Reflection and Conclusion

I wish to use this final posting to bring my investigation of ancient Greek religion, using Aphrodite as a vehicle, to a close and to reflect on my experiences of academic blogging.

I chose Aphrodite as the vehicle with which to explore ancient Greek religion throughout this blog as I wished to discover whether there was more to her than the romantic, serene goddess that I had a pre-conceived image of. Throughout the various topics we have explored over the course I can firmly claim that there is definitely more to her than that! I have discovered that Aphrodite is a complex goddess who had enough power to pose a threat to and, even, deceive the King of the Olympic gods, Zeus (Polytheism, Power and Aphrodite post). She has complex connections with the other gods, including Zeus, Hera and especially Dionysus (Polytheism, Power and Aphrodite and Love, and other drugs posts). She also had many characteristics and aspects of her personage that could be considered chthonic (Aphrodite and the Olympian/chthonian binary post). 

However, what I was not expecting was for the emerging complexities of Aphrodite to reflect the chaotic nature of ancient Greek religion as a whole. Aphrodite’s character could arguably be used as a representation to show the wider complex relationships, ideologies, symbols and anomalies of the entire Greek religious system. Every topic that I have approached during this course has seemed to be a simple enough topic to begin with, for example Polytheism, but when analysed they have proved extremely complicated and intricate, with no black and white answers.

Thus, arguably Aphrodite is a byzantine goddess within an extremely chaotic religion. Which is, therefore, why I chose the Omaste Witkowski painting (also at the start of this posting) entitled Cosmic Connections and Chaotic Love Affairs as the background image for the blog, as I believe it illustrates this conclusion fittingly in both name and appearance.

When I began this course and started planning out and writing drafts of my early postings I was admittedly treating each posting as a ‘mini-essay’ by which I mean I approached each posting as a separate topic and I wrote each one in a word processor and transferred it to Blogger, adding images to make the blog aesthetically pleasing. 

However, as the course continued and I became more comfortable with the medium of blogging I began to reassess how I was approaching the assignment. Even though each posting has a specific topic, I could see a common theme emerging, that of the complexity of Aphrodite’s character and the chaotic nature of Greek religion, which I embraced and emphasised to give the blog a thematic flow throughout. I began to carefully select which images I used to ensure that they added to the themes and arguments of the posting and were not simply there to look nice, I also tried to use various styles of images and graphics to bring diversity to the blog. As I revised each of my postings I began to find ways of bringing the blog to life by utilising the media; for example, creating hyperlinks to the online sources used and linking some of the images to their source websites. It was a challenge to find the right level of formality as I have never created an academic blog before, however I hope that I eventually found a balance which fits the academic criteria whilst allowing my narrative voice to come through.

Love, and Other Drugs

Aphrodite: Calm and serene

Dionysus: wine drinking and debauched

Are these two deities more more complimentary or contrasting?

This posting follows along similar themes as the previous one as it will be examining the links between Aphrodite and Dionysus; one considered an example of a perfect Olympian deity and the other an out-casted god, or a god that ‘doesn’t fit’. Before participating in this course I would have thought that there were very few, if any, similarities between Aphrodite and Dionysus. However, the ‘Olympian, chthonian and beyond’ lecture (12/11/13) began my journey into discovering the complexities of Aphrodite’s character and her surprising connections to the chthonian world, therefore, throughout the ‘Gods that don’t fit’ lecture (26/11/13) which focused on Dionysus, my mind was more open to note the many similarities between these two seemingly dissimilar deities.

Aphrodite’s relationship with Dionysus begins with their births. As stated in the previous posting, according to Hesiod’s Theogony Aphrodite has a motherless birth, rising from the sea after her father Ouranos’ testicles were severed and had fallen into it (L.190-206). The conception of Dionysus was a more natural one than that of Aphrodite, with Zeus bedding his mortal mother Semele, however Semele was killed before her pregnancy was at full term after begging Zeus to show himself in his true form and being overwhelmed by the outcome. Zeus saved the foetus Dionysus and stitched him into his own thigh, where he carried him to full term and bore him (Apollodurus: 3.4.3), thus giving Dionysus a motherless birth too. From these two birth stories alone one may assume that Aphrodite would become the outcast god as she was born from an older race of Greek gods and was the result of a strange, motherless conception. Dionysus’ birth however, whilst unconventional, could lead one to assume that he would eventually take the title of a traditional Olympian god as he had a normal conception and was eventually born from the body of his father Zeus, much like another great Olympian, Athena (Hesiod: L.887-896).

Why then did these two gods gain quite the opposite standing amongst the pantheon?

