Leuce (mythology)
In Greco-Roman mythology, Leuce was the most beautiful of the nymphs and a daughter of Oceanus. Pluto abducted her to the underworld, she lived out the span of her life in his realm, when she died, the god sought consolation by creating a suitable memorial of their love: in the Elysian Fields where the pious spend their afterlife, he brought a white tree into existence. It was this tree. Maurus Servius Honoratus identifies the tree as the white poplar, the leaf of, distinctively two-sided, one white and one dark; the double color, Servius says, made a wreath that represented the duality of the hero's labors in both the upper and the underworld. The association of white poplar leaves with Herakles is attested by archaeological remains, such as the poplar-leaf motif carved on a statue base found in a small sanctuary to Herakles along the Tiber river, it has been suggested that behind the vague outlines of this tale lurks an older myth having to do with Herakles' encounter with the river deity Achelous, who had chthonic associations and whose name was the subject of speculative theological etymology among the Greeks, in this case involving acherōïs, another Greek word for "poplar."
In a founding myth of the 1st century BC, Herakles is supposed to have established the Arvernian oppidum of Alesia, the name of which derives from the Gaulish word for poplar. Celebrants of the Bacchic rites wore a wreath of poplar leaves to honor the chthonic aspect of Dionysus. At Elis, white poplar was the only wood used in sacrifices to Zeus, according to Pausanias, because Herakles imported the tree and used it to burn the thigh bones of sacrificial victims at Olympia; the oak is the customary sacred tree of Zeus, the substitution among the Eleans may reflect the more widespread growth habit of the poplar there. The hero was supposed to have discovered the tree growing on the banks of the upperworld Acheron in Thesprotia. Pausanias says this is the reason for the Homeric epithet Acherōïda for the white poplar, called leukē in Greek; the white poplar might be worn as a crown at athletic contests in honor of Herakles, a patron of the Olympic games. Its infernal origin made it appropriate for funeral games, which played an important role in the development of Greek athletics.
The white poplar was sacred to Persephone, for whom Leuce seems to be a doublet, as a goddess of regeneration. Robert Graves used the myth of Leuce in developing his poetic theories of mythology. Graves, for instance, holds that the back of the poplar leaf was turned white by the sweat of Herakles. In The White Goddess, he names the white poplar as one of the "three trees of resurrection", along with alder and cypress
François-Joseph Navez
François-Joseph Navez was a Belgian neo-classical painter. François-Joseph Navez was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, he spent five years in Italy between 1817 and 1822. Between 1835 and 1862 he was the director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, he was a successful portrait painter. He painted many mythological and historic subjects; the orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels was his pupil. Jean Carolus, the Belgian painter of genre scenes and interiors, was a protege of François-Joseph Navez. 1816: Sainte Véronique de Milan, Art Museum, Ghent. 1816: La Famille de Hemptinne, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Belgium. 1821: Scène de brigands, Private collection. 1829: La Nymphe Salmacis et Hermaphrodite, Art Museum, Ghent. 1830: Songe d'Athalie, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Belgium. 1831: Portrait d'un jeune homme songeur 1836: Portrait de David, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 1844: Notre-Dame des Affligés, Chiesa di S. Antonio, a Charleroi. Trois Dames de Gand, Paris.
P. & V. Berko, "Dictionary of Belgian painters born between 1750 & 1875", Knokke 1981, p. 488-489. P. & V. Berko, "19th Century European Virtuoso Painters", Knokke 2011, p. 511, illustrations p. 421. Media related to François-Joseph Navez at Wikimedia Commons
Nephele
In Greek mythology, Nephele was a cloud nymph who figured prominently in the story of Phrixus and Helle. Greek myth has it that Nephele is the cloud whom Zeus created in the image of Hera to trick Ixion to test his integrity after displaying his lust for Hera during a feast as a guest of Zeus. Ixion failed in restraining his lust for Hera. Nephele married Athamas. Phrixus and Helle, the son and daughter of Athamas and Nephele, were hated by Ino. Ino hatched a devious plot to get rid of the twins, roasting all the town's crop seeds so they would not grow; the local farmers, frightened of famine, asked a nearby oracle for assistance. Ino bribed the men sent to the oracle to lie and tell the others that the oracle required the sacrifice of Phrixus. Before he was killed though and Helle were rescued by a flying golden ram sent by Nephele, their natural mother. Phrixus and Helle were instructed to not look down to Earth for the duration of their flight. Helle, did look down, fell off the ram into the Hellespont and drowned, but Phrixus survived all the way to Colchis, where King Aeetes took him in and treated him kindly, giving Phrixus his daughter, Chalciope, in marriage.
