Explore Dormarch, the supernatural hound of Gwyn ap Nudd, named companion of the Cŵn Annwfn and Wild Hunt who guards the threshold of the Welsh Otherworld. Previous Arthurian Next > Dormarch Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Dormarth (variant spelling), the Hound of Gwyn ap Nudd Pronunciation DOR-markh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Stallion of the Door, the Chief Hound of Annwn, the Leader of the Otherworld Pack, the Dog of the Wild Hunt Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Welsh/Celtic/Arthurian fringe Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Literary tradition c. 1100-1250 (Culhwch ac Olwen and the Black Book of Carmarthen) Symbol Triple Spiral Dog Prints Tags arthurian, dormarch, welsh, hound, gwyn-ap-nudd, annwn, cwn-annwn, wild-hunt, mabinogion, culhwch, black-book-of-carmarthen, otherworld Introduction - Overview Dormarch is the hound of Gwyn ap Nudd, the named dog of the king of the Welsh Otherworld, and by his master's place the chief of the Cwn Annwn, the spectral pack that rides the night sky before death and war. He is the stallion of the door, if his strange name is read aright, the horse-named hound that stands at the threshold of Annwn. He is one of the earliest named dogs in British literature, called up in the great muster of Culhwch and Olwen when Arthur summoned all the marvels of the Island of Britain to his aid, and named by his master in the old verses of the Black Book of Carmarthen, where Gwyn speaks of his hound as a warrior speaks of his sword. He is the baying in the mountain wind, the white dog with the red ears at the head of the immortal hunt. And he is the reminder that even the king of the Otherworld keeps a faithful hound, and that the oldest stories of Wales knew a dog could be a legend in his own right. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Dormarch Dormarch survives in two golden mentions, and both are old. The first is in Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest Arthurian prose tale, composed around the year 1100. When Culhwch musters the strength of Arthur's court to win Olwen from her giant father, the roll of the summoned runs for pages and passes from kings to magicians to animals, and among them come Gwyn ap Nudd, in whom, the tale says, God set the spirit of the demons of Annwn lest this world be destroyed, and with Gwyn comes his hound, Dormarch. That is all the tale gives him: a name on the greatest list in Welsh literature. But to be named at all in that company is fame, for the roll forgets thousands and remembers the few that mattered. The second mention is older still in spirit: the dialogue poem of the Black Book of Carmarthen, where Gwyn ap Nudd, speaking with the mortal prince Gwyddno Garanhir, names his hound Dormarch in the same breath as his war-gear, as a warrior names his sword. To know the hound, know the master. Gwyn ap Nudd, son of Nudd, is the king of Annwn, the Welsh Otherworld, the lover of Creiddylad for whose sake he fights Gwythyr every May Day until the Day of Judgment, and above all the gatherer of souls. In the old poem he tells Gwyddno that he was present where the warriors of Britain fell, that he was at Arfderydd when Gwenddolau was slain, walking the battlefields to take the dead. Where such a master hunts, his hound hunts too, and the pack that runs with Gwyn is the Cwn Annwn, the hounds of the Otherworld, the same shining white dogs with red ears that Pwyll Prince of Dyfed met at Glyn Cuch when he stumbled on the hunt of Arawn. Their colours are the colours of every Otherworld beast in Celtic story, and their cry plays tricks with distance, sounding far off when the hunt is close and close when it is far. Later Welsh folklore knew them as the pack that rides the storm, heard on wild nights over the hills, whose hearing was a warning of death, and named Dormarch, the one hound of the pack with a name, as their chief. His name is a riddle worth keeping. In Welsh, march is a stallion, and dor is a door or gate, so the hound's name runs something like the Stallion of the Door, as if he were not a dog at all but the steed that stands at the threshold of the Otherworld, or the horse-spirit that leads the hunt through it. The doubling of horse and hound in a single name is pure Annwn, where nothing is only itself. And he is in good company, for Welsh legend loved its dogs by name. There is Drudwyn, the whelp of Greid, whose leash and collar and chain were three of the impossible tasks of Culhwch; there is Cafall, the hound of Arthur himself, whose footprint in the stone at Carn Cabal, near Builth, was counted among the wonders of Britain in the ninth century, a print that returns to the cairn however often the stone is taken away. Ireland went further and named its greatest hero for a dog: Cu Chulainn, the Hound of Culann. Dormarch belongs to that ancient honour-roll of Celtic hounds, and outranks them all in one respect, for he alone runs with the dead. The Wild Hunt he leads has never slept. As Gwyn ap Nudd's pack it rode out over Wales on the nights of winter, and under other names it rides all over Europe: the Gabriel Hounds of the north of England, the Devil's Dandy Dogs of Cornwall, the hunts of Odin and of Herne. But the Welsh tradition keeps the gentlest touch of any of them, because it keeps the dog. Somewhere in the storm there is still a white hound with red ears at the front of the cry, a stallion's name on a hound's lean shoulders, running point for the king of Annwn as he gathers what the battlefields leave. The oldest Arthurian tale remembered to summon him, and a thousand years later his name still answers. Summary Dormarch endures as the named hound of the Welsh Otherworld, the stallion of the door who runs at the head of the Cwn Annwn with Gwyn ap Nudd through the stormy night. From the muster-roll of Culhwch and Olwen to the verses of the Black Book of Carmarthen, he is one of the first dogs in British literature to be given a name and a fame. He is the reminder that the Wild Hunt has a master and the master has a hound, that the colours of Annwn are white and red, and that when the cry of the pack sounds far off in the near hills, an old king of the Otherworld is out with his dog. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Dormarch From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Cŵn Annwfn Creature/Monster/Animal Cŵn Annwfn Gwyn ap Nudd Deity Gwyn ap Nudd Tarn Wadling Location Tarn Wadling Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Culhwch ac Olwen, c. 1080-1100 - the muster of Arthur's court, naming Dormarch the hound of Gwyn ap Nudd - The Black Book of Carmarthen, c. 1250 - the dialogue of Gwyddno Garanhir and Gwyn ap Nudd, in which Gwyn names his hound - Pwyll Prince of Dyfed (Mabinogion, First Branch) - the shining white, red-eared hounds of Annwn - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, Mirabilia, c. 829 - Carn Cabal and the footprint of Arthur's hound - Bromwich, Rachel and D. Simon Evans (eds.), Culhwch and Olwen: An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale (University of Wales Press, 1992) - the court list and its lore - Jarman, A.O.H. (ed.), Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin (University of Wales Press, 1982) - the Black Book texts - Rhys, John, Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Oxford University Press, 1901) - Gwyn ap Nudd and the Wild Hunt in later tradition - Gruffydd, W.J., Folklore and Myth in the Mabinogion (University of Wales Press, 1958) - the hounds and hunts of Welsh tradition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Geoffrey of Monmouth, the 12th-century chronicler whose Historia Regum Britanniae transformed Welsh legend into the enduring story of King Arthur. Previous Arthurian Next > Geoffrey of Monmouth Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Galfridus Monemutensis, Galfridus Artur, Gaufridus (Latin variants); Galfridus (Norman French form) Pronunciation JEF-ree of MON-muth Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Father of Arthur, the Chronicler of the Phantom Book, the Bishop of St Asaph, the Breton from Monmouth, the Maker of Britain's Mythic Past, the Wizard of Oxford Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British/Norman Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 1095-1155 CE (life); literary tradition c. 1135-1155 CE Symbol Phantom Book & Quill Tags arthurian, geoffrey-of-monmouth, hero, historia-regum-britanniae, merlin, king-arthur, chronicler, phantom-book, welsh, norman Introduction - Overview Geoffrey of Monmouth is the cleric who conjured King Arthur out of the mists of Welsh legend and wrote him into the history of the world, the man whose quill created the most famous king who never lived. He is the chronicler who claimed to have translated a "very ancient book in the British tongue" given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a phantom manuscript that has never been found and may never have existed, but which became the foundation for the greatest legend in Western literature. He is the author of the Historia Regum Britanniae, the History of the Kings of Britain, composed around 1136, a work that traced Britain from the Trojan exile Brutus to the final British king Cadwallader, and which gave the world the first complete biography of Arthur: his miraculous conception, his conquest of Rome, his Round Table, his wife Guinevere, his treacherous son Mordred, and his departure to the Isle of Avalon. He is the poet who wrote the Prophetiae Merlini, the Prophecies of Merlin, around 1135, transforming a Welsh wild man into the boy-prophet who revealed the red and white dragons beneath Dinas Emrys, and who later composed the Vita Merlini, the Life of Merlin, in ornate Latin hexameters around 1150. And he is the bishop of St Asaph who was consecrated in 1152 but probably never set foot in his see, a man who spent his life in Oxford and the Welsh Marches, rubbing shoulders with earls and archdeacons, and who died in 1155 leaving behind a legacy that would shape the literature of Europe for a thousand years. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Geoffrey of Monmouth Geoffrey was born around 1095, probably in Monmouth, a town on the Welsh Marches where the River Wye meets the River Monnow, a place where Norman, Welsh, and Breton cultures mingled in the decades after the Conquest. His name appears on charters as "Galfridus Monemutensis," Geoffrey of Monmouth, and scholars believe he may have been of Breton descent, his family perhaps arriving with William the Conqueror's forces from Brittany, the Celtic homeland that shared Wales's language and legends. He was educated, possibly at the priory of St Mary's Church in Monmouth, and by 1129 he had appeared in Oxford, where his name appears on the charter of Osney Abbey. For the next twenty years, he was an Oxford cleric, linked with Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man who shared his taste for letters and who, according to Geoffrey's own prologue, presented him with the "very ancient book in the British tongue" that became the supposed source of the Historia. Whether this book existed or was a literary fiction, the claim was a common medieval device for authenticating a new work, and Geoffrey used it to bridge the gap between the legendary past and the Norman present. The Prophetiae Merlini, composed around 1135 with the encouragement of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was Geoffrey's first Arthurian work. It was a collection of cryptic prophecies attributed to Merlin, the boy-prophet who had revealed the red and white dragons to Vortigern, and it enjoyed immense popularity as political prophecy. Sections were translated into Middle English and used to signify political events for centuries, and the work established Merlin as a figure of national destiny rather than mere local legend. But it was the Historia Regum Britanniae, completed by 1138, that changed everything. In twelve books, Geoffrey traced the history of Britain from the arrival of Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, who founded Britain after the Trojan War, through the reigns of King Lear, King Cymbeline, and Old King Cole, to the rise and fall of King Arthur. He gave Arthur a father, Uther Pendragon, who fell in love with Igraine through Merlin's enchantments. He gave Arthur a sword, Caliburn, forged in Avalon. He gave Arthur a queen, Guinevere, who was descended from a noble Roman family. He gave Arthur a son, Mordred, born of the incestuous union between Arthur and his half-sister Morgause. He gave Arthur a Round Table, a fellowship of knights, and a conquest of Rome that rivalled the deeds of Alexander the Great. And he gave Arthur a death: wounded at the battle of Camlann, carried to the Isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, leaving the kingdom to fall to the Saxons. None of this had existed in a single narrative before Geoffrey wrote it. Geoffrey's sources were a patchwork of earlier texts and oral traditions. He drew upon Gildas's De Excidio Brittaniae, a 6th-century lament for the ruin of Britain, which mentioned Vortigern and Aurelius Ambrosius. He drew upon Nennius's Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century chronicle that first mentioned "Arthur the soldier," the dux bellorum who fought twelve battles against the Saxons. He drew upon Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Welsh genealogical tracts, regnal lists, and the rich oral folklore of Wales and Brittany. But he also invented freely, filling gaps with his own imagination, and the result was a work that his contemporaries immediately recognised as something between history and fiction. William of Newburgh, a 12th-century Augustinian canon, lambasted the Historia as "a pack of lies" and accused Geoffrey of shamelessly inventing stories about the Britons. But the book was a bestseller. Two hundred and seventeen surviving manuscripts testify to its popularity, and it was translated into Norman French by Wace around 1155, into Middle English by Layamon around 1200, and into Welsh, Cornish, and other languages. It became the foundation for the entire Arthurian tradition, the source from which Chrétien de Troyes drew his romances, from which Malory composed his Morte d'Arthur, and from which Tennyson and every modern reteller has taken their Arthur. The political context of Geoffrey's work was the Norman conquest and the struggle for legitimacy. The Anglo-Norman kings needed a history that connected them to the pre-Saxon British past, a lineage that justified their rule over Wales and the Welsh Marches. Geoffrey's Historia provided exactly that: a narrative in which the Britons, ancestors of the Welsh, had once ruled a vast empire that included Rome itself, and in which the Saxons were usurpers who had stolen the land from its rightful heirs. The Norman