Arguably, Dionysus became a god that ‘doesn’t fit’ when he grew to be associated with drunkenness, madness, excess, addiction, escape from reality and loss of control: or, to put it crudely, when he became a drug. Similarly, Aphrodite gained a position as one of the Olympian 12 through her reputation as a calming goddess who created harmony in bringing lovers together and calmed the stormy seas (Parker: p90). However, I would argue that these reputations illustrated by Parker’s admittedly crude use of ‘calming’ and ‘madness’ to describe the primary characteristic of Aphrodite and Dionysus respectively, do not allow one to see the similarities and relationship between these supposedly contrasting deities. Firstly, Aphrodite and Dionysus’ realms of power are interlinked, as Aphrodite has domain over all aspects of love and lust, but Dionysus has some specific dominion over “mindless sexual ecstasy” (Johnson and Ryan: p18). There is also an example of Anacreon praying to Dionysus to make the object of his desires more receptive to him through drunkenness (Anacreon: fr.357). Aphrodite could also provoke all of the aforementioned drug-like symptoms in the mortals she had dominion over, therefore, arguably she was as much of a drug as Dionysus himself.

In Plato’s Phaedrus Socrates explains that one who is in love, under the power of Aphrodite, has lost their mind and do not have their wits about them (Plato: 241). Anacreon describes how Polycrates, in a jealous rage, acts irrationally and cuts off his lover’s hair in an attempt to make him less desirable to others (Anacreon: fr.347), he then describes his own feelings towards the boy he desires “I love Cleobulus, I am mad for Cleobulus” (Anacreon: fr.359: emphasis added). There are many more examples of love and lust being likened with madness in Greek lyric and philosophy however the greatest unintentional comparison between the insanity felt by lovers and the drug sought by worshipers of Dionysus comes later in Plato’s Phaedrus where Socrates argues that madness and disillusionment from oneself is not necessarily a negative state of being. Socrates claims that “the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god”, he goes on to describe the madness as “wonderful” and not something to be ashamed of, he reasons that god-gifted madness can “provide relief from the greatest plagues of trouble…[and] relief from present hardships” (Plato: 244-45). The cathartic escape from oneself and ones troubles outlined by Plato is concerned with the madness induced by the gift of Aphrodite, but it could just as fittingly be describing the madness which consumed many followers of Dionysus.

Thus, if both deities were capable of provoking such intense madness amongst mortals, again I ask, why do we brand Dionysus as an outcast god, associated with dark madness whereas Aphrodite remains in high standing as the goddess of love and beauty? This question has many complex answers which I cannot do justice to in this short posting. However, one of the contributing factors could be the Christianised lens through which we often unconsciously view the ancient world. As touched upon in the last post on the Olympian/chthonian binary, Dionysus may have gained his reputation as a god who ‘doesn’t fit’ through his association with excessive wine drinking and women becoming drunk and mad, which goes against Christian nature. Whereas most references to madness through Aphrodite are usually men becoming mad with love, towards women; which was a lot more palatable to them, or towards boys; which were mostly ignored by the Christian/Western community until relatively recent years. Arguably, by which point the reputation of Dionysus as decadent and Aphrodite as respectable were already set into our minds. This is just one, simple analysis of the incredibly complex question of why we view two gods who have a surprising amount in common as so vastly different.

References

Anacreon, (2003) ‘Fragment 347’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Anacreon, (2003) ‘Fragment 357’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Anacreon, (2003) ‘Fragment 359’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Apollodorus, (1921) The Library, Frazer, J. G. (trans.) London: Harvard University Press, available at Perseus.tufts.edu

Hesiod (1973) ‘Theogony’ in Hesiod and Theognis, Baldick, R., Jones, C. A. and Radice, B. (eds.), Wender, D. (trans.) Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd.

Johnson, M. and Ryan, T., (2005) Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature, New York: Routledge

Parker, R., (2011) On Greek Religion, New York: Cornell University Press

Plato, (2003) ‘Phaedrus’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Note: The title of this posting is taken from the 2010 film of the same name

Aphrodite and the Olympian/chthonian Binary

This graphic of Aphrodite's origin shows some of her chthonian attributes;
 her violent birth from the sea/earth through the castration of her 'father' Ouranos,
who was of the older generation of gods

The separating of ancient Greek deities into the two categories of Olympian and chthonian is, as with every aspect of ancient Greek religion, I am discovering, extremely complex and without a simple solution.  The debate surrounding what makes a god either Olympian or chthonian and which deities belong in each category has been waging “for as almost long as there has been a conception of ‘Greek Religion’ as a subject of scholarly endeavour” (Deacy: p.N/A). However, the question I wish to concentrate on is whether or not these two classifications should even be used to separate the gods, in scholarship.

