obviously modern; tomatoes are native to the Americas.)
Eggs: Greeks liked eggs if they could get them, including pheasant, duck, and goose. Chickens were a late import to mainland Greece (700 and after?), kept for eggs, not their meat—and for entertainment. Cock-fighting was extremely popular, imported (along with roosters) from Persia. Eggs were a relatively cheap form of protein, and better than hard cheeses for height-gain in children…if children got to eat them (see “meat” below).
Fish: Greeks loved fish, and ate it regularly, especially if on the coast. In fact, the word “opson,” which just means a relish or dip (usually for bread), came to be associated specifically with fish. The opsóphagos, who we’d call a foodie, means “one who relishes the relish” (totally James Davidson’s pun there)—infamous as fish-snobs.😊 Fish, which included shellfish/mollusks, could be super expensive, but also dirt-cheap and more available than meat, especially dried and salted. Fresh-water fish was popular inland. A funny note: in Homer, fish was clearly “poor people’s food” while eating meat was a sign of wealth. Given the difficulty of meat acquisition, that’s not crazy. See below.
Meat: not eaten daily, and sometimes barely weekly. When it was, it was often hunted meat. The most common meat for the stewpot was hare (not rabbit) or pheasant. Things that could be caught in nets or quickly with dogs. Big game was much rarer on the table, and domestic animals weren’t killed unless for special occasions (the “fatted calf” or “fatted kid”). Ergo, the only non-game meat the average farm family might have would be sacrificial meat offered maybe once a month, for whatever festival. It was a TREAT. Thus to eat meat regularly was a sign of wealth. It was also typically reserved for the men. If you’ve seen a hare, it’s not big. A deuce of hares for the stewpot, where the men eat first, then women and children, meant the men/youths got most of the meat, whereas the women and younger children got little + broth. And mothers probably gave theirs to their kids. (Women in ancient Greece were routinely underfed, which is why 1) miscarriage was a serious issue, and 2) pudgy women were considered attractive, as it was a sign of having enough food to spare for the women to eat their fill.)
So, given the strong link between nutrition and height, and given the above brief summary of what the average ancient Greek ate, it should come as no surprise that ancient Greeks weren’t the tallest people.
But again, there would have been some difference between wealthy populations, average, and poor. Wealth wouldn’t have affected the dairy consumption, as that was cultural (milk just wasn’t consumed). But it definitely affected meat, and eggs and yogurt as well.
Why all of this matters? The evidence from burials. If we do, in fact, find burials of the “average joe” (or jane), wealthier families could afford better burials, which translates to better chances of preservation. Pauper’s graves aren’t what we find, for the most part. Ergo, I tend to regard the “average heights” of skeletal remains as the “average heights of the wealthier class.”
Another issue: shrinkage from cremation. Greeks did not uniformly practice cremation, even in the same city-state and same time period. This allows for non-cremated comparative data. But cremation does warp the bones.
So…how tall was the average ancient Greek man? About 5’6” (170 cm), ±2 inches.
In Macedonia, we might have cause to think they ran an inch or two above the southern average, certainly the elite classes, as hunted meat was more plentiful, thanks in part to greater forest cover. And the elite classes were more likely to eat sacrificial meat—especially the royals.
In Dancing with the Lion: Becoming, I mention that the king made a daily sacrifice for the health of the Macedonian people, and that meat was served at his evening supper party. The rules of hospitality would have required that the king, certainly when in residence at the palace (probably less so on the march/on campaign) entertained guests nightly. No doubt the elaborateness of the meal varied, but these nightly symposia (supper-parties) were clearly A Thing. They would have included Hetairoi (Companions) in temporary residence, any foreign dignitaries, courtiers, etc.
That wasn’t normal. That was royal. But it does mean the Argead men (and possibly the women) ate meat on a far more regular basis than anybody else. The wealthy Hetairoi (elite class or aristocrats) also likely ate meat more regularly, as hunting was also A Thing for the elite class. They also had money for better food/nutrition.
So, the Macedonians, especially the elite, were probably a little bigger than southern Greeks.
The skeleton from Tomb II at Vergina, who some consider Philip II, but many others Philip III Arrhidaios (Alexander’s half-brother), was about 5’7”.
The male skeleton from Tomb I at Vergina, who some consider Philip II, but could also have been a Gaulic grave-robber (or someone else entirely) was about 6’.