kings, by this logic, were the restorers of British glory, the new Arthurs who would reclaim the island from the Saxon descendants. The dedication of the Historia to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I and one of the most powerful magnates in England, was a political masterstroke, securing patronage and protection for a work that might otherwise have been condemned as heretical or treasonous. Geoffrey's later appointment as Bishop of St Asaph in 1152, consecrated by Archbishop Theobald of Bec at Lambeth, was a reward for his literary service, though there is no evidence that he ever visited his Welsh see, which was in the midst of unrest. In his final years, Geoffrey returned to the character who had made him famous. Around 1150, he composed the Vita Merlini, a poem of 1,530 lines in Latin hexameters that portrayed Merlin in a very different light from the boy-prophet of the Historia. This Merlin was a king of Dyfed who went mad after the slaughter of his companions in battle, fled to the Caledonian forest, and lived as a wild man among the beasts. He was restored to sanity by the music of a messenger and the love of his sister Ganieda, but he chose to return to the woods, preferring the company of nature to the courts of men. The poem introduced Taliesin, the legendary Welsh poet, as Merlin's companion, and it explored themes of madness, prophecy, and the rejection of civilisation that would resonate through later literature. Geoffrey died in 1155, leaving behind a body of work that had transformed the cultural landscape of Europe. Within a generation, Wace had added the Round Table to Arthur's court, Chrétien de Troyes had invented Lancelot and the Grail Quest, and the Arthurian legend had become the Matter of Britain, the greatest secular mythology of the Middle Ages. Geoffrey of Monmouth had not merely written about Arthur; he had created him, breathing life into a figure who had been little more than a name in a chronicle and turning him into the once and future king, the symbol of British identity, and the hero of the greatest story ever told. Summary Geoffrey of Monmouth endures as the most influential writer in British history, the cleric whose phantom book gave the world a king who never existed but who has outlasted every real monarch. From the priory of Monmouth to the College of St George at Oxford, from the dedication to Robert of Gloucester to the bishopric of St Asaph he never visited, his life was the journey of a man who turned legend into literature and literature into destiny. He is the reminder that history is not only what happened, but what we believe happened, and that the greatest kings are sometimes born from the imagination of a single man with a quill and a vision of a Britain that never was, but should have been. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Geoffrey of Monmouth From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Stonehenge Location Stonehenge Tintagel Location Tintagel Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon Merlin Person Merlin Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin), c. 1135 - primary source; the collection of cryptic prophecies attributed to Merlin, dedicated to Alexander Bishop of Lincoln - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), c. 1136-1138 - primary source; the complete biography of King Arthur from conception to Avalon, the Trojan foundation of Britain, and the dedication to Robert Earl of Gloucester - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini (Life of Merlin), c. 1148-1151 - primary source; the Latin hexameter poem of Merlin's madness, wild existence in the Caledonian forest, and restoration through music and prophecy - William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, c. 1198 - primary source; the contemporary critique of Geoffrey's Historia as "a pack of lies" and the accusation of shameless invention - Robert Wace, Roman de Brut, c. 1155 - primary source; the Norman French verse translation and adaptation of Geoffrey's Historia, adding the Round Table - Layamon, Brut, late 12th to mid-13th century - primary source; the Middle English alliterative adaptation of Wace's translation, bringing Geoffrey's Arthur to English-speaking audiences - Tatlock, J.S.P., The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and Its Early Vernacular Versions (University of California Press, 1950) - scholarly monograph; the definitive study of Geoffrey's sources, methods, and the transmission of his work - Curley, Michael J., Geoffrey of Monmouth (Twayne Publishers, 1994) - scholarly biography and literary analysis of Geoffrey's life, works, and historical context - Thorpe, Lewis (trans.), Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain (Penguin Classics, 1966) - modern scholarly translation with introduction and notes on Geoffrey's sources and the phantom book controversy - Wright, Neil (ed.), The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth I: Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 568 (D.S. Brewer, 1984) - scholarly critical edition and textual analysis of the earliest manuscript tradition - Flint, Valerie, "The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Parody and Its Purpose. A Suggestion," Speculum 54 (1979): 447-468 - scholarly article; the argument that Geoffrey's work was a deliberate parody of historical writing with political purpose - Tolhurst, Fiona, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) - scholarly study; the analysis of Geoffrey's female characters and their influence on the Arthurian tradition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Empusa, the bronze-legged shape-shifting spectre sent by Hecate to terrify travellers on the night roads of Greek myth. | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Empusa Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἔμπουσα (Empousa) Pronunciation em-POO-suh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Empousa, The Shape-Shifter, The One-Footed, Daughter of Hecate, The Bronze-Legged, The Spectre of the Crossroads Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Spirit Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period c. 5th century BCE (Aristophanes' Frogs, 405 BCE); folk belief likely older Symbol Donkey Leg & Claw Tags greek, empusa, hecate, spectre, shape-shifter, aristophanes, crossroads, monster Introduction - Overview Empusa is the shape-shifting spectre of Greek mythology, the phantom servant of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft and the crossroads, sent to terrify travellers on the roads by night. She is the monster of the mismatched legs: one of bronze, and the other of an ass or of dung, a detail so absurd that only the Greeks could have made it frightening. She is the apparition who ambushed the god Dionysus himself on his journey to the underworld in Aristophanes' comedy Frogs, melting before the audience's eyes from ox to mule to beautiful woman to dog, while the terrified god begged his own priest for protection. She is the mother of a whole brood, the empousai, vampiric she-demons with flaming hair who seduced handsome young men in order to drain them of blood and life. She is the phantom that the wandering sage Apollonius of Tyana shouted down on the banks of the river Indus, driving it shrieking into the dark with a storm of curses. And she is a fright that has never quite gone away, from the insults of Athenian politicians to the