Boeotia
Boeotia, sometimes alternatively Latinised as Boiotia, or Beotia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece, its capital is Livadeia, its largest city is Thebes. Boeotia was a region of ancient Greece, since before the 6th century BC. Boeotia lies to the north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth, it has a short coastline on the Gulf of Euboea. It bordered on Megaris in the south, Attica in the southeast, Euboea in the northeast, Opuntian Locris in the north and Phocis in the west; the main mountain ranges of Boeotia are Mount Parnassus in the west, Mount Helicon in the southwest, Cithaeron in the south and Parnitha in the east. Its longest river, the Cephissus, flows in the central part, where most of the low-lying areas of Boeotia are found. Lake Copais was a large lake in the center of Boeotia, it was drained in the 19th century. Lake Yliki is a large lake near Thebes; the earliest inhabitants of Boeotia, associated with the city of Orchomenus, were called Minyans.
Pausanias mentions that Minyans established the maritime Ionian city of Teos, occupied the islands of Lemnos and Thera. The Argonauts were sometimes referred to as Minyans. According to legend the citizens of Thebes paid an annual tribute to their king Erginus; the Minyans may have been proto-Greek speakers, but although most scholars today agree that the Mycenean Greeks descended from the Minyans of the Middle Helladic period, they believe that the progenitors and founders of Minyan culture were an autochthonous group. The early wealth and power of Boeotia is shown by the reputation and visible Mycenean remains of several of its cities Orchomenus and Thebes; the origin of the name "Boeotians" may lie in the mountain Boeon in Epirus. Some toponyms and the common Aeolic dialect indicate that the Boeotians were related to the Thessalians. Traditionally, the Boeotians are said to have occupied Thessaly, the largest fertile plain in Greece, to have been dispossessed by the north-western Thessalians two generations after the Fall of Troy.
They moved south and settled in another rich plain, while others filtered across the Aegean and settled on Lesbos and in Aeolis in Asia Minor. Others are said to have stayed in Thessaly, withdrawing into the hill country and becoming the perioikoi. Though far from Anthela, which lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly in the locality of Thermopylae, Boeotia was an early member of the oldest religious Amphictyonic League because her people had lived in Thessaly. Many ancient Greek legends are set in this region; the older myths took their final form during the Mycenean age when the Mycenean Greeks established themselves in Boeotia and the city of Thebes became an important centre. Many of them are related to the myths of Argos, others indicate connections with Phoenicia, where the Mycenean Greeks and the Euboean Greeks established trading posts. Important legends related to Boeotia include: Eros, worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae The Muses of Mount Helicon Ogyges and the Ogygian deluge Cadmus, said to have founded Thebes and brought the alphabet to Greece Dionysus and Semele Narcissus Heracles, born in Thebes The Theban Cycle, including the myths of Oedipus and the Sphinx, the Seven against Thebes Antiope and her sons Amphion and Zethus Niobe Orion, born in Boeotia and said to have fathered 50 sons with a local river god's daughters.
Many of these legends were used in plays by the tragic Greek poets, Aeschylus and Euripides: Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, known as the Theban plays Euripides's Bacchae, Phoenician Women and HeraclesThey were used in lost plays such as Aeschylus's Niobe and Euripides's Antiope. Boeotia was notable for the ancient oracular shrine of Trophonius at Lebadea. Graea, an ancient city in Boeotia, is sometimes thought to be the origin of the Latin word Graecus, from which English derives the words Greece and Greeks; the major poets Hesiod and Pindar were Boeotians. Boeotia had significant political importance, owing to its position on the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth, the strategic strength of its frontiers, the ease of communication within its extensive area. On the other hand, the lack of good harbours hindered its maritime development; the importance of the legendary Minyae has been confirmed by archaeological remains. The Boeotian population entered the land from the north before the Dorian invasion.
