[lit-ideas] The Labours of Herakles -- and why they are still relevant to us
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:19:05 EDT
HERAKLEAN MASCULINITY
I wasn't sure where Augeias kept his stable of oxen. I thought it was on the
Egean, but McCreery rightly corrects me. It was on the Ionian, and
poetically adds:
>Neptune's stables are swept out
>regularly by the tides.
Now, it strikes me that Herakles did not think of asking his father
(Poseydon) to have the tides of the IONIAN swept the dirty stables.
See:
_Elis, Greece (District) - LoveToKnow 1911_
(http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Elis,_Greece_(District))
ELIS, or ELEIA, an ancient district of southern Greece, bounded on the N. by
Achaea, E. by Arcadia, S. by Messenia, and W. by the Ionian Sea. ...
I also found out that there is a Greek constellation of Stars that the
Greeks call "Augean stable" because it is a 'stable' one.
This task on the part of Herakles has been minimized by some, but it must be
granted that re-routing the flow of _two_ rivers (Alpheos and Phythos) _was_
some task.
Incidentally, I have a little manual on man (or Masculinity) by a university
professor, ("Masculinity: Historical Aspects") and one of his silly surveys
to his students was to ask who they considered to be the 'perfect man'.
Rather than Atlas, or Achilles, or Adam (not that I would have chosen him --
Achilles, maybe), they seemed to have agreed on "Hercules".
My favourite statue of Hercules -- which does look rather perfect -- lies in
the British Art Centre in Yale. The original is in the stately home in
Wiltshire, England. It is said that the sculptor -- following the old
tradition of
the Greeks regarding Zeuxis -- who combined the bodies of the six most
beautiful women --, went to Woolwich and combined the bodies of six _boxers_.
There is a rough look to the statue, but possibly fitting for a man who
could deal with so many things. (I love his separating Africa from Europe by
crushing the Rock of Gibraltar with a maze -- "The Pillars of Herakles -- and
the
"Via Heraklea" that unites Gibraltar with the land of my ancestors in "Villa
Speranza", Bordighera, and onto Rome --- is my idea of an idyllic road to
hike, bike, or convertible-drive.
Cheers
JL
JL
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