Chapter 6 WOMEN
One of the most striking differences between most of our world today and the ancient world of Greek mythology is the depiction of women.The Greek world placed huge emphasis on sheer physical strength.This was partly a result of the physical geography of Greece.Highly mountainous,bounded by the ocean and surrounded by scattered islands,to ancient Greeks the sea and the forces of nature appeared hostile and threatening.Those who defied these hostile forces of nature or could control them were singled out for admiration.Hence the Greek world was a very masculine one,even by primitive standards.Those women who won acclaim in it often had very male characteristics.The goddess Athena emerged fully armed from the head of Zeus.In murdering her brother and scattering his body parts,Medea showed what we would today regard as a most wicked and unfeminine ruthlessness;and we shall see in this chapter how she also committed infanticide,surely the most unfeminine of all acts.Destructive monsters such as the sphinx,harpies and sirens were feminine by gender.And there were the Amazons,female warriors reported to have cut off one of their breasts so as to be able to wield a bow more effectively.[1]
That is not to say that there were not women in Greek myth who embody more traditional womanly virtues.We have seen how the loyal Penelope waited twenty years for the return of Odysseus.Andromache is portrayed as the model dutiful wife of Hector.Alcestis,wife of Admetus,volunteered to take the place of her husband who had been condemned to die for failing to sacrifice to the goddess Artemis（only,as we have seen,to be rescued by Herakles）.[2]In this chapter we shall see how Antigone put her moral duty to bury her brother ahead of her own life.And there is the case of Iphigenia,who allowed herself to be sacrificed so that the goddess Artemis（again）could be appeased and the Greek expedition against Troy could proceed.But the world in which all of these women operate is a distinctly male one.[3]
Part of the masculinity of the Greek world can also be glimpsed in attitudes to violence towards women.We have already seen how possession of a woman was regarded as prestigious,just as the possession of other desirable material objects was regarded a conferring prestige on the owner.There are plenty of examples of women who,being prized for their beauty,bring prestige to their suitor or abductor.Helen of Troy is the most obvious such case.In this chapter we shall also see how Persephone was abducted by the god Hades.The beautiful maiden Europa was abducted by Zeus.[4]We shall also see later how at the siege of Troy Achilles and Agamemnon quarreled over the possession of the captured,and therefore enslaved,princess Briseis.
The fact that possession of a woman was achieved by kidnapping or even rape was of no moral significance.It might even be considered admirable as a demonstration of male strength and power.So there was little moral sense of a woman’s right to be treated respectfully and no modern expectation of chivalry.
Pandora
The jealous Zeus avenged himself not only against Prometheus but also against Man,who had benefited from Prometheus’ goodwill.He ordered his son Hephaestus to create Pandora,the extraordinarily beautiful and able but entirely untrustworthy first woman.Hesiod,who first tells this myth,writes of Pandora：“From her is the race of women and female kind;of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble,no helpmates in hateful poverty,but only in wealth.”A more negative view of the female sex is difficult to imagine.
Zeus also gave Pandora a jar which she was forbidden ever to open,and then sent her down to earth,where she stayed with Prometheus’ brother,Epimetheus.Prometheus had warned his brother not to accept gifts from Zeus.But Pandora’s beauty was too great to resist and Epimetheus married and she was welcomed among humankind.Eventually her curiosity led her to open the jar.Out of the jar flew all kinds of evils,sorrows,plagues and misfortunes which afflicted mankind from that time onwards.By the time Pandora replaced the lid,only hope remained in the box.
There has been much debate about this.What was hope doing in the jar in the company of so many evils in the box? Was it a delusive kind of hope,[5]encouraging mankind to struggle miserably for what is unachievable? Or was it a blessing,enabling mankind to deal with and combat the evils that have escaped into and infected the world? Or is it that hope is imprisoned within the box and so unable to act as an antidote to those evils? Even in their most primitive forms,there is a wealth of interpretations that can be attached to many of the Greek myths.
