Tag Archives: thebes

Notes on Hekate of Boeotian mythos

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In Thebes, there was a woman named Galinthias. She was a midwife who delivered Herakles from the womb of Alkmene, her childhood friend. Alkmene’s pregnancy offended Hera, and cursed the young woman’s birth pains to never cease. Galinthias, worried her friend would be driven mad, first appealed to Hekate, who concluded that the curse was placed by another Deathless One, and She could not remove those, but perhaps appealing to the right Deity would earn the sympathies of the one Who could. Deciding No-One higher up than the Moirai, for even the other Theoi were bound to Their tapestry, Galinthias then appealed to the Moirai, Who Themselves were becoming exhaused by the sound of the laborous woman’s screaming, and removed the curse in order to hear Themselves think.

When Hera realised Alkemene had given birth to a son, Herakles, She spoke up that Her own curse had become removed because a silly girl took advantage of the Moirai in Their confusion. The Moirai concluded that Hera was technmically correct (the best kind of correct) and it was decided that Galinthias’ fate was to be transformed into a ferret, a creature that looks most absurd in mating and birth labour. Hekate, though, was sympathetic to Galinthias and the girl’s desires to remove Hera’s curse, and did not fault the girl for failing to discover that it was Hera who cast the curse, and therefore only Hera who could be appealed to lift it. Out of kindness, Hekate made the ferret one of Her sacred workers on Gaia’s face, and in Thebes, the animal was held in esteem as the nurse of Herakles, their native Heros.

By Hesiod’s account, Ouranos and Gaia begat Koios (the Titan Theos of the North, also “the Inquirer”) and Phoibê (the “Bright”, the Titan Theon of prophecy); Koios and Phoibê begat Perses (the Destroyer) and Asteria, the Titan Theon of the Stars, astrology, and necromancy. It is Perses and Asteria Who are the parents of Hekate.

As per the playwright Aeschylus, Phoibê is regarded as the previous oracular deity of Delphi, later succeeding Her reign and bestowing Delphi as a gift to Apollon, Her grandson via Leto. Phoibê is also associated with the moon. Asteria, after the Titan war, was pursued by Zeus, but She did not want Him, and so first transformed to a quail, then lept into the sea, swam out, and became the island of Delos, where Apollon was born.

It is through Asteria that Hekate inherited the gift of necromancy and oracles from the dead. Some ancients also may have believed that Asteria was also worshipped as a goddess of prophetic dreams.

Though Hesiod names the mother of Kirke as Perseis (Destroyer) and Her father as Helios; Diodoros Siculus names Kirke’s parentage as that of Hekate and Aeëtes. Some also regard Perseis as an epithet of Hekate, though it seems Hesiod gives Perseis a genealogy distinct from Hekate, and Perseis’ mother is Tethys (“Nurse”) and Okeanos. It’s therefore easy to see Perseis and Hekate as one-in-the-same, as these themes are recurring and may be considered too lofty for an Okeanid. Light bearing. Destroyer. Nurse. Sight.

If one is to syncretise Kirke then as a daughter of Hekate Perseis, this undoubted maintains Hekate’s associations with practising witchcraft rather than merely casting spells and curses Herself for the mortals who supplicate Her.

By Hesiod, Kirke is the mother of Odysseus’ immortal son Latinus, father/ruler of the Tyrsenoi, who have since been identified with the Etruscans, and also Telegonos, Whose story is the subject of the now-lost Telegony, which only exists in summary.

The Scholia of Pindar seem to identify Hekate and Perseis with the name Khariklo (“Graceful Spinner”) who is identified in these notes as the daughter of Perses and Okeanos — and also a daughter of Apollon. Even without meditating on this, this gives the appearance of further linking Hekate and Apollon.

These notes also revive previous themes, as Khariklo is identified as the wife of the Centaros Kheiron, the mentor of a young Dionysos and also Asklepios.

Artemis Eukleia

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“Fair Fame” kept coming back to me as something to focus on this syncretic conundrum — for starters, what is this supposed to mean, “fair fame”? I’m surprised that it didn’t occur to me earlier, since I fancy myself a buff of archaic English.

An archaic definition of “fair” is “a beautiful or beloved woman“, and though the word itself is of Germanic origin, this particular use probably comes from the French “belle” and the time of the English ruling and leisure classes being predominantly French.

Kharis Eukleia would therefore have domain over the fame of women, or of women famous for being especially beautiful. This could therefore easily tie in to Artemis’ role as a protector of women, even if it may be at odds with modern sensibilities that Artemis is a rugged, boyish, feminist goddess who doesn’t need to worry about society’s notion of beauty.