With the exception of the Minyae, the original peoples were soon absorbed by these immigrants, the Boeotians henceforth appear as a homogeneous nation. Aeolic Greek was spoken in Boeotia. In historical times, the leading city of Boeotia was Thebes, whose central position and military strength made it a suitable capital, it was the constant ambition of the Thebans to absorb the other townships into a single state, just as Athens had annexed the Attic communities. But the outlying cities resisted this policy, only allowed the formation of a loose federation, religious. While the Boeotians, unlike the Arcadians acted as a united whole against foreign enemies, the constant struggle between the cities was a serious check on the nation's development. Boeotia hardly figures in history before the late 6th century BC. Previous to this, its people are chiefly known as the makers of a type of geometric pottery, similar to
Naxos
Naxos is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture; the island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern time was one of the best abrasives available. The largest town and capital of the island is Naxos City, with 6,533 inhabitants; the main villages are Filoti, Vivlos, Agios Arsenios and Glynado. Climate is Mediterranean, with mild winters and warm summers; the Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Csa".. According to Greek mythology, the young Zeus was raised in a cave on Mt. Zas. Homer mentions "Dia". Károly Kerényi explains: This name, which means'heavenly' or'divine', was applied to several small craggy islands in our sea, all of them lying close to larger islands, such as Crete or Naxos; the name "Dia" was transferred to the island of Naxos itself, since it was more supposed than any other to have been the nuptial isle of Dionysus. One legend has it that in the Heroic Age before the Trojan War, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on this island after she helped him kill the Minotaur and escape from the Labyrinth.
Dionysus, the protector of the island, met Ariadne and fell in love with her. But Ariadne, unable to bear her separation from Theseus, either killed herself, or ascended to heaven; the Naxos portion of the Ariadne myth is told in the Richard Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The giant brothers Otus and Ephialtes figure in at least two Naxos myths: in one, Artemis bought the abandonment of a siege they laid against the gods, by offering to live on Naxos as Otus's lover. Zas Cave, inhabited during the Neolithic era, contained objects of stone from Melos and copper objects including a dagger and gold sheet; the presence of gold and other objects within the cave indicated to researchers the status of the inhabitant. Emery was exported to other islands. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Naxos dominated commerce in the Cyclades. Naxos was the first Greek city-state to attempt to leave the Delian League circa 476 BC. Athens demanded all future payments from Naxos in the form of gold rather than military aid.
Herodotus describes Naxos circa 500 BC as the most prosperous Greek island. In 502 BC, an unsuccessful attack on Naxos by Persian forces led several prominent men in the Greek cities of Ionia to rebel against the Persian Empire in the Ionian Revolt, to the Persian War between Greece and Persia. Pope Martin I was detained on the island of Naxos for a year after he was arrested by Byzantine authorities in Rome due to his holding of a synod that condemned monotheletism, he was held on the island prior to being taken to Constantinople for trial. While detained on the island, he wrote to a certain Theodore living in Constantinople. Under the Byzantine Empire, Naxos was part of the thema of the Aegean Sea, established in the mid-9th century. In the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, with a Latin Emperor under the influence of the Venetians established at Constantinople, the Venetian Marco Sanudo conquered the island and soon captured the rest of the islands of the Cyclades. Of all the islands, only on Naxos was there any opposition to Sanudo: a group of Genoese pirates had occupied the castle between the end of Byzantine rule and Sanudo's arrival.
To steel his band's resolve, Sanudo burnt his galleys "and bade his companions to conquer or die." The pirates surrendered the castle after a five weeks' siege. Naxos became the seat of Sanudo's realm, which he ruled with the title of Duke of Naxia, or Duke of the Archipelago. Twenty-one dukes in two dynasties ruled the Archipelago, until 1566. Under Venetian rule, the island was called by Nasso; the Ottoman administration remained in the hands of the Venetians. Few Turks settled on Naxos, Turkish influence on the island is slight. Under Ottoman rule the island was known as Turkish: Nakşa. Ottoman sovereignty lasted until 1821. Naxos is a popular tourist destination, with several ruins, it has a number of beaches, such as those at Agia Anna, Agios Prokopios, Kastraki, Mikri Vigla and Agios Georgios, most of them near Chora. As other cycladic islands, Naxos is considered a windy place perfect for windsurfing, as well as kitesurfing. There are seven sports clubs in the island that offer both of these sports and other water activities.