From the late 16th century the phrase“Pandora’s box”entered the English language.[6]To“open a Pandora’s box”means to set in motion events that will bring new,previously unknown troubles,over which one has little or no control.[7]More significantly,the myth of Pandora,as first formulated by Hesiod,may well have influenced later Jewish and Christian writers in establishing a tradition of misogyny in the West.There is certainly a similarity between the roles of Pandora and Eve.Both are a source of trouble and mischief.Their foolish or malicious behavior brings to a close an innocent,all-male era of peace and plenty and replaces it with one of suffering and death.
Medea
Such a negative view of women is easily reinforced by examining one of the most horrific female figures of ancient mythology,Jason’s lover and later wife,Medea.We have already seen how she murdered her brother and scattered his body parts over Kolchis in order to slow down her father’s pursuit of herself and Jason.After returning with Jason to Iolkos,it was discovered that Pelias,believing the Argonauts to be dead,had killed Jason’s parents and dashed out the brains of their baby son on the palace floor.Vengeance is the inevitable response,and it is Medea who masterminds this by tricking two of Pelias’ daughters[8]into murdering their father.She achieves this by showing how,after killing an old ram,chopping it into pieces and mixing the pieces with a potion in boiling water,she is able to produce a fresh young lamb.She persuades the daughters to try the same trick to rejuvenate their father.The foolish girls comply and so bring about the death of their father.As a result of Pelias’ death,Jason and Medea are banished from Iolkos.
They flee to Corinth.Here various versions of the myth compete.One says that Medea claimed the throne of Corinth as the only daughter of King Aeetes,and that the Corinthians accepted Jason as their king;and that Medea resisted the advances of Zeus out of respect for Hera,who promised in return to make her sons immortal,but that her sons died after Medea took refuge in the sanctuary of Hera.Another version presents Kreon as the king of Corinth and enemy of Medea.In this version Medea kills Kreon and Kreon’s family avenge his death by killing Medea’s sons.But the most famous version of the myth is that fashioned by Euripides in his play Medea,first produced in 431 B.C.
Euripides’ play is of immense psychological intensity and Euripides achieves this by making Medea thoroughly human right up to the point that she escapes in the chariot of her grandfather,the sun god,Helios.Kreon is king of Corinth and,after ten years,Jason determines to leave Medea and marry Glauke,[9]Kreon’s young daughter.He claims he is motivated not by sexual desire[10]but by his determination to promote his family’s welfare by contracting this new,highly advantageous marriage.Consumed with jealousy and anger,Medea accuses him of ingratitude and recounts the many occasions when she has come to his aid.Jason replies that he regards Aphrodite,not Medea,as his benefactress,for it is she who caused Medea’s uncontrollable love for him.Moreover,by bringing her to a civilized land from backward Kolchis,Jason claims to have done Medea a great service.
Medea then changes her tune,feigning compliance with Jason’s wishes,and sends her two sons to Glauke with a poisonous wedding dress which,when she puts on,clings to her skin and kills her.（A modern parallel might be the effect of napalm on the flesh.）As her father tries to help his daughter disentangle herself,he too becomes caught up in the robe and they both perish in agony.
Medea then murders her two children both because she fears they will be killed or enslaved in revenge for what she has done to Glauke and to further punish Jason for his infidelity.She then escapes into the heavens in a chariot of fire sent by her grandfather,the sun god Helios.[11]
It is said that Euripides was bribed by the Corinthians to make Medea responsible for the death of her children in order to absolve themselves of guilt.If so,we have an example of how myth can be shaped to political ends.But what is most striking is how the myth is simply material out of which one of the three Greek playwrights fashions an examination of the human condition in the form of the intense jealousy of a passionate,wronged woman.
