[lit-ideas] Re: Sexual Dimorphism -- and Greek Myth
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:59:13 EDT
Thanks to R. Paul for corrections and refs. to Hesiod and Pindar.
"Order, order! Athena sprang from the brow of _Zeus_, fully formed and
armed, after one of his fellow gods had struck him on the forehead to relieve
him
of a fierce headache that came upon him after he had swallowed Metis, with
whom he'd been fooling around. Zeus feared, I'm not sure why, that one of
Metis' children would turn out to be more powerful than he, hence the
precautionary ingestion; however, Metis was alredy pregnant with Athena."
Mm. Nicely convoluted -- to my taste.
I read from Hesiod:
"[Metis] straightway conceived
Pallas Athene; and [Zeus] gave
her birth by way of his head"
"he d'autika Pallad' Athenen
kusato, ten men etikte [Zeus]
par koruthen ep'okhthesin"
-- where the word in the Loeb translation is 'head', which the Liddell/Scott
has as 'head'
_http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%
3Aentry%3D%2359239_
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=#59239)
From 'korus': 'head, top, hence crown, top of the head, also peak of a
mountain, summit, extremity, tip.
But I take R. Paul's word that that means 'brow' (as in 'highbrow'?)
It was nice to learn that Temis was already 'with child' when Zeus 'sallowed
her down suddenly' as Hesiod rather directly puts it.
Note that Hesiod has Metis "conceiving" Athena ("kusato"). While Zeus "gave
[Athena's] birth by way of his head".
Quite a miracle, or as Romans would say, 'legend'. Will consult Pindar -- I
only have (so far) the Loeb second volume -- first on the way.
Metis seems to have been one of those boring deities named after an abstract
idea -- in this case, "Thought" -- cfr. Sir Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie
Queene" where "Speranza" is the name of one of those boring deities.
Cheers,
JL
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