monster pages of the Percy Jackson novels, where her flaming daughters still hunt young heroes. Gallery Empusa the demon goddess depicted as a vampiric seductress and also as a demonic being with donkey leg. Main Article - Who or What was... Empusa Empusa belonged to the court of Hecate, the torch-bearing goddess of crossroads, ghosts and sorcery, who walked the night with packs of baying hounds and a retinue of restless spectres. Among these Empusa was the most feared: not a goddess, not a ghost of any dead person, but a phasma, a pure apparition, a thing whose whole nature was to appear. She had no fixed shape because her shape was never the point; her power was transformation itself, and she shifted from form to form, beast to woman to monster, faster than the eye could settle. Ancient commentators explained her name as the One-Footed, and her feet were her signature: one leg was made of bronze, flashing like a sword in the dark, and the other, depending on who told the tale, was the leg of an ass or a lump of dung, a grotesque joke that somehow made her worse. She waited where Hecate ruled, at crossroads and lonely stretches of road after nightfall, and she came for travellers who walked alone. Her most famous appearance is the funniest scene of terror in all ancient literature. In 405 BCE the comic playwright Aristophanes of Athens staged his masterpiece Frogs, in which Dionysus, the god of wine and theatre, despairing of the city's tragedians, disguises himself as the hero Heracles, the one man who had gone to the underworld and returned, and journeys down to the land of the dead to fetch back the playwright Euripides. With him goes his smart-mouthed slave Xanthias, and after crossing the lake of the dead on the ferry of Charon, the gaunt boatman of the underworld, master and servant hear a sound and see a light. Xanthias describes the thing coming towards them: an enormous beast that will not hold its shape, an ox, then a mule, then a beautiful woman. Dionysus perks up and wants to run to meet her, but Xanthias calls back that now she is a dog, and the god groans the name the audience has been waiting for: Empousa. Worse follows. Her face is on fire, and one of her legs is bronze, and the other, Xanthias swears, is made of dung. The brave god of theatre, dressed as the bravest hero in Greece, is so frightened that he turns to the front row of the audience and begs the priest of Dionysus, whose seat of honour stood there at every performance, to protect him, breaking the fourth wall a full two thousand years before the term existed. The phantom vanishes in a blaze of light, and the road to the underworld is safe again, at least from her. The sage Apollonius of Tyana, the wandering wonder-worker of the first century CE whose life was written by the biographer Philostratus, met her kin on the far side of the world. Travelling with his companions along the river Indus in India, the party saw a phantom drifting near their camp, changing shape and gliding closer, and his companions froze in dread. Apollonius knew the old remedy: spectres of this kind cannot bear abuse. He loosed a stream of curses at the thing and told his companions to curse it too, and the empousa fled shrieking into the night as such phantoms do. The Greeks also knew her daughters, the empousai, she-demons of the roads and cemeteries who shared the bronze leg and the flaming hair of their mother and added a worse habit: they took the shape of beautiful women, seduced young men in the dark, and drank their blood and life away drop by drop, cousins in appetite to the child-devouring Lamia. In the everyday life of Greece, Empusa's name was a household word for fright. Mothers used her as a bogey to scare children indoors before dusk, and her name became a ready insult: the great orator Demosthenes, addressing the Athenian assembly in 330 BCE in his speech On the Crown, reached for the worst thing he could say about his rival Aeschines and said it about his mother, publicly calling the woman an Empousa. The word lived on in Greek for centuries as a term for phantoms and nightmares, and Byzantine scholars were still explaining her to readers a thousand years after Aristophanes made a theatre full of Athenians laugh and shudder at her. Her afterlife in the modern world is strangely lively. The genus Empusa, a group of praying mantises with twisted, otherworldly bodies and leaf-like limbs, was named for her shape-shifting oddness, and stalks the fields of Europe and Africa to this day. In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, beginning with The Lightning Thief in 2005, millions of young readers have met the empousai exactly where the Greeks left them: servants of Hecate with flaming hair, one bronze leg and one donkey leg, disguised as beautiful girls and hungry for the blood of heroes, most memorably a pair posing as cheerleaders in The Battle of the Labyrinth. The phantom of the crossroads has walked from the night roads of Attica into paperback fiction and insect anatomy without ever losing her mismatched legs. Summary Empusa stands as the shape of fear itself in Greek belief, the spectre who is nothing but a shifting apparition, the bronze-legged daughter of Hecate who made even a god scream for his priest. From the lamp-lit stage of Athens to the banks of the Indus, from a political insult to a nursery bogey, from Riordan's flaming-haired cheerleaders to a mantis on a Mediterranean leaf, her story is two and a half thousand years of changing shape without ever disappearing. Ancient commentators traced her name to the verb for appearing suddenly, and she has never stopped doing it. Every flicker at the edge of a dark road, every figure that changes as you approach it, is still her territory. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Empusa From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Lamia Creature/Monster/Animal Lamia Charon Deity Charon Dionysus Deity Dionysus Hecate Deity Hecate Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Aristophanes, Frogs (405 BCE) - Lines 288-306 (the Empousa on the road to the underworld: the changing shapes and the bronze leg) - Scholia on Aristophanes' Frogs 293 (ancient and Byzantine commentaries) - Empousa the bronze-legged spectre of Hecate and the meaning of her name - Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (c. 220 CE) - Book 2.4 (the Empousa driven off by curses on the Indus); Book 4.25 (the phantom bride of Corinth, named empousa and lamia) - Demosthenes, On the Crown (330 BCE) - Section 18.130 (Empousa hurled as an insult in the Athenian assembly) - Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon (c. 5th - 6th century CE) - Entries on Empousa (the spectre and her names) - The Suda (10th century CE) - Entry "Empousa" (the apparition sent by Hecate) - Johnston, Sarah Iles, Hekate Soteira (Scholars Press, 1990) - On Hecate and her retinue of spectres - Johnston, Sarah Iles, Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (University of California Press, 1999) - Chapter on the returning dead and road-haunting spectres - Felton, Debbie, Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (University of Texas Press, 1999) - Chapter on bogeys and apparitions - Patera, Maria, Figures grecques de l'epouvante de l'antiquite au present (Brill, 2015) - Study of Empousa and the Greek bogey tradition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Kay, King Arthur's foster-brother and sharp-tongued seneschal who named Beaumains in Camelot's kitchen. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Kay Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Sir Kay, Cei (Welsh), Cai (Welsh), Caius (Latin), Kai (French), Kei (German) Pronunciation KAY Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Kitchen Master, The Tall, The Seneschal, Sir Kay, Fair Hands' Tormentor, The Foster-Brother, The Steward of Camelot, The Sharp Tongue Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British/Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 830-1485 CE Symbol Kitchen apron & utensils Tags arthurian, kay, hero, seneschal, kitchen-master, camelot, gareth, beaumains, foster-brother, arthur Introduction - Overview Kay is the foster-brother of King Arthur and the sharp-tongued seneschal of Camelot, the man who held the keys to the king's household and who turned a kitchen into a testing ground for the noblest knight of the Round Table. He is the son of Sir Ector, the nobleman who raised Arthur in secret after Merlin, the wizard who placed the sword in the stone by which Arthur proved his right to the throne, spirited the infant away from the court of Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father. He is the boy who grew up beside Arthur, sharing lessons in swordcraft and horsemanship, never knowing that his foster-brother was the heir to all Britain. He is the knight who tried to claim credit for drawing the sword from the stone, the weapon embedded in an anvil outside St Paul's cathedral in London by Merlin for Uther Pendragon, and who was forgiven when the truth came out. He is the seneschal who managed the kitchens, the feasts, and the provisions of Camelot, and who nicknamed Gareth of Orkney Beaumains, meaning Fair Hands, in mockery of his uncalloused palms before that same kitchen knave proved himself the equal of any knight in Christendom. And he is the warrior who killed two kings with his own hand at the Humber River, the foster-brother whose loyalty outlasted his pride, and whose sharp tongue was the whetstone against which the virtue of the Round Table was sharpened. Gallery Other depictions of Sir Kay including him as Kitchen Master. Main Article - Who or What was... Kay Kay was born the son of Sir Ector, a nobleman of the Welsh Marches who was entrusted by Merlin with the infant Arthur after Uther Pendragon's death. Ector raised the boy as his own, and Kay grew up believing Arthur was merely a younger foster-brother, the child his father had taken in. The two boys trained together, fought together, and shared every secret, though Kay was the elder and the heir to his father's house. When Arthur drew the sword from the stone and was proclaimed king, Kay was among the first to kneel, and his father asked only one favour: that Arthur make Kay his seneschal, the steward who managed the royal household, the kitchens, the feasts, and the provisions that kept the court alive. Arthur swore that no other man would hold the office while they both lived, and Kay became the most powerful servant in the kingdom, the man who controlled the keys to every storeroom and the roster of every scullion. In the earliest Welsh tradition, recorded in the medieval tale Culhwch and Olwen of the 11th or 12th century, Kay is a figure of almost supernatural power. He is called Cei, one of the three enchanter knights of Britain, and his abilities are described with wonder: he could hold his breath underwater for nine days and nine nights, he could go without sleep for the same span, a wound from his sword could not be healed by any physician, and when it pleased him he could grow as tall as the tallest tree in the forest. He was the foremost warrior at Arthur's court, and when Culhwch, the hero seeking the giant's daughter Olwen, came to Camelot, it was Cei who led the expedition. This Welsh Cei is a far cry from the seneschal of later romance, a hero of mythic stature who fought monsters and bore the heat that could dry his companions' clothes in the heaviest rain. The French romances of the 12th century, particularly those of Chretien de Troyes, the poet who invented the Arthurian romance as a literary genre, transformed Kay from the Welsh superman into the sharp-tongued steward who serves as a foil for the great knights. In Chretien's Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, Kay mocks Sir Calogrenant for his chivalric courtesy and provokes him into the adventure that drives the tale. In Chretien's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Kay tricks Arthur into letting him attempt the rescue of Queen Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur, from the abductor Maleagant, and is humiliatingly defeated. In Chretien's Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Kay slaps a maiden who prophesies that Perceval, the naive Welsh boy who would become the greatest Grail knight, will achieve greatness, and Perceval later avenges her by breaking Kay's shoulder. Yet even in these tales, Kay is never a coward or a traitor. His mockery is the test that proves the hero's virtue, and his sharp words maintain the order of the court. Thomas Malory, in his Le Morte d'Arthur compiled in 1469-1470, gave Kay his most enduring form. Malory's Kay is the seneschal who manages the kitchens and who, when Gareth of Orkney arrived at Camelot in rags asking for food and drink for a year, put him to work among the scullions and mocked him with the name Beaumains. It was Kay who set the kitchen boy to labour, Kay who laughed at his white hands, and Kay who was silenced when Gareth proved himself the conqueror of the Red Knight of the Red Lands. Yet Malory also gives Kay moments of genuine glory. During the invasion of the five kings of Denmark, Ireland, the Vale, Soleise, and the Isle of Longtains, Kay stood with Arthur, Gawain, and Griflet by the Humber River when the enemy attacked by night. Kay saw five kings riding toward them and declared that he would take two of them while the others took the rest. He charged, struck one king through shield and body so that the man fell dead, then ran to the fifth and clove helm and head with a single blow. Arthur praised him worshipfully, and Queen Guinevere herself declared that any lady who did not love Kay was greatly to blame. Kay's death is told differently in different traditions. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1138, Kay is killed in the war against the Roman Emperor Lucius, avenged by Arthur who splits the emperor's head to the teeth. The Vulgate Cycle also has him die in France fighting the Romans. In Welsh literature, he is killed by a warrior named Gwyddawg, who is in turn killed by Arthur. But Malory's version is more ambiguous: Kay survives the Roman war, is sent to retrieve the sacred scabbard of Excalibur, Arthur's sword, before the final battle of Camlann, and is mentioned among the few who survive that last terrible conflict. Some later traditions suggest he was killed by Lancelot during the rescue of Guinevere from the stake, confused with Sir Kainus le Strange, but Malory himself leaves Kay's fate uncertain, the foster-brother who may have outlived the kingdom he served. Summary Kay endures as the most complex foster-brother in British mythology, the sharp-tongued steward who mocked a kitchen knave into knighthood and killed two kings with his own hand. From the superhuman Cei of Welsh legend to the seneschal of Malory's Camelot, from the kitchen where he