In gratitude, Phrixus gave the king the Golden Fleece of the ram, which Aeetes hung in a tree in his kingdom. The Golden Fleece would be taken by Jason and his Argonauts. Aries
Pegasides
Pegasides were nymphs of Greek mythology connected with wells and springs those that the mythical horse Pegasus created by striking the ground with his hooves. According to Greek mythological tradition the winged horse Pegasus was the son of Poseidon and river god of the Greeks, equivalent to the Roman Neptune; the hero Bellerophon needed the untamed Pegasus to help him defeat the monster Chimera. Hence, while Pegasus was drinking at the spring Pirene in Corinth, Bellerophon caught him. Pegasus, struck a rock with his hoof, creating the spring Hippocrene on Mount Helicon; the name Pegasides means "originating from or linked with Pegasus". Hence, in poetry, the waters of Hippocrene and other springs that arose from the hoofprints of Pegasus are called Pegasides; the Muses are called Pegasides because the spring Hippocrene was sacred to them. Nymphs in general, if associated with springs and brooks, may be called Pegasides: thus Pegasis, the singular form, is applied by the Roman poet Ovid as a by-name or adjective to the nymph Oenone, daughter of the river-god Cebrenus.
Pegasis is used by the Greek author Quintus Smyrnaeus as the name of a nymph who had sex with the Trojan prince Emathion and gave birth beside the river Granicus to Atymnius. The latter was killed by Odysseus in the Trojan War. Adam, Alexander. A Summary of Geography and History, both Ancient and Modern: with an Abridgment of the Fabulous History of Mythology of the Greeks. London, printed for T. Cadell And W. Davies. OCLC 751291898. Anthon, Charles. A classical dictionary: containing an account of the principal proper names mentioned in ancient authors and intended to elucidate all the important points connected with geography, biography and fine arts of the Greeks and Romans. New York, Harper & Bros. OCLC 1395800. Erasmus, Desiderius. Poems: Volume 85-86. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. P. 438. ISBN 0-8020-2867-5. Gardner, James; the faiths of the world. Edinburgh, London, A. Fullarton & Co. OCLC 4914490. Lemprière, John. A classical dictionary. New York, E. Duyckinck, G. Long.
OCLC 5897265. Parada, Carlos. Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology. 107. Coronet Books. ISBN 978-9170810626. Smith, William. A classical dictionary of biography and geography: based on the larger dictionaries. London: John Murray. OCLC 316433650. Walford, Edward; the Antiquary. Cambridge: ProQuest LLC, 2008. OCLC 663459113
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths told by the ancient Greeks. These stories concern the origin and the nature of the world, the lives and activities of deities and mythological creatures, the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' own cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths in an attempt to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and its civilization, to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself; the Greek myths were propagated in an oral-poetic tradition most by Minoan and Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC. Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the Theogony and the Works and Days, contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians and comedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias.
Aside from this narrative deposit in ancient Greek literature, pictorial representations of gods and mythic episodes featured prominently in ancient vase-paintings and the decoration of votive gifts and many other artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles. In the succeeding Archaic and Hellenistic periods and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on the culture and literature of Western civilization and remains part of Western heritage and language. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes. Greek mythology is known today from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. 900 BC to c. 800 BC onward. In fact and archaeological sources integrate, sometimes mutually supportive and sometimes in conflict.
Mythical narration plays an important role in nearly every genre of Greek literature. The only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus; this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens wrote on many of these topics, his writings may have formed the basis for the collection. Among the earliest literary sources are the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the "epic cycle", but these and lesser poems now are lost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the "Homeric Hymns" have no direct connection with Homer, they are choral hymns from the earlier part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiod, a possible contemporary with Homer, offers in his Theogony the fullest account of the earliest Greek myths, dealing with the creation of the world. Hesiod's Works and Days, a didactic poem about farming life includes the myths of Prometheus and the Five Ages.
