I like to say things like ‘when I become the ruler of the Universe’…but, really, if I ever became that, I would pluck Thomas Sowell out and make him do the actual ruler. Because he is that awesome.
I would place Thomas Sowell along with Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Richard Feynman, Thomas Payne and, well, all the giants that advanced humanity. The only difference between him and them is that he is still alive, able to share his wisdom with us.
So far, I hope to have established that Ancient Greeks tried a path to integrate the peoples they had conquered by matching their head god with Zeus, the Ancient Greek’s head god, which worked rather well for the larger integration, but created the problem of all the ‘goddess queens’ that were now left over…
These became, in the mythology, human women Zeus had affairs with.
The conquered men had only to blame their head god (who became fused with Zeus) for being capricious, but, whom did the conquered women have?
One of their own – a human woman from their tribe – was so awesome as to cause Zeus, the to dog god, to fall in love with her, carry her off, do all kinds of dangerous things for the love of this woman – one of their own.
In comes Hera.
She is the Goddess of ‘family’ – yet she is always being cheated on by her husband, Zeus. And with human women – to add insult to the injury!
Hera is the Goddess of protecting the nuclear family – and she cannot do it with her own family!
This rather turns Hera nasty: she cannot control her husband, the king of Gods, from cheating on her, but she still is a goddess and has the powers that come along with it. Hera, not able to punish her husband, takes her anger out on his human lovers and their children.
And she does it in very, very mean ways. There are books written just about the ways Hera punished the women Zeus romanced (whether they were willing or not).
But…let us remember: Hera threw away her son (Hephaestus/Vulcan) to what she thought would be his death simply because he was born deformed. She may be the goddess of the hearth, family and childbirth, but she did throw away her baby for having been born deformed.
So, how did she treat the children of her husband, Zeus, and human women?
Not nicely.
When there arose a particularly awesome specimen of humanity, the son of Zeus and a human woman, Hera was not happy. Like, a lot ‘not happy’.
And, she made Hercules suffer, every chance she got.
There was nothing anyone could say to her to convince her that Hercules was actually a good guy, who did good things to help people.
Yes, he had been given a bunch of tasks to do, and he did them well and cleverly, but, outside of that, he is said to have helped folks who needed help, lending his muscle power as well as his intelligence, where and when needed.
Perhaps we can argue about his worth – but, the one not willing to engage in such an argument was Hera.
For her, Hercules was a symbol of her husband’s infidelity. He had to be destroyed.
The more famous Hercules got, the more necessary it was for Hera to absolutely destroy him.
And she did – in the most devious way possible.
Hercules had a wife and two children. He loved them and protected them.
Hera knew this.
And, she had her goddess powers.
She used these powers.
When Hercules came home one day, he saw a big monster and two little monsters attacking his home – and, loving his family, he slew them to protect his wife and children.
Except that, these were not monsters, they were his wife and children. Hera’s magic made him see them as monsters. So, he slew them.
Hera’s magic made Hercules kill his own family. His wife and children…
It destroyed Hercules.
This is a sad end to an epic story – but it is really important in our times.
Hera suffered from ‘Hercules derangement syndrome’ because she had been wronged. Her role as the protector goddess of the family was challenged by her husband’s infidelity and his bastard child’s excellence.
There was no way to talk Hera down from her vengeance.
Her very being as the queen of the gods, as the patroness of the family, was completely uprooted by the very existence of Hercules. Her very essence, her reason for being, is undermined by the very existence of Hercules.
These are high stakes, for a goddess, a top goddess.
Somehow, I do not think that chatting with her about the good things Hercules did would change her mind. Rather, I think the person doing the chatting would end up in a bit of smoke…
As we enter the story, Hera is the Queen Goddess – but her husband , Zeus, is habitually with other women.
This is not so much a function of who Zeus is, as it is a by-product of fusing Ancient Greek’s mythology with their conquered peoples, matching their head god with Zeus to facilitate their integration into the Hellenic culture, but having the previous head queen goddess left over.
‘Obviously’, these were women Zeus had had affairs with, which challenged Hera’s position in the pantheon of deities.
OK, nasty but…
She had to keep her position, both as a goddess and as the queen of the Gods, being the wife of Zeus.
So, Hera had to ‘fight back’ to remain who she was.
I suspect that this is where this aspect of Hera, as the patron of wronged women, came from.
Regardless, Hera was the ultimate step-mother-from hell.
Is it really coincidence that her step-son was the ultimate masculine embodiment?
Hera (Romanized as Juno).
She is the long suffering wife (and sister – this is the Egyptian influence on Greek mythology, where the Pharaoh married his sister to ‘keep the bloodlines pure’) who is the goddess of marriage, hearth (family home) and protector of women (especially during childbirth).
When Ancient Greeks conquered a people, they integrated their main god into Zeus, claiming they were really one and the same and making the cultural/social integration of the conquered peoples that much more possible.
‘Integrating’ the ‘queen consort’ was much more difficult.