named Beaumains to the Humber River where he proved his worth, his story is the reminder that loyalty does not always wear a gentle face. He is the foster-brother whose keys kept the court fed and whose words kept the heroes honest, the man who stood beside Arthur from the sword in the stone to the last battle and beyond. Tags: kay, arthurian, hero, seneschal, kitchen-master, camelot, gareth, beaumains, foster-brother, arthur Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Kay From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Helena Person Helena Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Culhwch and Olwen, c. 11th-12th century (Welsh, Mabinogion tradition) - primary source; Cei's supernatural powers and his role as foremost warrior at Arthur's court - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1138 - primary source; Kay as Arthur's steward and his death fighting the Roman Emperor Lucius - Chretien de Troyes, Yvain, or The Knight of the Lion, c. 1170s - primary source; Kay as the mocking foil who provokes Calogrenant's adventure - Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart, c. 1170s - primary source; Kay's failed attempt to rescue Guinevere from Maleagant - Chretien de Troyes, Perceval, or The Story of the Grail, c. 1180s - primary source; Kay slaps the maiden and is later avenged by Perceval - Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book 7 and Book 5, c. 1469-1470 (printed 1485) - primary source; the kitchen episode with Beaumains, the battle of the five kings at the Humber, and Kay's ambiguous survival - Vulgate Lancelot and Vulgate Mort Artu, 1215-1230 - primary source; Kay's death in France fighting the Romans - Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Development of Arthurian Romance (Hutchinson, 1963) - scholarly analysis of Kay's evolution from Welsh hero to French seneschal - Loomis, Roger Sherman, Arthurian Tradition and Chretien de Troyes (Columbia University Press, 1949) - scholarly examination of Kay's role as the court's sharp-tongued foil - Putter, Ad, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance (Oxford University Press, 1995) - analysis of the seneschal figure in Arthurian court structure Meta Description: Discover Kay, King Arthur's foster-brother and sharp-tongued seneschal, the kitchen master who named Beaumains and killed two kings at the Humber River. | Mythopouch Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Nereus, the Greek Old Man of the Sea, truthful shape-shifter and father of the Nereids, who yielded directions to Heracles after a long wrestling match. Previous Greek Next > Nereus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Νηρεύς (Nēreus) Pronunciation NEER-ee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Old Man of the Sea, Geron Halios, The Proteus of the Deep, The Truth-Teller, The Gentle God, The Father of the Nereids, The Shape-Shifter of the Aegean Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Primordial (Hesiodic attestation c. 700 BCE) Symbol Trident in Old Sea Tags greek, nereus, deity, old-man-of-the-sea, nereids, thetis, heracles, shape-shifter, aegean Introduction - Overview Nereus is the Old Man of the Sea, the gentle primordial god who dwells in a cave beneath the Aegean waves with his fifty daughters, the Nereids, the sea nymphs whose dance upon the water is the most beautiful sight a sailor can witness. He is the son of Pontus, the personification of the sea itself, and Gaia, the earth-goddess whose body is the soil of the world, a being older than the Olympian gods and more ancient than the Titans who ruled before them. He is the shape-shifter who can transform into any creature of the deep, from a lion to a serpent to a torrent of water, and who tells the truth to any mortal brave enough to wrestle him through every form. He is the father of Thetis, the sea nymph who married the mortal Peleus and became the mother of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. And he is the god whom Heracles, the hero forced to complete twelve impossible labours, wrestled for three days to learn the way to the garden of the Hesperides, proving that even the oldest power of the sea must yield to a man who refuses to let go. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Nereus Nereus was born in the first generation of the Greek cosmos, the son of Pontus, the primordial sea, and Gaia, the primordial earth. In Hesiod's Theogony, the great poem of divine genealogy composed around 700 BCE, Nereus appears as the eldest child of this union, a god who inherited the calm and the depth of his father's waters and the steadfastness of his mother's soil. He was not a storm god like Poseidon, the Olympian who ruled the sea with his trident and his temper. Nereus was the sea at peace, the gentle swell that carries ships to harbour, the clear water that reveals the sand beneath. The Greeks called him Geron Halios, the Old Man of the Sea, and they imagined him as a white-bearded figure emerging from the waves, his body covered in seaweed, his eyes the colour of the deep water, and his voice the sound of waves breaking on a distant shore. He married Doris, one of the three thousand Oceanids, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, the primordial river-gods whose waters encircled the world. Doris was a nymph of the fish and the coral, and she bore Nereus fifty daughters, the Nereids, each one more beautiful than the last. The most famous of these nymphs was Thetis, whose beauty was so great that both Zeus, the king of the gods, and Poseidon, the god of the sea, desired her. But a prophecy warned that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father, and the gods, fearing the fate that had befallen Uranus and Cronus, married her instead to Peleus, a mortal king of Thessaly. From that union came Achilles, the hero whose wrath shaped the Trojan War. Other Nereids included Galatea, the beloved of the Cyclops Polyphemus, and Amphitrite, who became the wife of Poseidon and the queen of the sea. Nereus's defining characteristic was his truthfulness. Unlike other gods who lied to mortals for sport or for revenge, Nereus always told the truth, but he would only speak to those who proved themselves worthy. The test was a wrestling match. Nereus was a shape-shifter of extraordinary power, able to transform his body into any creature that lived in the sea or on the land. When a mortal seized him and demanded answers, Nereus would change form again and again, becoming a lion with claws of coral, a serpent with scales of pearl, a leopard with spots of shadow, a tree with roots of kelp, a torrent of water that slipped through the fingers, and a flame that burned without heat. Only the mortal who held on through every transformation, who refused to release their grip no matter what horror or wonder appeared in their arms, would win the right to ask a question and receive a true answer. The most famous wrestling match was with Heracles, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, the hero who was forced to complete twelve labours as penance for killing his wife and children in a fit of madness sent by Hera, the queen of Olympus. The eleventh labour required Heracles to fetch the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, the nymphs who tended the tree of golden fruit at the western edge of the world, but no mortal knew the way. Heracles travelled to the shore of the Aegean and found Nereus emerging