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Posts from the ‘Mythology’ Category

Jun 18

Nafplion: Greece’s Venetian City

Sometimes it’s nice to just do some plain old sight-seeing and not think about how it fits into my understanding of ‘the Greeks.’  Last Saturday, we walked around Nafplion / Nauplion (Drop the ‘o’ if you so desire, no one seems to mind. Note that upsilons often become ‘f’ in modern Greek; find this particularly strange as a pronunciation of ‘autos,’ the ancient and modern Greek word for self).  By walked, I mean climbed.  And by around, I mean up.  999 steps lead up the Palamidi Fortress that we can see from our terrace.  The steps begin about two tenths of a mile away.  Legend has it that the the fortress / castle, which
has 9 separate bastions, originally had 1000 steps that led up to it but some horseman was really excited when they defeated the enemy and charged his horse up the hill breaking the first step.  It’s not clear there actually are 999 steps — we didn’t count, we were too busy walking. Read more

Jun 16

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Gendered Pantheons or My goddess doesn’t want to beat up your god

I’ve been reading the novel Phaedra by June Rachuy Brindel (St. Martin’s Press, 1985) about the story of Phaedra and thinking more about the transition of the worship of Gaia, the earth goddess, to the Olympian pantheon that I talked about in my first and second posts on Delphi.  Brindel sets up the action of the novel, the confrontation between Phaedra and Theseus, as a confrontation between the life-giving power of the earth goddess and the kind of world that worshipped the earth goddess to the war mongering of those who keep the cult of the Olympians.  Even Zeus must keep justice with violence.   Read more

Jun 9

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Elysian Fields: Initiation to the Mysteries

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