Still, this syncretism of Artemis and Eukleia is not the only face of Artemis in Boeotia, but at a glance seems to be one unique to Boeotia.

Boeotian Theoi: Ares

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CULT IN BOIOTIA (CENTRAL GREECE)

I) THEBES Chief City of Boiotia

Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 10. 5 :
“The fountain [of Ismene, near Thebes in Boiotia] which they say is sacred to Ares, and they add that a Drakon was posted by Ares as a sentry over the spring.”

While I can agree with the sentiment that to deny War, or at least downplay it as one of Ares’ domains is to essentially revere a deity completely different from the one recognised throughout ancient Hellas, I’m also none too fond of this apparent trend of recognising the spear and denying the helm and shield. Both the “KGA [Kinder Gentler Ares]” and the “short-tempered … foul-mouthed … ultimate redneck” are both false images of the God.

While masculinity is certainly within Ares’ realm, as well as a protector, to characterise Him as merely a “protector of women” —in His mythos, unusually for a Hellenic God, He laid with no woman, mortal or immortal, by rape or abduction, and indeed, slew Halirrhothios for the attempted rape of Ares’ daughter Alkippe— he also rushed to the aid of His own son, Kyknos, when Kyknos was losing in battle with Herakles. He is a protector of those who need Him most; he’s not the father who would throw a boy into a cruel world unprepared and himself unprepared to give the boy any more aid than a gruff order to “man up”.

Also, He is the father of the Amazones (with the Nymphe Harmonia), and several named Amazones were in His especial favour — and unless you’ve been watching Steeve Reeves films, Amazones are clearly in no need of protection from mortal men. He is a patron of those who are independent, and who will not be owned or dominated by another.

He arrested the man Sisyphos, who dared to imprison Thanatos, preventing the death of mortal man. He purveys over not just civil order, but natural order.

While Ares’ patronage is, first and foremost, to warriors and soldiers, to concentrate on this and hypermasculinity is to somehow deny so many dazzling facets of the God that have little to do with that. It’s like how Apollon is a patron of music, but that’s hardly all Apollon is about.


In the town of Tanagra, the city’s naiad, Tanagra, was beloved of Ares. Corrina wrote of a boxing match between Ares and Hermes for the affections of Tanagra, with Ares as victor.

In Thebes, he was a lover of Erinys Telphousia (often understood as a guise of Demeter), and She bore Him the Ismenian Dragon, whose teeth were sowed by Kadmos and from them grew —full-formed and armoured— the Spartoi. Kadmos then earned Ares’ wrath, but was in Athene’s favour. Athene, as a war deity, has always struck me as a deity more interested in warfare and strategy, while Ares contrasts this as a lower-ranking officer, or at least one of very basic strategies that may win many battles, but could ultimately lose the war because of poor planning. The offspring of a bond between Ares and one of the Erinyes (“Furies”, to the Romans; “Dark Ones” and keepers of the gates to the Underworld’s Dungeons of the Damned) was a monster that Kadmos had to slay in order to reach the spring and found the city of Thebes — there’s that “short-tempered” warrior for you, a half-literate Freeper standing in the way of progress, and illustrating the folly of mixing war and retribution. And, in direct relation to the founding of Thebes, it’s clear that the fruits of Ares had to be destroyed for the city to even begin to happen by Athene’s will, which then can symbolically suggest that while Ares’ role as a war-god is important, what He does best is by no means a permanent solution, which is what Athene is there to offer.

Ancient Hellenes had mixed feelings toward Ares; He was necessary to protecting a town from attack and His favour necessary for winning any war, but His constant battle companions are Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror) — Ares has just as much a place in the events of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United $tates and the repugnant “Patriot Act” as he does in any just battle. Even as Aphrodite’s lover, He and the Goddess were caught in a literal trap net set by Hephaistos, exposing Ares and all his machismo to humiliation. And where Athene is clearly a learned general in the mythos, Ares is best described in the mythos as a soldier, one who takes orders — one who thinks the way He’s been trained to; and sure, the gods are not literally as They are in the mythos, but the mythos offers, at the very least, a grain of truth about Their natures.

I admit, I’m not especially fond of Ares, but where people who will gladly sing praises for their own rose-tinted versions of a swaggering warrior full of braggadocio who is somehow immune to being bested, much less shamed by “weaker” (which they claim is the true nature of “effeminate”) men, I give what is due to a warrior-god who is a doting father to His favourite son, and to the Amazones, and who reminds man of civil and natural order, but a deity who keeps company of some of the most dreadful daimones, and whose mythos can often serve as a warning against unbridled lust and against unbridled ego.