Naxos is the most fertile island of the Cyclades. It has a good supply of water in a region where water is inadequate. Mount Zeus is the highest peak in the Cyclades, tends to trap the clouds, permitting greater rainfall; this has made agriculture an important economic sector with various vegetable and fruit crops as well as cattle breeding, making Naxos the most self-sufficient island in the Cyclades. Naxos is well known within Greece for its cheese and Kitron, a local lemon-citrus spirit. Pannaxiakos A. O. Ecumenical Patriarch Callinicus III of Constantinople Nicodemus the Hagiorite, saint Petros Protopapadakis, Prime Minister of Greece Manolis Glezos, writer I
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
Cadmea
The Cadmea, or Cadmeia, was the citadel of ancient Thebes, named after Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes. The area is thought to have been settled since at least the early Bronze Age, although the history of settlement can only be reliably dated from the late Mycenaean period. In the classical and the early Hellenistic periods, the Cadmea served a similar purpose to the Acropolis of Athens. During the Spartan and Macedonian occupations of Thebes, foreign garrisons were stationed on the Cadmea. Phoebidas was the general responsible for the unauthorized seizure of the citadel of Cadmea in 382 BC, in violation of the Peace of Antalcidas in place then; the Cadmea was destroyed in 335 BC by Alexander the Great, who razed the city of Thebes as a warning to other Greek cities contemplating revolt against his rule. Cassander, the Macedonian general who inherited the Greek territorial possessions of Alexander after his death, rebuilt the Cadmea in 316 BC. Cadmea is an ancient name for calamine or zinc carbonate.
Combined with copper, it was used in ancient times for the production of brass, as mentioned, for instance, by the Roman author, Pliny the Elder. The element, was, in 1817, first isolated from an impurity in calamine.
Io (mythology)
Io was, in Greek mythology, one of the mortal lovers of Zeus. She was an ancestor of many kings and heroes such as Perseus, Heracles, Lynceus and Danaus; the astronomer Simon Marius named a moon of Jupiter after Io in 1614. In most versions of the legend, Io was the daughter of Inachus, though various other purported genealogies are known. If her father was Inachus her mother would have been Inachus' wife the Oceanid nymph Melia, daughter of Oceanus; the 2nd century AD geographer Pausanias suggests that she is the daughter of Inachus and retells the story of Zeus falling in love with Io, the legendary wrath of Hera, the metamorphosis by which Io becomes a beautiful white heifer. At another instant several generations Pausanias recounts another Io, descendant of Phoroneus, daughter of Iasus, who himself was the son of Argus and Ismene, the daughter of Asopus, or of Triopas and Sosis. Io's father was called Peiren in the Catalogue of Women, by Acusilaus a son of the elder Argus known as Peiras, Peiranthus or Peirasus.
Io may therefore be identical to Callithyia, daughter of Peiranthus, as is suggested by Hesychius of Alexandria. Io was a priestess of the Goddess Hera in Argos, whose cult her father Inachus was supposed to have introduced to Argos. Zeus noticed Io, a mortal woman, lusted after her. In the version of the myth told in Prometheus Bound she rejected Zeus' advances, until her father threw her out of his house on the advice of oracles. According to some stories, Zeus turned Io into a heifer in order to hide her from his wife. In the version of the story in which Zeus transformed Io, the deception failed, Hera begged Zeus to give her the heifer as a present, having no reason to refuse, he did. Hera sent Argus Panoptes, who had 100 eyes, to watch Io and prevent Zeus from visiting her, so Zeus sent Hermes to distract and slay Argus. According to Ovid, he did so by first lulling him to sleep by playing the panpipes and telling stories. Zeus freed Io, still in the form of a heifer. In order to exact her revenge, Hera sent a gadfly to sting Io continuously, driving her to wander the world without rest.
Io crossed the path between the Propontis and the Black Sea, which thus acquired the name Bosporus, where she met Prometheus, chained on Mt. Caucasus by Zeus. Prometheus comforted Io with the information that she would be restored to human form and become the ancestress of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles. Io escaped across the Ionian Sea to Egypt. There, she gave birth to Zeus's son Epaphus, a daughter as well, Keroessa, she married Egyptian king Telegonus. Their grandson, Danaus returned to Greece with his fifty daughters, as recalled in Aeschylus' play The Suppliants; the myth of Io must have been well known to Homer, who calls Hermes Argeiphontes, meaning "Argus-slayer." Walter Burkert notes that the story of Io was told in the ancient epic tradition at least four times of which we have traces: in the Danais, in the Phoronis— Phoroneus founded the cult of Hera, according to Hyginus' Fabulae 274 and 143—in a fragment of the Hesiodic Aigimios, as well as in fragmentary Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.
