From Tortoise

To Lyre
Io
Zeus
Hera
Cow
Argus
Hermes

Io and Zeus, Pompeii fresco, 79 CE

Renée-Antoine Houasse, Mercury and Argus (1688)

Argeïphontes
 Jacob Jordaens, Mercury and Argus (1635-1640)

Rise in
popularity of
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses

Illustrated print
editions of the
text and
paintings

17th century
cultural debate
Peter Paul Rubens, Mercury and Argus (1636-1638)

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

Especially in France, but throughout western Europe
“Moderns” saw in Ovid a kindred spirit: A new way of telling the “ancient” stories
Self-conscious, elaborate, not “Classical” (not restrained)
Velázquez, Hermes and Argus (1659)

Choice of Hermes, in particular:

A rejection of self-restraint
An affirmation of trade and commerce
Aphrodite and Ishtar
Myths of Sex and Death
 Golden Aphrodite
Greek Goddess of Sexual Love
• Birth: Manner
• Born from the foam (aphros) of Ouranos’ genitals in the sea
(Hesiod)
• Exception, in Homer’s Iliad: Daughter of Zeus and Dionê
• Steps out of the sea
• Beautiful, bejeweled, “sexy-glancing darling”
• Hesiod: grass grows under her feet as soon as she is on land:
creation
• Sweet desire: overwhelming urges and passions
 Cyprus: “Cyprian”
- born there or first
came ashore there

Aphrodite statue on
Cyprus

Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, 1485

Birth: Location
Kythera:
“Kytherea” -
also claimed
Aphrodite
came out of
the sea there
 Aphrodite
• Her birth encapsulates her characteristics and power:
• struggle/violence/unpredictability and
• desire/loveliness/creation
• Dangerous & irresponsible, but also sweet and fun
• Attributes: Birds, Eros
• Cult Titles
• Of the Harbor
• Of All the People
• Laughter-loving; Genital-loving
• Married to Hephaistos (frequent account)
• Affairs with (marriage?) Ares
• Affairs with others
• Causes others to have sex: no escaping her power
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
• A reflection on the mortal condition
• Sweet longing (desire and lust) v. ruthless age
• Golden Aphrodite:
• laughter-loving, loves a good joke, humorous, fun-loving, brag
• busy, beautiful, fragrant, festooned/bejeweled, shining
• She can tame, persuade, baffle, delude, cheat, toss lust
• Power over gods & mortals to “delude or persuade,”
EXCEPT
o Athena (battles, technical education, weaving)
o Artemis (arrows & slaughter, lyre & dancing, forests & city)
o Hestia (hearth)
 Aphrodite and Anchises
• In retaliation for the Aphrodite-induced love affairs of
immortals with mortals, Zeus causes Aphrodite to
desire a mortal man
• Zeus chooses Anchises, Prince of Troy
• handsome, respectful
• Aphrodite persuades him (at first)
• Appears like a virgin, so as not to scare him (and he’s scared)
• She pretends that she is mortal; Hermes brought her to Troy
to be Anchises’ bride
• Take me to your parents; Let my parents know where I am
• Then she casts desire upon him
• Anchises then says he is going to make love to her now
• Aphrodite shied away, and then got in bed
• Anchises carefully undresses her
• Aphrodite causes him to sleep after sex
Aphrodite: sex and death
• Aphrodite appears as herself after sex; Anchises
afraid
• Aphrodite reassures Anchises
• He will have a great son: Aeneas (ainos: grievous)
• Aphrodite’s anguish over having a mortal son
• Proud of Anchises, but “ruthless age” is the
problem
• Ganymede and Zeus
• Father worried about Ganymede’s disappearance
• Comforted by Hermes’ message from Zeus and divine gifts
• Tithonos and Eos (Dawn)
• Dawn neglected to ask for youth
• Tithonos wasted away (cicada)
• Difference between mortals and immortals
• Unlike the nymphs who will share their long lives with
great trees: Tree and nymph die together
 Companion Eros
Roman copy of Greek statue circa 250BCE • pre-existing force OR
• child with Ares
 • Child of Aphrodite and Hermes
• Nymph Salmacis would not let go
Hermaphroditus • They fused together
• Woman’s breasts & man’s genitals
 Priapus
• Child of Aphrodite and
Hermes (or Dionysus)
• Enormous penis wards off
evil: apotropaic
• Priapism = a permanent
penile erection
• Myth came late (Hellenistic
period: 323 BCE – 30 CE)
• The Romans associated him
with prosperity
• at left at Pompeii
Ishtar: Goddess of Sexual Love, Fertility, and War
• Aphrodite shares some aspects with
goddesses from the Ancient Near Eastern
goddesses
• Sumerian Inanna syncretized with later
Akkadian Ishtar
• Ishtar
• Doves
• Lions
Ishtar: The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld
• Akkadian/Babylonian
• Based on older Sumerian version, The Descent of Inanna
•Ishtar goes to the underworld (Kurnugi): the
dark house and demands to enter
•Sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld is
angry
• Why is she here?
• Ereshkigal weeps for young men, girls, infants
• “Let Ishtar enter according to the ancient rites”
Ishtar and Dumuzi
•Ishtar enters, is stripped, becomes diseased
•All sexual activity on earth comes to a halt
•Ea makes “Good-looks the playboy”
• Goes to Kurnugi, asks Ereshkigal for the waterskin
• The waterskin is Ishtar transformed
• A substitute needs to take Ishtar’s place
•Dumuzi (“faithful son”), her lover, takes her place
• Dumuzi’s sister weeps
• Yet there is the hope that Dumuzi will return to the
living
Ishtar and Dumuzi: desire, life, and death
• Desire itself dies when Ishtar is in Kurnugi
• Reproduction is restored (reborn) with return of desire
• Ishtar returned to world of living
• Seasonal fertility explained
• Sacrifice (or planting) of male seed will lead to rebirth
• Dumuzi to spend half year in Underworld, half on Earth
(Sumerian version)
• Ritual of “Sacred Marriage”
• A priest and priestess reenact the sex of Ishtar and Dumuzi
• Ritual to lead to rich natural harvest
• “Sympathetic magic” = like action produces like result
• Ritual progression of cult statue of Ishtar
• To promote growth