I will say that I am pretty convinced Tomb II belongs to Arrhidaios and Hadea Eurydike. I am not convinced the male skeleton in Tomb I is Philip. For one thing, it’s an insecure site. There are bits of 7 skeletons in there, thanks to the crazy tomb robbery of the Gauls during the reign of Antigonos Gonatos. The most complete are a woman, a neonate, and an adult male, but we have other neo-nates and an adolescent there too. It sounds to me like a lot of bones got thrown everywhere. The woman and full neonate are probably the original occupants. But even if the male skeleton is a full skeleton, it was found half in/out of the hole knocked in the side of the cyst tomb. Was he originally in there? Or did somebody put a sword through one of the tomb robbers to limit the pool when dividing the goods? A Spanish team has argued it’s Philip, based on a knee wound…but Philip had a THIGH wound, not a knee wound.
Anyway, I’m willing to give you Arrhidaios as about 5’7”. But the 6’ dude may or may not be Philip—or a Macedonian at all. I DID make Philip very tall in Dancing with the Lion. But the academic in me is not convinced that skeleton in Tomb I is his, despite the heroon (hero shrine) above the tomb.
So, in short, no, Hephaistion being taller is not evidence of his not being Macedonian. If anything, it might be the reverse. BUT, if he were raised in Macedonia, his nutrition was probably more akin to other elite families there, which might give him a more Macedonian height.
Finally, there are always outliers from the norm. We’re told of a young woman named Phye, used by the tyrant Peisistratos on his second return to Athens. He’d been in exile in Thrace, took a boat back to Attika, landed at Marathon, was met by his cronies with a chariot. Then he went out into the fields, where he spotted Phye…who was about 6’ tall. He dressed her up in armor, put her in the chariot, and had her drive him into Athens as “Athena.”
He should have recruited her to play basketball.
But it shows even if Hephaistion were born in Athens (as Sabine Müller thinks), he could still have been taller than Alexander…who apparently was short. But shorter than average might still be 5’4”. So even if Hephaistion HAD been average (5’6”), he’d have been taller.
jesepii reblogged
does anyone have any hacks for how to actually read scholarly stuff & absorb it?
i'm trying to read these essays & stuff in a class i'm really interested in yet i can't physically focus on it enough to actually process what's going on
pomodoro timer for readings is a life saver
Honestly I tend to just break the reading up into thirds and do it over the course of the day so im not cramming info into my brain and getting nothing out of it
First, do whatever you need to do to stay alert/focus: beverage of choice, good lighting, etc.
Second, don't get lost in the details, aim for getting a general understanding of the text. Summarize the text in your own words. Be sure to include anything that was innovative, striking, or controversial - and anything you might want to explore further.
I jot down unfamiliar academic words in a little notebook I keep for the purpose, and add the definitions for future reference.
Try breaking the long sentences into short sentences on scrap paper.
Genuinely good advice. Just a small addition:
I find it useful to read difficult or convoluted sentences aloud to myself if I’m somewhere where that’s appropriate. It helps me grasp the meaning more easily. (I also do this to help remember names when I’m reading history, particularly if it’s in a language other than English.)
jesepii reblogged
A Brief List of Resources for Classical Studies:
- A database enabling you to search for keywords in article titles from c.160 Classics related journals. Provides a link to an abstract or full text version if one exists online.
- Annotated list of Reference Websites
- Online database and resources for studying Women and Gender in the ancient world.
- “Original electronic project aiming at collecting, recording, documenting, presenting and promoting the historical data that testify to the presence of Hellenic culture throughout time and space.”
- A showcase of digital and print resources for Classical studies.
- Books, Magazines, Blogs, Travel. All Archaeology related.
- Portal website on the Ptolomatic (holla!) Empire.
- Information website about the above.
- Basically a portal site and resource for information on all things Virgil.
- Portal and Resource. Link is in French, but you can have the website translated to any language.
- “On-line course supplement for students and teachers of the ancient and medieval worlds.”
- “The Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology is part of the Higher Education Academy.”
- “an educational charity introducing the languages and culture of the ancient world to UK state schools in order to enrich the curriculum.”
- “ information on Roman law sources and literature, the teaching of Roman law, and the persons who study Roman law.”
- “World Wide Web resource for Egyptological information.”
ABZU:
- “guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world”.