Antigone
Much more appealing to a modern audience is the figure of Antigone,daughter of Oedipus.This is because in Sophocles’ play about her a dilemma often discussed in western thinking is investigated in detail.Following the death of her brother Polyneikes in the Theban war,[12]she is caught throwing handfuls of earth over his body in defiance of the orders of her uncle,King Kreon.Brought before Kreon,she justifies her actions by saying that the laws of the gods,which decree that one’s relatives should receive proper burial,take precedence over the laws of man.Here is an eternal theme — divine law versus human law — and Sophocles chooses to discuss it in relation to one of the most emotionally powerful of subjects in ancient Greece,the burial of one’s dead relatives.Sophocles makes the claims of divine law triumph in the end,although Kreon,who is attempting to govern by the rule of law,is not presented as an evil ruler but as one trapped by the logic of following through the duties of those in power to maintain order.
Eventually Antigone is condemned.Her punishment is to be entombed alive.This is all the more terrible because she is engaged to be married to Kreon’s son,Haimon.At this point,Haimon steps forward to persuade his father that the punishment he has decreed is both barbaric and politically unwise,as Antigone is popular among the people of Thebes.Kreon refuses to change his mind and orders the entombment of Antigone to be put into effect.
Next,the blind prophet Tiresias appears and warns Kreon that the gods are angry at his decision and that Thebes will suffer dreadful punishment if it is implemented.The chorus reinforces Tiresias’ arguments.For a while Kreon resists Tiresias,then at last,and too late,relents.He sets out to cancel his instructions.On the way,he stops to give proper burial to the body of Polyneikes’ brother,Eteokles.When he arrives at the tomb,it is too late.Antigone has hanged herself.Kreon is met by Haimon carrying his fiancée’s dead body.Haimon then himself commits suicide.Kreon returns home to find that his wife,Eurydice,grief-stricken at the death of her son,has killed herself too,cursing her husband with her dying breath.
The most celebrated modern adaptation of Antigone is the play by Jean Anouilh written in 1942 and first performed in 1944,it was inspired by an attack on Nazi collaborators by a lone protestor,who well knew that his action would be fatal to himself and futile.And it is often regarded as thinly veiled support for the Resistance against the Vichy government of France,which collaborated with the Nazis.This modern focus on the importance of conscience and integrity[13]may not,however,have been so much to the fore in Sophocles’ mind as the message that the will of the gods,as represented by the moral law,cannot be defied.On this reading,the main point is that Kreon’s attempt to do so by decreeing that the body of Polyneikes remain unburied is doomed to failure.Once again,it is a denial of man’s ability to control his fate,a reassertion of the power of the divine will.
Hades and Persephone
Antigone is unusual in being a female figure to refuse to submit to a male protagonist.Persephone（Proserpina）,the daughter of Demeter（Ceres）,the goddess of grain,fits the pattern of the woman conquered by a more powerful male.She was picking flowers one day and,as she reached out for the narcissus,the most beautiful flower of all,the earth fell away beneath her and Hades（Pluto）,god of the Underworld and brother of Persephone’s father Zeus,snatched her away and carried her off to be his wife.
Her mother searched for her for nine days.Then the sun god Helios,who alone had seen what had happened,told her that it was Zeus’ will that Persephone should marry her uncle.Demeter was furious and caused the crops to fail until Zeus relented and sent his messenger Hermes（Mercury）to fetch Persephone home.
Hades pretended to agree to his brother’s order but,before he released Persephone,he made her eat a pomegranate seed,as a result of which she was compelled to return to him regularly.[14]Therefore Persephone was re-united with her mother and father for two thirds of each year and had to spend the other third with Hades.When Persephone rose from the Underworld,it would be spring;but when she returned,winter would set in.
Here then in a myth that displays the characteristic casual use of male strength to satisfy male desire but which also serves to explain an important aspect of the natural world.[15]
Orpheus and Eurydice
Myths about love abound in Greek mythology but most centre upon the male lover.For example,Orpheus was the son of the god Apollo[16]and the muse[17]Calliope.Apollo was fond of Orpheus and gave him a golden lyre or harp,[18]and taught him to play it.