from a cave at dawn, the old god's beard dripping with seawater and his eyes still heavy with sleep. Heracles seized him, and Nereus began to transform. For three days and three nights, the hero wrestled the god through every shape the sea could produce, until Nereus, exhausted and impressed, returned to his true form and told Heracles the way to the garden. He also told him that only Atlas, the Titan condemned to hold up the heavens, could pluck the apples without arousing the serpent Ladon that guarded the tree. Nereus was worshipped at Gythium, the port city of Sparta in Laconia, where a sanctuary dedicated to him stood beside the harbour. Sailors offered sacrifices to him before embarking on voyages, and fishermen prayed to him for calm seas and abundant catches. In art, he was depicted as a wise old man, sometimes riding a sea-monster, sometimes holding a trident or a staff of coral, always surrounded by his daughters who danced in the waves at his feet. He was not a god of terror or power but of knowledge and endurance, the elder of the sea who had seen the world before the gods were born and who would remain when the last ship had sailed. Summary Nereus endures as the gentlest of the primordial gods, the Old Man of the Sea whose truthfulness and shape-shifting made him the wisest counsellor in the Greek cosmos. From the wrestling match with Heracles to the marriage of Thetis and Peleus, from the cave beneath the Aegean to the sanctuary at Gythium, his story is one of ancient power that yields to patience rather than force. A detail worth remembering: Nereus told the truth to everyone who held on through his transformations, and the Greeks understood that the deepest wisdom of the sea is not given to the strong but to those who refuse to let go. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Nereus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Thetis Deity Thetis Gaia Deity Gaia Nereids Group Nereids Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Theogony, lines 233-264 (c. 700 BCE) - birth of Nereus from Pontus and Gaia, his marriage to Doris, and the birth of the Nereids - Homer, Iliad, Book 1.357-359, Book 18.36-49 (c. 8th century BCE) - Thetis as daughter of Nereus and her appeal to her father - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5.11 (1st-2nd century CE) - Heracles wrestling Nereus for directions to the Hesperides - Pindar, Nemean Ode 3.60-63 (c. 490 BCE) - reference to Nereus as father of Thetis and the Nereids - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 3.21.7 (c. 150 CE) - sanctuary of Nereus at Gythium in Laconia - Stesichorus, Fragment 184 (c. 6th century BCE, preserved in Athenaeus) - Nereus and the Nereids in early lyric poetry - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - comprehensive analysis of Nereus in early Greek literature and art - Jean-Rene Jannot, "Nereus" in LIMC (Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Artemis, 1994) - iconographic study of Nereus in Greek and Roman art Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Laertes, old king of Ithaca, Argonaut and father of Odysseus, whose vineyard reunion with his long-lost son closes the hero's journey home on Ithaca. Previous Greek Next > Laertes Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Λαέρτης (Laértēs) Pronunciation lay-UR-teez Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Old King of Ithaca, The Father of Odysseus, The Argonaut, The Vineyard Keeper, The Hunter of the Boar, The Grief-Stricken Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 8th century BCE (literary attestation) Symbol Pruning Hook, Vineyard & Trees Tags greek, laertes, person, odysseus, ithaca, argonaut, calydonian-boar, telemachus, anticlea, vineyard Introduction - Overview Laertes is the old king of Ithaca who outlived his throne and his wife and spent twenty years waiting for a son who everyone said was dead, the father of the cleverest hero in Greek mythology. He is the son of Arcesius, the king of the island kingdom in the Ionian Sea, and the husband of Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus, the master thief who could steal anything and never be caught. He is the Argonaut who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, the hunter who pursued the Calydonian Boar across the fields of Aetolia, and the king who stepped aside for his son and watched Odysseus sail for Troy while he grew old in a palace that grew emptier every year. He is the grieving father who abandoned the city for a farm on the edge of his kingdom, who dressed in rags and worked his own vineyard because he could not bear the sight of Penelope's suitors drinking his wine in his hall. And he is the man who fell to the ground in tears when his son, returned from the war and the wandering, told him the names of the fruit trees they had planted together, the only proof that mattered. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Laertes Laertes was born on Ithaca, the rugged island in the Ionian Sea off the western coast of Greece, the son of Arcesius, the king who ruled the island and its surrounding islets. His mother was Chalcomedusa, or in some accounts he was the son of Arcesius alone, the direct descendant of Cephalus, the eponymous hero from whom the island of Cephalonia took its name. Laertes grew up in a small kingdom where the soil was thin and the sea was everything, a land of goats and olive groves and hidden harbours that looked out toward the setting sun. He married Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus, the master thief who lived on Mount Parnassus and who had taught his daughter the cunning that she would pass to her son. Their marriage united the island royalty with the mountain outlaws, and from it was born Odysseus, the child who would outwit every enemy he ever faced. In his youth Laertes was a warrior and an adventurer. He sailed with Jason and the Argonauts, the band of heroes who sought the Golden Fleece in the distant land of Colchis on the Black Sea, and he fought in the great hunt of the Calydonian Boar, the monstrous creature sent by Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, to ravage the fields of Aetolia. These were the great heroic enterprises of the generation before the Trojan War, and Laertes took part in them as a young prince hungry for glory. But by the time the Trojan War began, he was already an old man, and he stayed behind on Ithaca while his son Odysseus sailed with Agamemnon's fleet. Some accounts say that Laertes had already abdicated the throne in favour of Odysseus, preferring the quiet of his estates to the burdens of rule. Others say that he simply grew too old to fight, and that he watched the ships depart from the cliffs of Ithaca with the foreboding of a father who knows he is seeing his son for the last time. The twenty years of the war and the wandering that followed destroyed Laertes by inches. His wife Anticlea died of grief, unable to bear the uncertainty of her son's fate, and Laertes buried her on Ithaca and withdrew from the city to a farm on the edge of his land. He gave up his royal robes, dressed in the ragged clothes of a labourer, and spent his days digging in his vineyard, pruning the vines that he and Odysseus had planted together when the boy was young. He refused to enter the palace because he could not bear the sight of Penelope's suitors, the young nobles of Ithaca and the surrounding islands who had occupied his son's