The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, rendered yet more dangerous by its gods. Lyrical poets took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar and Simonides, bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, relate individual mythological incidents. Additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama; the tragic playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides took most of their plots from myths of the age of heroes and the Trojan War. Many of the great tragic stories took on their classic form in these tragedies; the comic playwright Aristophanes used myths, in The Birds and The Frogs. Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, geographers Pausanias and Strabo, who traveled throughout the Greek world and noted the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends giving little-known alternative versions. Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions presented him and found the historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East.
Herodotus attempted to reconcile the blending of differing cultural concepts. The poetry of the Hellenistic and Roman ages was composed as a literary rather than cultic exercise, it contains many important details that would otherwise be lost. This category includes the works of: The Roman poets Ovid, Valerius Flaccus and Virgil with Servius's commentary; the Greek poets of the Late Antique period: Nonnus, Antoninus Liberalis, Quintus Smyrnaeus. The Greek poets of the Hellenistic period: Apollonius of Rhodes, Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Parthenius. Prose writers from the same periods who make reference to myths includ
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature; the Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars; the first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus, Ovid is today best known for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, influenced Western art and literature.
The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology. Ovid talks more about his own life than most other Roman poets. Information about his biography is drawn from his poetry Tristia 4.10, which gives a long autobiographical account of his life. Other sources include Seneca the Quintilian. Ovid was born in Sulmo, in an Apennine valley east of Rome, to an important equestrian family, on 20 March, 43 BC; that was a significant year in Roman politics. He was educated in rhetoric in Rome under the teachers Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro with his brother who excelled at oratory, his father wanted him to study rhetoric toward the practice of law. According to Seneca the Elder, Ovid tended to not the argumentative pole of rhetoric. After the death of his brother at 20 years of age, Ovid renounced law and began travelling to Athens, Asia Minor, Sicily, he held minor public posts, as one of the tresviri capitales, as a member of the Centumviral court and as one of the decemviri litibus iudicandis, but resigned to pursue poetry around 29–25 BC, a decision his father disapproved of.
Ovid's first recitation has been dated to around 25 BC. He was part of the circle centered on the patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, seems to have been a friend of poets in the circle of Maecenas. In Trist. 4.10.41–54, Ovid mentions friendships with Macer, Horace and Bassus. He married three times and divorced twice by the time he was thirty years old, he had one daughter, who bore him grandchildren. His last wife was connected in some way to the influential gens Fabia and would help him during his exile in Tomis; the first 25 years of Ovid's literary career were spent writing poetry in elegiac meter with erotic themes. The chronology of these early works is not secure, his earliest extant work is thought to be the Heroides, letters of mythological heroines to their absent lovers, which may have been published in 19 BC, although the date is uncertain as it depends on a notice in Am. 2.18.19–26 that seems to describe the collection as an early published work. The authenticity of some of these poems has been challenged, but this first edition contained the first 14 poems of the collection.
The first five-book collection of the Amores, a series of erotic poems addressed to a lover, Corinna, is thought to have been published in 16–15 BC. 8–3 BC. Between the publications of the two editions of the Amores can be dated the premiere of his tragedy Medea, admired in antiquity but is no longer extant. Ovid's next poem, the Medicamina Faciei, a fragmentary work on women's beauty treatments, preceded the Ars Amatoria, the Art of Love, a parody of didactic poetry and a three-book manual about seduction and intrigue, dated to AD 2. Ovid may identify this work in his exile poetry as the carmen, or song, one cause of his banishment; the Ars Amatoria was followed by the Remedia Amoris in the same year. This corpus of elegiac, erotic poetry earned Ovid a place among the chief Roman elegists Gallus and Propertius, of whom he saw himself as the fourth member. By AD 8, he had completed his most ambitious work, the Metamorphoses, a hexameter epic poem in 15 books; the work encyclopedically catalogues transformations in Greek and Roman mythology, from the emergence of the cosmos to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar.