The most famous story about Orpheus concerns his wife,Eurydice.While fleeing from the unwanted attentions of Aristaeus（also a son of Apollo）,Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel.She died and went to the Underworld.On the advice of the gods,Orpheus traveled to the Underworld in search of her.He charmed the three-headed dog Cerberus with his lyre and the gates of the Underworld opened of their own accord.With his music he also charmed Hades and Persephone,who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on condition that Orpheus did not look back at her until he had reached the earth above.
Orpheus set off and Eurydice followed him.But he was so anxious to know that she was behind him that he turned to look at her as soon as he had reached the upper world but just before she had.She therefore vanished for ever.[19]
The Roman poet Ovid tells the story[20]that,after the loss of Eurydice,Orpheus rejected women and took only youths as his lovers.Therefore the Thracian Maenads,[21]Dionysus’ followers,threw sticks and stones at him as he played his lyre.However,his music was so beautiful that the sticks and stones refused to hit him.The angry Maenads then tore him to pieces in a frenzy.His head is said to have kept singing as it floated down the river.
Orpheus’ head and lyre floated down the river to the Mediterranean shore,from where the winds and waves carried them on to the island of Lesbos,whose inhabitants buried his head and built a shrine in his honor.His lyre was carried to heaven by the Muses,and was placed among the stars.The Muses also gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at the foot of Mount Olympus,where the nightingales sang over his grave.His soul returned to the Underworld,where some say he was re-united at last with Eurydice.
Venus and Adonis[22]
Unlike the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,that of Venus and Adonis focuses principally on the female rather than the male protagonist.The goddess Aphrodite（Venus）fell desperately in love with the handsome young hunter Adonis.[23]Adonis was the offspring of an incestuous union.The wife of the king of Cyprus had boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite.In revenge,Aphrodite had caused the king’s daughter to fall passionately in love with her father and to sleep with him on several occasions without his knowing her identity.When he found out,she had only been able to escape his wrath by persuading the gods to turn her into a myrrh tree,and it was from this myrrh tree that Adonis had been born.
Aphrodite entrusted Adonis to the safe keeping of Persephone,who duly herself fell in love with him.Hearing of this,Aphrodite returned to the Underworld to take back Adonis but found Persephone unwilling to release him.So Aphrodite appealed to Zeus,who recused himself from judging between goddesses both of whom wished to lie with Adonis and asked Calliope,the muse of epic poetry,to arbitrate.Calliope divided the year into three,assigning Adonis to each goddess for one third of the year and allowing him the other third to himself.
Aphrodite’s love for Adonis led her to abandon Olympus to spend time with him in the woods,disguising herself as a huntress.They enjoyed many pleasant times together.She warned him not to chase wild beasts but Adonis laughed at her concern.
One day she returned for a brief visit to Olympus.At precisely this moment Adonis’ hounds discovered a wild boar.Adonis was excited enough to pursue it and shoot at it with his darts.However,the boar turned on him,sunk its tusk into his side and killed him.The boar was none other than Ares（Mars）,the god of war and former lover of Aphrodite;[24]and Ares had been roused to jealousy by Persephone telling him that Aphrodite now loved Adonis more than himself.On her return Aphrodite was distraught beyond words.She was unable to bring Adonis back from the Underworld and sprinkled nectar on his blood.The nectar turned into a beautiful flower,the red anemone.
Cupid and Psyche[25]
For a further story of love and the jealousy it so often inspires in Greek myth,we turn to the myth of Cupid（Eros）[26]and Psyche.Cupid,the god of love,is the son of the goddess Venus（Aphrodite）.He is often portrayed as a chubby boy with a bow and arrow.Those whom he shoots are consumed with desire.
Venus is jealous of Psyche,[27]whose extreme beauty was drawing worshippers away from her.So she orders Cupid to shoot the sleeping Psyche with his arrow so that,when she wakes,she will fall in love with a hideous monster,the first being she caught sight of.Here we see a device used by Shakespeare in his comedy,A Midsummer Night’s Dream,which twice includes a love potion that leads to the victim falling in love with the first being she/he catches sight of.Shakespeare uses the device to illustrate the utter irrationality of physical desire when he makes Titania,queen of the fairies,to fall in love with a donkey.