As far as I am aware, there have been no ancient sources discovered which provide a definitive list of which gods the Greeks themselves regarded as Olympian or chthonian. Therefore, it could be argued that the categories were created anachronistically by western scholars who, consciously or not, were affected by the Christianised ideas of Heaven and Hell. I believe this can be seen in the characterisation of Olympian gods as good, sky or mountain-dwelling, distant from mortals and worshipped as opposed to the chthonian god’s portrayal as dark, earth or underworld-dwelling, lesser, older, closer to mortals and feared (Deacy: p.N/A). The notion of the Earth and underworld being ‘lesser’ than the sky-realm is arguably one that the ancient Greek’s did not hold and is instead heavily influenced by the Christian ideas of Heaven being superior to Earth and Hell.

The argument I see against the categorisation of the gods into these two groups is not only the Christian anachronism but that the gods are too complex to neatly fit into either category and therefore, arguably, it is a pointless endeavour to try! As this blog focuses on Aphrodite, I will use her as an example to try and substantiate this admittedly bold statement. Aphrodite, as one of the 12 major Olympians, is a goddess who has always, arguably, sat quite comfortably in the Olympian group. However, using the criteria which has been set out to judge which group a deity belongs to, it could be argued that even ‘golden girl’ Aphrodite has some chthonian qualities.

As I stated before, one of the Chthonian characteristics is that they are usually seen as older, more primitive and earthly. The birth story of Aphrodite, as set out in Hesiod’s Theogony, explains that the goddess was born on the god Ouranos- two generations older than Zeus and the other Olympians. She was born in a primitive manner through the violent castration of her father by his son Kronos and she was born from the Earth, without a mother, rising from the sea onto the shore of Cyprus. Another chthonian quality discussed in our lecture was that they are often localised gods and, whilst worship of Aphrodite was surely widespread, she remained very close to her Cyprian roots as she often carried the name Cypris (Hesiod: L.190-206). Already, cracks begin to show in Aphrodite’s classification as an Olympian goddess.

An issue that has arisen in my Olympian/Chthonian research is the notion that chthonian gods are more concerned with ‘earthly’ matters. How does one define what is earthly? Usually it translates to a dominion over the harvest, however I would suggest that mortals are just as earthly a matter as the harvest is. Therefore, any gods who have a strong dominion over mortal concerns could be suggested to have chthonian qualities. This resonates especially with Aphrodite as it is often romanticised that she holds dominion over matters of love, as if ‘love’ is dealt out from a distance with her having no direct involvement with the mortals. However, she also has a strong holding in the baser pleasures of lust and sex amongst both gods and mortals, with the goddess herself taking mortal lovers such as Anchises. As well as having dominion over lust on Earth, it could be suggested that Aphrodite’s powers reach even deeper, into the Underworld as Hades is clearly a slave to desires as is seen in the kidnapping of Persephone (Hesiod: L.912-15). Links with the Underworld are often thought to be a chthonian trait. The argument here is that lines between what is considered normal for Olympian and Chthonian deities is not always clear.

 One of the methods used by scholars to determine whether a deity was considered chthonian is to investigate the sacrificial rituals performed for them and determine if there are any anomalies from the ‘normal’ sacrificial rites (Scullion and Parker: p.284-286). However, as Scullion illustrates there are many anomalies within the sacrificial rituals of a variety of gods; both those considered Olympian and chthonian. It is interesting that the use of a particular epithet could lead to chthonian aspects appearing in the sacrifice, for example, Aphrodite Ourania was recorded to have has ‘sober’ sacrifices where no wine was poured in libation (Henrichs). Scullion suggests that this could mean that the gods became chthonian when particular epithets were used. Another way Parker explains it are that the gods could be seen as part-Olympian and part-chthonian simultaneously (Parker: p.82).

Thus, the debate surrounding the Olympian/chthonian binary supports what has arguably been the main theme of this course: the study of ancient Greek religion is incredibly complex and there are no straight forward answers to any aspect of it. There appears to be no black and white solution to which gods fit into each category, or even what exactly each category means. I would argue that any attempt to settle this debate with a clear chart depicting where each god should be listed would result in a chaotic mess of arrows and asterisks! Therefore, it could be argued that we, as scholars, should stop trying to justify these categorisations and continue to study the gods as the complex beings that they were instead of trying to pigeonhole them into the over simplistic labels of Olympian gods and chthonian gods.

References

Deacy, S. (forthcoming) ‘Gods: Olympian or chthonian’ in Eidinow, E. and Kindt, J. (eds.) Oxford Handbook on Greek Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Henrichs, A., (1984)’The Eumenides and wineless libations in the Derveni papyrus’ Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, vol XVII, p255-68

Hesiod (1973) ‘Theogony’ in Hesiod and Theognis, Baldick, R., Jones, C. A. and Radice, B. (eds.), Wender, D. (trans.) Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd.

Parker, R., (2011) On Greek Religion, New York: Cornell University Press

Scullion, S., (1994) ‘Olympian and chthonian’, Classical Antiquity, Vol 13, (No 1), p115-116, available at: Jstor.org

Vergil (1990) The Aeneid, West, D. (trans), London: Penguin Group