Stoa:
- A consortium for electronic publication in the Humanities, including most notably: Suda-On-Line English translation of the Suda, a 10th century Byzantine historical encyclopedia. Demos: Classical Athenian Democracy; a practical description of how the various institutions of Athenian democracy actually worked. Metis Bruce Hartzler’s collection of interactive QTVR panoramas for ancient Greek archaeological sites. And Medicina Antiqua A resource for the study of medicine in the Greek and Roman world.
- From the Stone Age through the Modern Period from The Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), a non-profit cultural institution based in Athens, Greece.
- Website of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture with sites on the museums, monuments, and archaeological sites of Greece.
- Website of the American School of Classical Studies at Althens’ excavations of the Athenian Agora.
- Concise information on projects applying computing technologies to Classical/Ancient Historical research.
- Online scholarly community of teachers and students who share an interest in the ancient Roman world; images, texts, history and many other resources.
- Recent journal articles and book in the Classics. Type general search term under “Alle Felder” (All Fields) or specific “Autor” (Author) and hit “Suche Starten” (Start search).“
- University of North Carolina. Cartographic resources, including a collection of free digital maps for educational use.
- A website by “enthusiasts” rather than scholars but very interesting!
- Databases and study tools.
- Timely open-access, peer-reviewed reviews of current scholarly work in the field of classical studies (including archaeology). This site is the authoritative archive of BMCR’s publication, from 1990 to the present.
- It investigates the performance of ancient texts in any medium and any period, from Greek tragedy to Roman epic, from stage to screen, from antiquity to the present day.
- Contains digitised versions of a quarter fo the British Museum’s Greek manuscripts.
- A blog which, much like this, presents a variety of online resources for the Ancient world.
- A website which seeks to store virtual Greek and Latin epigraphy of the ancient world, through a federation of multiple archive banks.
- Litterature and Object databases.
- A website devoted to studying ways in which 3D digital technologies can be applied to the capture, representation and interpretation of sculpture from all periods and cultures. Up to now, 3D technologies have been used in fruitful ways to represent geometrically simple artifacts such as pottery or larger-scale structures such as buildings and entire cities. With some notable exceptions, sculpture has been neglected by digital humanists.
- The open access Canadian Journal of Philosophy and Humanities.
- A “ principal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, literatures, and civilizations.”
- Access to a wide variety of resources about Classics in Canada including graduate programs, and the monthly bulletin.
- The works of St. Thomas Aquinas in Latin.
- An on-line reprint of Augustine: Confessions, with commentary by James J. O'Donnell.
LANGUAGE RESOURCES:
- Pronunciation Guide; Accentuation Drills; Vocabulary Drills; and much more.
- The news of the world in Ancient Greek- a great way to learn and practice the language.
Quick look-up of Greek and Latin words across all of the Perseus lexica.
NUMISMATICS [COINAGE]:
- Database on more than 600,000 objects.
- Coin hoards of the Roman Republic Online archive.
- Similar to CHRR but coins of the Empire.
- A standard typology of the provincial coinage of the Roman Empire.
- A series of resources on Roman coinage.
- The Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum is a British AcademyResearch Project, the purpose of which is to publish illustrated catalogues of Greek coins in public and private collections in the British Isles.
MANUSCRIPTS:
- Princeton’s Modern language translations of Byzantine sources, digitized Greek manuscripts.
- Pinakes s'ouvre à de nouvelles collaborations institutionnelles et accueille maintenant des projets de recherches sur les manuscrits de divers domaines. On trouvera l'ensemble des partenaires et des financements passés ou actuels sur la page Colophon.
- A detailed biliography on Greek codicology.
Resource Lists by School: All links are to Classics, or Antiquities portals for more resource lists.
- Oxford Libraries
- Cambridge Libraries
- University of Toronto
- Berkeley Classics Department
- Library of Congress: Classics and Medieval History
- Virginia Tech: Electronic Antiquity
- Brock University: Classics Research Guide
- Cambridge Ancient History Series
- Williams.
- University of Texas
- Princeton University
Text Databases [Via Oxford]:
- Antiquity
- American Journal of Archaeology
- Archaeology Magazine
- Arion
- Cambridge Archaeological Journal
- Classical Philology
- Classical Quarterly
- Classical Review
- Eranos
- Greece & Rome
- Journal of Near Eastern Studies
- Journal of Field Archaeology
- Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies
- Journal of Roman Archaeology
- Kernos
- Phoenix
- Pomoerium
- Syllecta Classica
- Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphie
Gateways:
- Argos - search-engine for all major classical resources
- Classics Section of the Intute gateway.