The Story of Pindar

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Pindar was born in the 65th Olympiad in Cynoscephalae, a village outside Thebes. His mother’s name was Cleodice and no-one can seem to decide if his father’s name was Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus. Unlike Hesiod, he seems to be from the ancient Boeotian equivalent of a bourgeoisie background, and clearly this is one of those things that hasn’t changed about Western Society, as unlike Hesiod, he included practically none of his family’s dirty laundry in his own work. Pindar’s got class, so there’s not much I can goof on (affectionately, of course). There’s a legend that his gift for “honey-like verse” came from having his mouth stung by a bee as a youth, and that’s seriously all anybody really knows about ol’ high-falutin’ Pindar until he was maybe twenty — of course, if you think about it, it’s far more impressive that Hesiod, being from a lower class tier, made it past that age, this was a time when the mathematically-average lifespan was 40-ish, but if one could make it past the age of 15-ish, when the typical life expectancy was around 55-ish and the higher your class, the more likely you were to live into your seventies1 — and making it past the age of twenty at a time prior to even 18th Century medicine is a far more impressive feat when you’re a toiler than when you’re from “elegant learning”. In poetry, Pindar was tutored by Corinna of Tanagra (a fellow Boeotian) and also relocated to Athens to be further instructed by Lasos of Hermione. By the age of twenty, he was commissioned for his first Victory Ode by a wealthy family from Thessaly. At about the age of thirty, Pindar was at the Pythian games where he met chariot winner and Sicilian prince Thrasybulus, nephew of Theron of Acragas, and they became lifelong friends thereafter — it’s unfortunate that this seems to be one of the less slashtastic ancient Hellenic male-male friendships, but maybe I’m just letting my perversion show with that comment.

Er… *ahem!* Carry on!

So, it seems Pindar was a triple-threat lyric poet; he wrote the lyrics, he wrote the instrumental accompaniment, and he choreographed. In modern terms: Pindar was one melodramatic script away from being The Ultimate Theatre Geek™. Sometimes he’d train performers at his hime in Thebes, but he’d also get commissioned by patrons of the arts and would travel all over the ancient Hellenic world to put on shows. He was practically a celebrity, and like modern celebrities, there was sometimes rivalry for jobs, but Pindar’s got class — sure, some of his poetry reflects these rivalries, but only in vague metaphors, like with ravens and apes and shit like that. Even today, people speculate who this was really all about, but like I said, Pindar’s got class.

Still, Pindar got mixed up in politics. Once, after writing praise of Athens, the rival city of his home city of Thebes, fined him 5000 drachmae, and rumour has it that Athens responded with a gift of twice that. Other hometown drama llamas were ridden in on by the fact that he was a friend of Sicilian tyrant Hieron, the subject of one of Pindar’s first Pythian ode, and it was probably all this bullshit that later led him to write another ode denouncing all tyrants. It’s also been suggested all over the place (and at times seems rather apparent) that Pindar used his fame and his odes as a vehicle for advancing both personal interests and those of his friends. Alright, maybe Pindar’s class is limited, but still, man’s got it; after all, of his personal life, we have very little: his wife was Megacleia, and his son was named Daiphantus, and he had two daughtrers, Eumetis and Protomache. He lived in Thebes near the shrine of the oracle Alkmáon.

Pindar died at about the age of eighty2, and his daughters took home his ashes to Thebes, and the Thebans, despite visiting much drama upon the man in life, regarded his house as one of the city’s landmarks, a practical tourist attraction, and it is said that Alexander the Great so revered Pindar (possibly in no small part to the favourable writings he made of Alexandros I of Makedon) that when he had the city burned in the name of “building Hellenic unity”, Pindar’s house was the only one in the area left intact. Delphi’s Temple of Apollon displayed Pindar’s iron chair that he sat upon during the Theoxenia festival, and one of his daughters claimed to have inscribed a posthumous verse of Pindar’s honouring Persephone.

1: Seriously, in nearly 3000 years, we’ve only really gained about twenty years in life expectancy for the average person, and a statistically insignificant increase in life expectancy for higher classes, and the important factor hasn’t been in prolonging the lives of the elderly, but in all but eradicating paediatric mortality. Remember maths class: “average” figures for ancient life span account all the millions of people dying before the age of eighteen, which skews averages making it look like hardly anybody would see the age of thirty-five, when this is clearly bull.
2: Seriously, octogenarians don’t seem like that big a deal now, do they?
[Also, apologies for dragging this "week" out so long — it's mainly been allergies, which have been bad enough this last couple weeks that I've been feeling muscle weakness and will wake up practically choking on my own snot. Wasn't nearly so bad this morning. ☺]