Cupid prepares to follow out his mother’s order but,before he can do so,Psyche wakes and,looking straight at Cupid,though unable to see him as he is invisible,falls in love with him.Cupid drops his arrow,pricks himself and falls in love with her.When Cupid reports back to Venus,she is so angry that she places a curse on Psyche to the effect that she will not find a suitable husband.Cupid retaliates by refusing to shoot any more arrows with the result that neither human beings nor animals any longer fall in love and so reproduction ceases.
In time Venus relents and Cupid goes to work with his arrows once more.But,although many admire Psyche’s beauty,none wish to marry her.Eventually Cupid comes to visit her every night,playing the part of husband but insisting that Psyche never look him in the face.When Psyche is persuaded by her two jealous and curious sisters that she is sleeping with a monster,she forgets Cupid’s command and prepares to look the monster in the face and kill it.As a result she actually catches sight of Cupid and also,accidentally,pricks herself with one of his arrows and so gives way to the urge to kiss him.Cupid wakes;annoyed at having been revealed before the intended moment,he flees.Psyche searches for him far and wide.In due course Cupid forgives her for having disobeyed his orders and seeks the help of Jupiter（Zeus）,who makes Psyche a goddess,giving her ambrosia to drink and conferring on her immortality.The marriage of Cupid and Psyche finally takes place and Jupiter also brings about a grudging reconciliation between Psyche and Venus.
There are as usual variations on this story but,as with other myths,the picture of love is overwhelmingly one of desire,and both gods and mortals are prone to jealousy and sexual indiscipline.There have been attempts to raise the level of discourse by portraying Psyche’s love as eventually transcending desire,perhaps reflecting the fact that this is a Roman rather than a Greek myth and that the Romans tended to be more strait-laced.Also,even with the Greeks,by the time of Plato in the 4th century B.C.there was a quest for a higher kind of love than a fundamentally physical one.But the notion that desire leads to possession and that success is equated with the acquisition of what one desires remains uppermost in Greek mythology.Perhaps this means that the objectification of women is traceable to Greek culture and that the Greek myths should make us aware of issues of gender equality that should still concern us today.
注释
[1]Among the Amazons was Queen Penthesilea,who fought with（and was killed by）Achilles at Troy.
[2]Euripides’ tragedy Alcestis popularized her story.
[3]The contrast between male power and female subservience is well illustrated in the painting Jupiter and Thetis by Ingres（1811）.
[4]Zeus disguised himself as a white bull and,while Europa was picking flowers in a field with her friends,persuaded her to climb onto his back,raced to the sea and swam to Crete,where Europa was installed as the first queen of Crete and the mother of three sons,one of whom was King Minos.From Europa comes the name of the continent of Europe.The Greeks sometimes used the name for an area from the Balkans in the north to Turkey in the south,but in time it came to denote the area currently called Europe.
[5]As is argued by Robert Graves.
[6]In ancient Greece it was described as a large earthenware container,but the Renaissance scholar Erasmus mistranslated the Greek word πιθος into a Latin word closer in meaning to a small box.
[7]A more colloquial modern phrase with the same meaning is to“open a can of worms.”The phrase has even been used officially in modern China.In April 2018 in response to President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States,a Chinese spokesman warned：“The malicious practices of the United States are like opening Pandora’s Box,and there is a danger of triggering a chain reaction that will spread the virus of trade protectionism across the globe.”
[8]A third,Alcestis,later the wife of Admetus,refused to take part.
[9]Glauke is sometimes called Creusa,mainly by Roman authors.
[10]At one point Jason says：“You women think everything depends on sex! If any trouble happens on that score,you turn the best laid,finest plans into cause for hostility.Men ought to be able to beget children from some other sources and the female gender should not exist.Then evil would not exist for human beings.”