- Voice of the Shuttle Classics Page from University of California, Santa Barbara
- Classical and Biblical Literary Research Tools compiled by Jack Lynch at Penn
- Reading Classics Gateway
- Kirke Katalog der Internetressourcen für die Klassische Philologie
NOTE: So I compiled a list of some of my favorite classics sites to use. I also put in links to other school’s departments and libraries. Almost all Universities which have Classics departments have resources lists. If you want to add to the list, please do!
All of the schools above have much more extensive lists for you to use! I made this list in little over half an hour, so there is much room to be expanded on.
NEW ADDITIONS:
Latin Library at Packard Humanities Institute - http://latin.packhum.org/ (PHI numbers standard way to refer to Latin texts, look at the ones Perseus uses - it’s PHI).
Brepolis - http://www.brepolis.net/ - may need to access this via your institution or its ezproxy (includes the Library of Latin Texts A and B LLT-A and LLT-B and many other interesting resources).
L’Annee Philologique - http://www.annee-philologique.com - another one in which you’ll have to use via your institution’s ezproxy or other online database (we use ebscohost). Many journals you submit articles to expect references to other journals use the abbreviations in APh.
For databases of journals, first start at JSTOR - http://www.jstor.org - again, institutional access is required.
((Via: monumentum))
The Latin Library - A collection of Classical and Medieval texts in Latin, organized by author.
The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook - A collection of mostly primary source texts translated into English. Not comprehensive, but covers a broad range of topics.
((Via: hodie-scolastica))
Brief.
actually a dream. a long dream tho.
jesepii reblogged
jesepii reblogged
Ares is not the protector of women in greek mythology.
He is never presented as such in any source, there is no evidence such a role was ever assigned to him in any account, and as far as I'm aware this popular yet unattested assertion is born from the echo-chambers of tumblr. In fact quite the opposite could be argued. CW for sexual assault.
This baffling claim seems to originate from a sort of shallow examination of the way Ares "behaves in myth", and the following arguments are the most frequently presented:
1. Ares protects his daughter Alkippe from assault, and is therefore morally opposed to rape. (Apollodorus 3.180, Pausanias 1.21.4, Suidas "Areios pagos", attributed to Hellanikos)
Curiously this argument is never applied to, for example: Apollo for defending his mother Leto from Tytios, Herakles for defending Hera from Porphyrion (or his wife Deianeira from Nessos), or Zeus for defending his sister Demeter from Iasion (in the versions where he attacks her), among other examples. The multiple accounts of rape of the previously mentioned figures did not conflict with these stories in greek thought: they're defending family members or women otherwise close to them. This sort of behaviour is not uncommon, even in contemporary times, e.g. a warrior has no ethical problem killing men, but would not want his own family or loved ones to be killed. The same goes here for sexual assault.
2. There are no surviving accounts of Ares sexually assaulting anybody.
The idea that the ancient greeks pictured that, among all the gods, Ares was the only one who shied away from committing rape borders on ridiculous. In this case absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The majority of surviving records of Ares' unions are presented in a genealogical manner, and do not go into details about the nature of said unions. This is by no means uncommon for most mythographers, where most sexual encounters are presented as such, and details of specifics are to be found elsewhere. However, common motifs that are found in other accounts of rape also appear in stories concerning Ares' relationships, e.g. tropes like shape-shifting/the use of disguises, the victim being a huntress, secrecy, and the disposal of the concieved child, are to be found in the stories of Phylonome and Astyoche respectively:
Φυλονόμη Νυκτίμου καὶ Ἀρκαδίας θυγάτηρ ἐκυνήγει σὺν τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι: Ἄρης δ᾽ ἐν σχήματι ποιμένος ἔγκυον ἐποίησεν. ἡ δὲ τεκοῦσα διδύμους παῖδας καὶ φοβουμένη τὸν πατέρα ἔρριψεν εἰς τὸν Ἐρύμανθο
"Phylonome, the daughter of Nyktimos and Arkadia, was wont to hunt with Artemis; but Ares, in the guise of a shepherd, got her with child. She gave birth to twin children and, fearing her father, cast them into the [River] Erymanthos." (Pseudo-Plutarch, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories, 36)
οἳ δ᾽ Ἀσπληδόνα ναῖον ἰδ᾽ Ὀρχομενὸν Μινύειον, τῶν ἦρχ᾽ Ἀσκάλαφος καὶ Ἰάλμενος υἷες Ἄρηος οὓς τέκεν Ἀστυόχη δόμῳ Ἄκτορος Ἀζεΐδαο, παρθένος αἰδοίη ὑπερώϊον εἰσαναβᾶσα Ἄρηϊ κρατερῷ: ὃ δέ οἱ παρελέξατο λάθρῃ: τοῖς δὲ τριήκοντα γλαφυραὶ νέες ἐστιχόωντο.