The way that Ancient Greeks integrated their ‘head god’ Zeus into being just another interpretation of the conquered peoples’ ‘head god’ in order to harmonize the conquered people’s mythology with the Greek one – well, it dealt a rather raw deal to the ‘head queen’ of the conquered people’s pantheon: the ‘head god’, Zeus, had a queen (Hera), so, who or what was this other queen goddess of the conquered peoples’ pantheon?
She became Zeus’s mistress.
They all did… and Hera ‘had to’ deal with it, within the constrains of the Ancient Greek Mythology – which she did, in epic Hera way, as has been recorded in myth of how she had treated Hercules.
When the Ancient Greeks would conquer another peoples, they would claim that their main God, the head of their pantheon, is just another manifestation of the Greek head god, Zeus (Romanized as Jupiter), so, there really is not that much of a difference between them. They all worship the same capricious head god – this time, this side won, but if Zeus (by any other name) wanted, the other side would have won.
No shame in defeat – God’s did it. A way to ‘save face’…
We may not appreciate this now in our time, but, that is an extremely important aspect of integrating the defeated peoples’ culture into the winning one in a positive, constructive manner.
It seems that the Ancient Greeks understood (knowingly or not) that destroying a conquered culture’s ‘origin myth’ is devastating, for – what we now know – is a few generations.
So, whether by instinct, knowledge or wisdom, the Ancient Greeks avoided that.
Instead of denigrating the defeated peoples’ mythology, they went out of their way to graft it on to their own mythology, thereby giving the conquered peoples’ a channel to integrate into the Greek culture. This benefited both: new blood, new ideas – but within the same overarching cultural framework that is necessary to hold a society together.
Which makes ‘integrating’ the various ‘goddess queens’ that much more difficult…(coming next)
Ancient Greeks did not see Gods in the same way most modern religions conceive of them: perfect and all knowing and all powerful and (sometimes) all benevolent. Rather, they saw them as larger-than-life figures who may have had special powers, but they also each possessed very human qualities and very human failings.
Ancient Greek Gods are all manifestations of human archetypes, iconic illustrations of human nature. Perhaps the very essence of human nature.
Aphrodite (Romanized as Venus) is the goddess of beauty, love and, frankly, frivolity and vanity. She is married to Hephaestus (Romanized as Vulcan) who is the ugly and deformed god of smithing, metalwork, craftsmanship and fire. He is known to make the most beautiful jewelry (as well as very useful tools) which Aphrodite loves, rather loving him, so she is constantly unfaithful to him.
In modern terms, Aphrodite would be the cheating trophy wife and Hephaestus would be the physically inferior uber-rich man who overlooks his wife’s infidelity, because he knows she will always return to him and that is enough.
We all know modern day couples like that!
Aside: Aphrodite’s most common lover is said to be Aries (Romanized as Mars), the God of War, the ultimate warrior. This is an ancient encapsulation of the archetype of ‘the prostitute and the soldier’: Hers is the personification of femininity without a goal beyond sexuality, his is the personification of brutal masculinity without a goal beyond obeying orders of your superior commanders.
And, yes, most of us have also known couples like that.
Let’s consider Athena (Romanized as Minerva) who is the goddess of wisdom, war and crafts. Wisdom and wars – that makes sense: she is the personification of the wisdom when to enter into a war. She is not the goddess of combat, the way Aries is: she is the one whose wisdom directs whether Aries ought to be unleashed or not.
Yet, Athena’s wisdom was shadowed by her jealousy when her mastery of crafts had been questioned. A young woman named Arachne said she could weave better that Athena, so, Athena showed up for the challenge with her weaving loom and when it looked like Arachne was going to win, Athena – in a fit of jealousy – turned Arachne into a spider who can only weave webs.
Aside: I think it is ironic that I paid for a big part of my University education by designing one-of-a-knit-ware (at really, really high prices) – and I am rather very arachnophobic – or is it really ‘Arachne-phobia’?
Charity is good – just like Shakespeare spoke of mercy (paraphrasing): it blesses him who receives it as well as him who provides it.
Yet, in order for this to be true, it needs to be personal: one person choses to help another, one way or another.
When governments get involved – we are taking on a whole new thing.
Governments decide who is to ‘receive funds’ and who is to ‘surrender funds’ – you cannot give someone money without first taking it from someone else. Governments have a monopoly on taking money from some individuals (taxes) and they are permitted to use force to extract these funds.
Nay, they have a monopoly on violence to extract taxes.
These are collected from all citizens, willing or not. (We shall focus on the ‘not’ ones in just a bit.)
Then, a portion of these tax-collected funds are given out to people who do not work (cannot or are not willing to – sad, but irrelevant to the point of my argument).
So, some people work without compensation (taxes taken away) for a period of time (part of the year) only to support the lifestyle of other people who do not work.
In other words: people who are on welfare are ‘slave owners’ who do not need to work yet have their living needs provided for by other people who do work, but who would not support them if it were not for the threat of force (in this case, by the tax collecting governments).
If working/doing things for the benefit of others under the threat of force is not THE definition of ‘slavery’, then I do not know what is: and I would like your input – please correct me if I am wrong!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 