A mourning commemoration of Io was observed at the Heraion of Argos into classical times. The ancients connected Io with the Moon, in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, where Io encounters Prometheus, she refers to herself as "the horned virgin", both bovine and lunar. From her relationship with Phoroneus, as sister, Io is sometimes called Phoronis. Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume I: Books 1-8. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library No. 42. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1916. Online version at Harvard University Press. Peck, William Thane, The First and Second Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ginn & Company, 1900. Tsagalis, Early Greek Epic Fragments I: Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2017. ISBN 9783110532876 Theoi.com: Io: naiad nymph of Argolis and Egypt Assembles the essential references in Greek and Latin literature, in translation. Io engravings by Goltzius from the De Verda collection Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
Proserpina
Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose cult and mysteries were combined from those of Libera, an early Roman goddess of wine, the Greek Persephone and Demeter, goddesses of grain and agriculture. The Roman goddess Libera was daughter of the agricultural goddess Ceres and wife to Liber, god of wine and freedom. In 204 BC, a new "greek-style" cult to Ceres and Proserpina as "Mother and Maiden" was imported from southern Italy, along with Greek priestesses to serve it, was installed in Libera and Ceres' temple on Rome's Aventine Hill; the new cult and its priesthood were promoted by Rome's religious authorities as morally desirable for respectable Roman women, may have subsumed the temple's older, native cult to Ceres and Libera. Just as Persephone was thought to be a daughter of Demeter, Romans made Proserpina a daughter of Demeter's Roman equivalent, Ceres. Like Persephone, Proserpina is associated with its ruler, her name is a Latinisation of "Persephone" influenced by the Latin proserpere, with respect to the growing of grain.
Her core myths – her forcible abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother's search for her and her eventual but temporary restoration to the world above – are the subject of works in Roman and art and literature. In particular, Proserpina's seizure by the god of the Underworld – described as the Rape of Proserpina, or of Persephone – has offered dramatic subject matter for Renaissance and sculptors and painters. In early Roman religion, Libera was the female equivalent of Liber, she was an Italic goddess. She enters Roman history as part of a Triadic cult alongside Ceres and Liber, in a temple established on the Aventine Hill around 493 BCE; the location and context of this early cult mark her association with Rome's commoner-citizens, or plebs. Otherwise, her relationship to her Aventine cult partners is uncertain. Libera was identified with Proserpina in 205 BCE, when she acquired a Romanised form of the Greek mystery rites and their attendant mythology. In the late Republican era, Cicero described Libera as Ceres' children.
At around the same time in the context of popular or religious drama, Hyginus equated her with Greek Ariadne, as bride to Liber's Greek equivalent, Dionysus. The older and newer forms of her cult and rites, their diverse associations, persisted well into the late Imperial era. St. Augustine observed that Libera is concerned with female fertility, as Liber is with male fertility. Proserpina was introduced to Rome around 205 BCE, along with the ritus graecia cereris, as part of Rome's general religious recruitment of deities as allies against Carthage, towards the end of the Second Punic War; the cult originated in southern Italy and was based on the women-only Greek Thesmophoria, a mystery cult to Demeter and Persephone as "Mother and Maiden". It arrived along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention"; the new cult was installed in the ancient Temple of Ceres and Libera, Rome's Aventine patrons of the plebs.
Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone, after the latter's rape and abduction into the underworld by Hades. At the Aventine, the new cult took its place alongside the old, it made no reference to Liber, whose open and gender-mixed cult continued to play a central role in plebeian culture, as a patron and protector of plebeian rights and values. The female initiates and priestesses of the new "greek style" mysteries of Ceres and Proserpina were expected to uphold Rome's traditional, patrician-dominated social hierarchy and traditional morality. Unmarried girls should emulate the chastity of the maiden, their rites were intended to secure a good harvest, increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries. A Temple of Proserpina was located in a suburb of Melite, in modern Mtarfa, Malta; the temple's ruins were quarried between the 17th and 18th centuries, only a few fragments survive. The best-known myth surrounding Proserpina is of her abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother Ceres' frantic search for her, her eventual but temporary restitution to the world above.