"And they that dwelt in Aspledon and Orchomenus of the Minyae were led by Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares, whom, in the palace of Actor, son of Azeus, Astyoche, the honoured maiden, conceived of mighty Ares, when she had entered into her upper chamber; for he lay with her in secret" (Homer, Iliad 2. 512 ff)
In neither of these cases is a verb explicitly denoting rape used, though it is heavily implied by the context. The focus of the action is on the conception of sons, the nature of the interaction is secondary.
Other examples are found among the daughters of the river Asopos, who where (and here there's no confusion) ravished and kidnapped by different gods to different parts of the greek world, where they found local lines through children borne to their abductors and serve as local eponyms. Surviving fragments from Corinna of Tanagra tell:
"Asopos went to his haunts . . from you halls . . into woe . . Of these [nine] daughters Zeus, giver of good things, took his [Asopos'] child Aigina . . from her father's [house] . . while Korkyra and Salamis and lovely Euboia were stolen by father Poseidon, and Leto's son is in possession of Sinope and Thespia . . [and Tanagra was seized by Hermes] . . But to Asopos no one was able to make the matter clear, until . . [the seer Akraiphen reveals to him] 'And of your daughters father Zeus, king of all, has three; and Poseidon, ruler of the sea, married three; and Phoibos [Apollon] is master of the beds of two of them, and of one Hermes, good son of Maia. For so did the pair Eros and the Kypris persuade them, that they should go in secret to your house and take your nine daughters." - heavily fragmented papyrus. Corinna, Fragment 654
"For your [Tanagra's] sake Hermes boxed against Ares." Corinna, Fragment 666
It seems that, similarly to the myths of Beroe or Marpessa, the abducted maiden is fought over by two competing "suitors", and though we can infer that the outcome of the story is that Hermes gets to keep Tanagra, apparently by beating Ares at boxing, we don't actually know what happened or how it happened. In any case, Ares does mate with another daughter of Asopos, Harpina, who bears him Oinomaos according to some versions (Paus. 5.22.6) (Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, A125.3) (Diodorus Siculus, Library 4. 73. 1). There is little reason to suppose this encounter wasn't pictured as an abduction like the rest of her sisters.
The blatant statement that each of his affairs was envisioned as consensual is simply not true.
3. He was worshipped under the epithet Gynaicothoinas "feasted by women"
This was a local cult that existed in Tegea, the following reason is given:
There is also an image of Ares in the marketplace of Tegea. Carved in relief on a slab it is called Gynaecothoenas. At the time of the Laconian war, when Charillus king of Lacedaemon made the first invasion, the women armed themselves and lay in ambush under the hill they call today Phylactris. When the armies met and the men on either side were performing many remarkable exploits, the women, they say, came on the scene and put the Lacedaemonians to flight. Marpessa, surnamed Choera, surpassed, they say, the other women in daring, while Charillus himself was one of the Spartan prisoners. The story goes on to say that he was set free without ransom, swore to the Tegeans that the Lacedaemonians would never again attack Tegea, and then broke his oath; that the women offered to Ares a sacrifice of victory on their own account without the men, and gave to the men no share in the meat of the victim. For this reason Ares got his surname. (Paus. 8.48.4-5)
As emphasised by Georgoudi in To Act, Not Submit: Women’s Attitudes in Situations of War in Ancient Greece (part of the highly recommendable collection of essays Women and War in Antiquity), "it is not necessary to see the operation of an invitation in the bestowal of the epithet Γυναικοθοίνας on Ares". The epithet is ambiguous, and can be translated both as "Host of the banquet of women" or "[He who is] invited to the banquet of women". In any case no act of divine intervention occurs, and the main reason for the women's act of devotion lies principally in recognising their decisive role in the routing of the Lakedaimonians. They invite Ares to the banquet, the men are excluded.