The stories follow each other in the telling of human beings transformed to new bodies: trees, animals, constellations etc. At the same time, he worked on the Fasti, a six-book poem in elegiac couplets on the theme of the calendar of Roman festivals and astronomy; the composition of this poem was interrupted by Ovid's exile, it is thought that Ovid abandoned work on the piece in Tomis. It is in this period, if they are indeed by Ovid, that the double letters in the Heroides were composed. In AD 8, Ovid was banished to Tomis, on the Black Sea, by the exclusive intervention of the Emperor Augustus, without any participation of the Senate or of any Roman judge; this event shaped all his following poetry. Ovid wrote that the reason for his exile was carmen et error – "a poem and a mistake", claiming that his crime was
Artemis
Artemis, in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, the Moon, chastity. Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, the twin sister of Apollo, she was the patron and protector of young girls, was believed to bring disease upon women and relieve them of it. Artemis was worshipped as one of the primary goddesses of childbirth and midwifery along with Eileithyia. Much like Athena and Hestia, Artemis is sworn never to marry. Artemis was one of the most venerated of the Ancient Greek deities and her temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Artemis' symbols included a bow and arrow, a quiver and hunting knives and the deer and the cypress were sacred to her; the goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent. The name Artemis is of uncertain etymology, although various sources have been proposed. According to J. T. Jablonski, the name is Phrygian and could be "compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. According to Charles Anthon the primitive root of the name is of Persian origin from *arta, *art, *arte, all meaning "great, holy," thus Artemis "becomes identical with the great mother of Nature as she was worshipped at Ephesus".
Anton Goebel "suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter". The name may be related to Greek árktos "bear", supported by the bear cult the goddess had in Attica and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave, as well as the story of Callisto, about Artemis, it is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshipped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested, the earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek, a-te-mi-to /Artemitos/ and, a-ti-mi-te /Artimitei/, written in Linear B at Pylos. R. S. P. Beekes suggested. Artemis was venerated in Lydia as Artimus. Georgios Babiniotis, while accepting that the etymology is unknown states that the name is attested in Mycenean Greek and is of Pre-Greek origin. Ancient Greek writers, by way of folk etymology, some modern scholars, have linked Artemis to ἄρταμος, artamos, i.e. "butcher" or, like Plato did in Cratylus, to ἀρτεμής, artemḗs, i.e. "safe", "unharmed", "uninjured", "pure", "the stainless maiden".
Various conflicting accounts are given in Classical Greek mythology regarding the birth of Artemis and Apollo, her twin brother. However, in terms of parentage, all accounts agree that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and that she was the twin sister of Apollo. An account by Callimachus has it that Hera forbade Leto to give birth on either terra firma or on an island. Hera was angry with her husband Zeus because he had impregnated Leto but the island of Delos disobeyed Hera and Leto gave birth there. According to the Homeric Hymn to Artemis the island where Leto gave birth was Ortygia. In ancient Cretan history Leto was worshipped at Phaistos and, in Cretan mythology, Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis on the islands known today as Paximadia. A scholium of Servius on Aeneid iii. 72 accounts for the island's archaic name Ortygia by asserting that Zeus transformed Leto into a quail in order to prevent Hera from finding out about his infidelity, Kenneth McLeish suggested further that in quail form Leto would have given birth with as few birth-pains as a mother quail suffers when it lays an egg.
The myths differ as to whether Artemis was born first, or Apollo. Most stories depict Artemis as born first, becoming her mother's midwife upon the birth of her brother Apollo; the childhood of Artemis is not related in any surviving myth. The Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus. A poem by Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines some charming vignettes. Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, asked him to grant her several wishes: to always remain a virgin to have many names to set her apart from her brother Phoebus to have a bow and arrow made by the Cyclops to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer to have a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt to have sixty "daughters of Okeanos", all nine years of age, to be her choir to have twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested to rule all the mountains any city to have the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.
Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo. All of her companions remained virgins, Artemis guarded her own chastity, her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, the Moon. Callimachus tells how Artemis spent her girlhood seeking out the things that she would need to be a huntress, how she obtained her bow and arrows from the isle of Lipara, where Hephaestus and the Cyclops worked. Oceanus' daughters were filled with fear, but the young Artemis bravely approached and asked for bow and arrows. Callimachus tells how Artemis visited Pan, the god of the forest, who gave her seven bitches and six dogs, she captured six golden-horned deer to pull her chariot. Artemis practiced with h