In Latin literature, several versions are known, all similar in most respects to the myths of Greek Persephone's abduction by the King of the underworld, named variously in Greek sources as Hades or Pluto. "Hades" can mean both the hidden Underworld and its king, who in early Greek ver
Aulos
An aulos or tibia was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted in art and attested by archaeology. An aulete was the musician; the ancient Roman equivalent was the tibicen, from the Latin tibia, "pipe, aulos." The neologism aulode is sometimes used by analogy with rhapsode and citharode to refer to an aulos player, who may be called an aulist. There were several kinds of aulos, double; the most common variety was a reed instrument. Archeological finds, surviving iconography and other evidence indicate that it was double-reeded, like the modern oboe, but with a larger mouthpiece, like the surviving Armenian duduk. A single pipe without a reed was called the monaulos. A single pipe held horizontally, as the modern flute, was the plagiaulos. A pipe with a bag to allow for continuous sound, a bagpipe, was the askaulos. Though aulos is erroneously translated as "flute", it was a double-reeded instrument, its sound — described as "penetrating and exciting" — was more akin to that of the bagpipes, with a chanter and drone.
Like the Great Highland Bagpipe, the aulos has been used for martial music, but it is more depicted in other social settings. It was the standard accompaniment of the passionate elegiac poetry, it accompanied physical activities such as wrestling matches, the broad jump, the discus throw and to mark the rowing cadence on triremes, as well as sacrifices and dramas. Plato associates it with the ecstatic cults of Dionysus and the Korybantes, banning it from his Republic but reintroducing it in "Laws", it appears that some variants of the instrument were loud and therefore hard to blow. A leather strap, called a phorbeiá in Greek or capistrum in Latin, was worn horizontally around the head with a hole for the mouth by the auletai to help support the lips and avoid excessive strain on the cheeks due to continuous blowing. Sometimes a second strap was used over the top of the head to prevent the phorbeiá from slipping down. Aulos players are sometimes depicted with puffed cheeks; the playing technique certainly made use of circular breathing much like the Sardinian launeddas and Armenian duduk, this would give the aulos a continuous sound.
Although aristocrats with sufficient leisure sometimes practiced aulos-playing as they did the lyre, after the fifth century the aulos became chiefly associated with professional musicians slaves. Such musicians could achieve fame; the Romano-Greek writer Lucian discusses aulos playing in his dialogue Harmonides, in which Alexander the Great's aulete Timotheus discusses fame with his pupil Harmonides. Timotheus advises him to impress the experts within his profession rather than seek popular approval in big public venues. If leading musicians admire him, popular approval will follow. However, Lucian reports. In myth, Marsyas the satyr was supposed to have invented the aulos, or else picked it up after Athena had thrown it away because it caused her cheeks to puff out and ruined her beauty. In any case, he challenged Apollo to a musical contest, where the winner would be able to "do whatever he wanted" to the loser—Marsyas's expectation, typical of a satyr, was that this would be sexual in nature.
But Apollo and his lyre beat his aulos. And since the pure lord of Delphi's mind worked in different ways from Marsyas's, he celebrated his victory by stringing his opponent up from a tree and flaying him alive. King Midas was cursed with donkey's ears for judging Apollo as the lesser player. Marsyas's blood and the tears of the Muses formed the river Marsyas in Asia Minor; this tale was a warning against committing the sin of "hubris", or overweening pride, in that Marsyas thought he might win against a god. Strange and brutal as it is, this myth reflects a great many cultural tensions that the Greeks expressed in the opposition they drew between the lyre and aulos: freedom vs. servility and tyranny, leisured amateurs vs. professionals, moderation vs. excess, etc. Some of this is a result of 19th century AD "classical interpretation", i.e. Apollo versus Dionysus, or "Reason" opposed to "Madness". In the temple to Apollo at Delphi, there was a shrine to Dionysus, his Maenads are shown on drinking cups playing the aulos, but Dionysus is sometimes shown holding a kithara or lyre.
So a modern interpretation can be a little more complicated than just simple duality. This opposition is an Athenian one, it might be surmised that things were different at Thebes, a center of aulos-playing. At Sparta – which had no Bacchic or Korybantic cults to serve as contrast – the aulos was associated with Apollo, accompanied the hoplites into battle; the battle scene on the Chigi vase shows an aulos player setting a lyrical rhythm for the hoplite phalanx to advance to. This accompaniment reduced the possibility of an opening in the formation of the blockage. In this particular scene, the phalanx approaching from the left is unprepared and momentarily outnumbered four to five. More soldiers can be seen running up to assist them from behind. Though the front four are lacking a fifth soldier, they have the advantage because the aulete is there to bring the formation back together. An amphora from ca. 540-530 B. C. depicts H
.jpg)
.jpg)
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 616.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 