Also this a local epithet that isn't found anywhere else in Greece. As such it would be worth reminding that not every Ares is Gynaicothoinas, in the same way not every Zeus is Aithiopian, not every Demeter Erinys, or not every Artemis of Ephesos.
4. He is the patron god of the Amazons
He was considered progenitor of the Amazons because of their proverbial warlike nature and love of battle, the same reason he was associated with another barbarian tribe, the Thracians. In this capacity he was also appointed as a suitable father/ancestor for other violent and savage characters who generally function as antagonists (e.g. Kyknos, Diomedes of Thrace, Tereos of Thrace, Oinomaos, Agrios and Oreios, Phlegyas, Lykos etc.). Also he was by no means the only god connected with the Amazons (they were especially linked to Artemis, see Religious Cults Associated With the Amazons by Florence Mary Bennett, if only for the bibliography).
Similarly Poseidon was considered patron and ancestor of the Phaiakians mainly because of their mastery over the art of seafaring, and was curiously also credited in genealogies as father to monsters and other disreputable figures.
On another note I have found no sources that claim he taught his amazon daughters how to fight, as I've seen often mentioned (though I admit I'd love to be proven wrong on that point).
Finally, the last reason Ares is never portrayed as a protector of women is because of his divine assignation itself:
The uncountable references to his love of bloodshed and man-slaying don't just stop short of the battlefield, but continue on to the conclusion and intended purpose of most waged wars in antiquity: the sacking of the city. The title Sacker of Cities as an epithet of Ares (though it is by no means exclusive to him) is encountered numerous times and in different variations (eg. τειχεσιπλήτης or πτολίπορθος), and the meaning behind the epithet is plain. Though it is hard to summarise without being reductionist, the sacking of a city entails the plundering of all its goods, the slaughtering of its men, and the sistematic raping and enslavement of the surviving women (for the most famous depictions see The Iliad, The Trojan Women or The Women of Trachis, to name a small few of the literary references). There is little need to emphasise that war as concieved of in ancient greece, especifically the aspects of war Ares is most often associated with, directly entail sexual violence against women as one of the main concerns. The multiple references to Ares being an unloved or disliked deity are because of this, because war is horrifying (not because his daddy is a big old meany who hates him for no reason, Zeus makes very clear the motive for his contempt in the Iliad (5. 889-891): "Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar. To me you are most hateful of all gods who hold Olympos. Forever quarreling is dear to your heart, wars and battles.")
Ares was only the protector of women inasmuch as he could be averted or repelled:
"There is no clash of brazen shields but our fight is with the war god, a war god ringed with the cries of men, a savage god who burns us; grant that he turn in racing course backward out of our country’s bounds, to the great palace of Amphitrite or where the waves of the thracian sea deny the stranger safe anchorage. Whatsoever escapes the night at last the light of day revisits; so smite him, Father Zeus, beneath your thunderbolt, for you are the lord of the lightning, the lightning that carries fire. (Oedipus Tyrannos, 190-202)
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All that being said, this is a post about Ares as attested and percieved in ancient sources, made especifically in response to condecending and self-victimising statements about how "uhmmm, actually, in greek mythology Ares was a super-feminist himbo who was worshipped as the protector of women and was hated by his family for no reason, you idiot". It is factually incorrect. HOWEVER, far be it from me to tell anyone how they have to interact with this deity. Be it your retellings, your headcannons or your own personal religious attachments and beliefs towards Ares, those are your own provinces and prerogatives, and not what was being discussed here at all (I personally love retellings where Ares and Aphrodite goof around, or art where he plays with his daughters, or headcannons that showcase his more noble sides, etc.)
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I've seen that other people on tumblr have made similar posts, the ones I've seen were by @deathlessathanasia and @en-theos . I have no idea how to link their posts, but they're really good so go check them out on their pages!
jesepii reblogged
i will give tiktok one concession and that is that it has spawned a comment that contains a phrase that i think of often at relevant moments: pack it up boys we've made a social blunder
(from a video featuring someone's father/grandfather)
is anyone else reading "pack it up boys we've made a social blunder" in the voice of the lead penguin guy from Madagascar
WHO NEEDS MIDDLE BITS WHEN YOU CAN HAVE ✨ 𝒔 𝒄 𝒆 𝒏 𝒆 𝒔 ✨
jesepii reblogged
sure I could become a slut. but you see, I'm scared
a whore in theory but not in practice if you will