[11]There are other episodes and endings to the story of Medea.After leaving Corinth,she fled at first to Thebes,where she cured Herakles of the madness that had led him to kill the children of his first marriage.But as she was the murderess of Kreon,who was king of Thebes,she was not allowed to remain there.So she fled to Athens,married King Aigeus and had a son by him,only to find her domestic bliss shattered when Theseus,Aigeus’ son by a former wife,returned home.Her attempt to murder Theseus has been recounted above.
[12]In succession to Oedipus,Eteokles and Polyneikes had agreed each to rule for a year in turn,but after the first year Eteokles had refused to ceded the throne to his brother,whereupon Polyneikes and six other Greek leaders led an armed attack on Thebes.Both brothers were killed.The war was the subject of Aeschylus’ tragedy Seven Against Thebes.
[13]In western literature and history,the call of conscience is powerful and appealing.It is,for example,central to the popularity of Sir Thomas More,the writer of Utopia,subsequently chancellor to King Henry VIII,who defied the king and died rather than act against his conscience：“I am the king’s good servant,but God’s first.”
[14]Dane Gabriel Rossetti’s famous painting Proserpine（1874）depicts Persephone holding a pomegranate.
[15]The importance of the myth is reflected in the Eleusinian mysteries,which were secret rites celebrated by the Athenians every five years at Eleusis in Attica in honor of Demeter and Persephone.The mysteries were strongly supported by the Athenian state.
[16]However,this is not the only version of his paternity.Another says that he was the son of a king of Thrace.
[17]There were nine muses,of whom Calliope,the muse of epic poetry and eloquence,was the most senior.The muses were goddesses who inspired the creation of literature and the arts.Authors often call on a muse or the muses at the start of a poem and sometimes present themselves as merely the mouthpiece of the muse or muses.
[18]A lyre is a harp.
[19]A very popular French operetta,Orpheus in the Underworld,was composed by Offenbach and first performed in 1858.Offenbach’s work was a satire upon an earlier opera,Orfeo ed Euridice（1762）,by Gluck.It contains a famous galloping“can-can”dance,the tune of which,hugely slowed down,was used ironically by Saen-Saens in his Carnival of the Animals to represent the tortoise.In 1864 the aristocratic artist Lord Leighton painted a powerful depiction of Eurydice,apparently unaware of the stricture placed on Orpheus,imploring him to turn towards her,and Orpheus hardly able to resist.Also a fine French film,Orphée,directed by Jean Cocteau,was made in 1949,very loosely based on the Orpheus legend.
[20]In his long poem the Metamorphoses.
[21]The Maenads（known as Bacchae or Bacchantes to the Romans）were the female followers of the god Dionysius.They stirred themselves up into a frenzy by means of dancing and drinking.The name literally means“the raving ones.”
[22]Venus and Adonis is the title of one of Shakespeare’s earliest long poems（1593）,dedicated to the earl of Southampton.The myth was also highly popular with 16th and 17th century artists,particularly Titian and Rubens.
[23]The name has become synonymous with beauty.In modern English an Adonis is a beautiful young man.
[24]A fine painting of Venus and Mars by Botticelli（c.1485）hangs in the National Gallery in London.
[25]The myth of Cupid and Psyche first appears in a Roman collection by Apuleius called The Golden Ass in the 2nd century A.D..The names here are therefore the Roman ones with their Greek equivalents in brackets.
[26]The figure on the Shaftesbury Memorial fountain（erected in 1892/3 to commemorate the Victorian social reformer philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury）in Piccadilly Circus in London is frequently mistaken as Eros because of the bow it carries.It is one of London’s most famous sculptures and the first in the word to be cast in aluminum.In fact,the sculpture is Eros’ brother,Anteros,the god of selfless love or,on another interpretation,of requited love.
[27]“Psyche”（Ψυχή）is the Greek for“soul”and“butterfly.”Psyche is therefore often portrayed as a winged creature.