Category Archives: Greek Gods

Helen of Troy

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Helen of Troy should really be called Helen of Sparta since she was born in Sparta and was a Spartan princess. She was also a Mycenaen – part of the culture that swept into Bronze Age Crete. This period is probably fifty years after the period I am writing about but I did research into it anyway. We know a bit more about the Spartans and they were supposed to have been influenced by the Minoan civilization.

With that said, most of the Mediterranean cultures were influenced by this great civilization – maybe not in accordance with the wishes of the leaders since in Sparta laws were passed forbidding perfume, cosmetics and jewelry. However, girls were also educated at state expense and encouraged to be physically active. They also married later than many of their peers in other countries so maternal and infant mortality was less. They were also the scandal of Classical Greece since the women had so much more freedom than the poor wives in Athens. Although named for a Goddess, Athena, the women were kept closeted in their homes weaving with no company but slaves and other women. Even in Sparta, though, patriarchy ruled and the women had much less influence than those in Crete.

But I digress.

I think everyone knows the basic story:  that Helen was the most beautiful woman of her age. She was married to Menelaus, brother to Agamemnon. She was either abducted or chose to run away with Paris. (It doesn’t much matter if she was innocent. For most of the intervening centuries she has been considered a harlot.)They fled to Troy and a great war was fought that lasted more than ten years.  The war is the basis of the Iliad. As everyone knows, Troy was considered a myth until Schliemann excavated it.

Here’s what I did not know about Helen.

Another familiar myth is Leda and the Swan. Zeus takes the form of a swan to rape Leda. The child created by this union was Helen. Her beauty was frequently ascribed to her divine paternity. Because Zeus took the form of a swan, Helen was born from an egg. I am not kidding. Besides the painting that shows her rising from an egg, an artifact reputed to be a piece of the eggshell was a sacred object.

Since everybody in these stories are related, Helen’s half-brothers were the twins Castor and Pollux and her half-sister was Clytemnestra, wife to Agamemnon.

 

The Minotaur

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I’m sure most of us know something about Theseus and the Minotaur. Here’s the backstory. The Greeks revered Zeus. Poseidon wanted to be honored too so he sent a white bull to Minos, the King of Crete. Minos’s wife Parsiphae fell in love with the bull. She tasked Daedalus (yes, the inventor with the wax wings whose son was Icarus) to build a special wooden box in the shape of a cow. Once inside the box, she had intercourse with the bull. Nine months later she bore a half-man, half-bull. The Minotaur.

The myth reeks of patriarchy and a desire to, in modern parlance, throw shade on Cretan beliefs.

First, in Crete Zeus was not the primary God. He was an upstart, more akin to a harvest God, who died and was reborn.

We also don’t know if Crete had a King. Certainly it was a goddess centered, matrilineal culture. Many archeologists have assumed Crete had kings, but for decades these archeologists were men. Men, moreover, who lived with a strongly patriarchal structure. It is possible the Priestess’s consort acted as a wanax, or governor. Kingships came with the Mycenaeans.

Third several ancient cultures revered the bull or, in Indo-Europe the horse. One of the rites was mock intercourse with this symbol of fertility by the Queen/Priestess. This act was supposed to guarantee good crops, lots of livestock and of course healthy children for the coming year.

But what about the Minotaur?

Well, many many ancient and not so ancient cultures employ masks in religious rites. Animals are a frequently the subject.  Is it so far a stretch to believe that the Minotaur is a masked man involved in a religious rite?

Besides painting Theseus as a hero (which I dispute but more about that later), this myth spins Crete as decadent and deserving of conquest. By the Myceneans, naturally.

Zeus and Dionysus – Cretan Version

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The Cretan Zeus is not quite the same as the Classical Greek version of the God. For one thing, the Cretan Zeus is more of a harvest God who is born again each spring and dies in the Fall. Since Classical Greeks thought all Gods and Goddesses should be immortal, they changed the attribute of the God whose name they’d taken and declared all Cretans are liars. They kept, however, the story of his upbringing in a cave after his father, Cronus in Classical Greek mythology, swallowed all his children since one was prophesied as his killer. Zeus was nursed by a nanny goat – or one of several other animals. Take your pick. I’ve now read several variations. His crying was masked by the Kouretes, a group of armed men who clashed their weapons together to hide the cries.

So what does this have to do with Dionysus? Well, the Cretan Zeus is more like Dionysus. A harvest God followed by ecstatic worshippers.

When I was in Greece at Delphi I asked our tour guide why Dionysus was so different from the Classical Greek Gods. They do not embody the Dionysian wildness and several represent rationality. She didn’t know but I have the answer now. Dionysus is a very old God. He is named in the linear B tablets. And in many, if not most, of the other Middle Eastern Bronze Age religions there are other Gods like him.

These early beliefs were concentrated on fertility – not just human fertility although in Bronze Age Crete the High Priestess, as an earthly representation of the Goddess, represented that fertility. Ritual intercourse was practiced not only in the Mediterranean but as far away as Norway. For these early farmers, fertility among the livestock and of course a good harvest meant the difference between life and death.