hall, consumed his son's cattle, and drunk his son's wine while they pressed Penelope to choose a new husband. Athena, the goddess of wisdom who loved Odysseus above all mortals, looked down from Olympus and pitied the old man, and she inspired Telemachus, Odysseus's son, to seek news of his father in the courts of Pylos and Sparta. When Odysseus finally returned to Ithaca, disguised as a beggar by Athena's magic, he slew the suitors in a massacre that left the hall floor running with blood. But the revenge was not complete until he had seen his father. He travelled to the farm where Laertes lived, and he found the old man in his vineyard, wearing a filthy leather cap and a patched tunic, digging around a row of young trees with a pruning hook in his gnarled hands. Odysseus did not reveal himself at first. He pretended to be a traveller and spoke of Ithaca as if he were a stranger, and Laertes answered him with tears, describing the son he had lost and the kingdom that had been stolen from his family. Then Odysseus could bear it no longer. He showed his father the scar on his leg, the wound he had received as a boy from a boar's tusk on Mount Parnassus, and he named the thirteen pear trees, the ten apple trees, and the forty fig trees that Laertes had given him as a child, reciting their positions in the orchard as only a son could know. Laertes staggered, dropped his pruning hook, and fell to the ground weeping, and the two men embraced in the dirt of the vineyard while the old man's knees shook with joy. The story does not end with the reunion. The families of the dead suitors gathered to attack Odysseus, and Laertes, though ancient, took up his armour and fought beside his son in the final battle. Athena intervened to stop the bloodshed, and peace was restored to Ithaca. But the image that survives is not of Laertes the warrior. It is of Laertes the father, kneeling in the dirt of his vineyard, clutching the son he had given up for dead, proving that the greatest journey in Greek literature ends not with a monster or a queen but with an old man and his trees. Summary Laertes endures as the most touching father in Greek mythology, the old king of Ithaca who traded his throne for a vineyard and his dignity for the hope of seeing his son again. From the Argonaut voyage to the Calydonian hunt, from the death of Anticlea to the pruning hook in the vineyard, his story is one of heroic youth followed by a longer and harder heroism of waiting. A detail worth remembering: when Odysseus proved his identity, he did not show a magic sign or speak a password. He named the fruit trees his father had given him, and in those names Laertes heard the only truth that no stranger could ever know. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Laertes From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Telemachus Person Telemachus Odysseus Person Odysseus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Odyssey, Books 1.188-193, 11.174-196, 15.353-379, 24.205-355 (c. 8th century BCE) - primary account of Laertes's grief, farm life, and reunion with Odysseus - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.16 (1st-2nd century CE) - Laertes as one of the Argonauts - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 8.45.2 (c. 150 CE) - Laertes in the Calydonian Boar hunt - Hyginus, Fabulae 14 (c. 2nd century CE) - Laertes among the Argonauts - Sophocles, Philoctetes, lines 409-410 (c. 409 BCE) - reference to Laertes as father of Odysseus - W.B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme (Basil Blackwell, 1954) - scholarly study of Laertes in the Odyssey tradition - Alfred Heubeck, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey, Volume III (Oxford University Press, 1992) - commentary on Book 24 and the Laertes reunion scene - Sheila Murnaghan, Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton University Press, 1987) - scholarly analysis of the recognition scene between Odysseus and Laertes Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Taraxippus: Ghostly spirits haunting Greek racecourses who panicked horses during competitions, throwing riders in chaos at the Hippodrome | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Taraxippus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Ταράξιππος, pl. Ταράξιπποι) Pronunciation tar-uh-ZIP-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Taraxippoi, "Horse Disturbers," "Horse Frighteners," Equorum Conturbator (Latin) Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Spirit Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male (variously identified) Time Period Archaic to Roman Greece (8th century BCE-2nd century CE); documented by Pausanias in the 2nd century CE Symbol Chariot Wheel Tags greek, spirit, horse, racecourse, ghost, panic Introduction - Overview Taraxippus is the horse-frightening demon that haunted the race-courses of ancient Greece, the invisible presence that sent chariot horses into sudden, inexplicable panic at the most dangerous moment of the race, causing crashes, injuries, and deaths that the Greeks attributed to supernatural terror rather than mere chance. He is not a single creature but a multitude of spirits, each major festival site having its own resident Taraxippus, the most notorious being the Taraxippos Olympios at Olympia, where the greatest athletic games of the Greek world were held in honor of Zeus, the king of the gods and wielder of the thunderbolt. He is the ghost of murdered heroes, the vengeful spirit of charioteers who died in competition, or the angry soul of suitors who lost their lives and their loves on the race-track. He is the altar-shaped presence that stood at the turning-post of the hippodrome, where the chariots made their sharpest turn and the horses were most vulnerable to sudden fear. He is the deity that charioteers propitiated with sacrifices before every race, begging for safe passage around the curve where so many had crashed before. And he is the most practical ghost in Greek mythology, a supernatural explanation for the very real dangers of high-speed chariot racing, where a spooked horse at the wrong moment meant death for driver and beast alike. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Taraxippus The Greeks loved horse and chariot racing with a passion that bordered on obsession. The four great Panhellenic games, the athletic festivals that drew competitors from across the Greek world, all featured chariot races as their premier events. At Olympia, the oldest and most prestigious, the games were held every four years in honor of Zeus, and the chariot race was the climax of the competition. At Nemea, the games honored Zeus as well, and the Isthmian games honored Poseidon, the god of the sea who was also the patron of horses. At Delphi, the Pythian games honored Apollo, the god of music and prophecy. Each of these sites had a race-course, a hippodrome, with a long straight track and a sharp turn at each end, marked by posts called termai. The turn was the most dangerous part of the race, where chariots had to slow slightly, swing wide, and then accelerate again, all while competing with other teams for the inside line. It was here, at the turning-post, that the Taraxippus made his presence felt. The most famous Taraxippus stood at Olympia, on the longer side of the race-course, built into a bank in the shape of a round altar. Pausanias, the Greek traveler and geographer who wrote a detailed description of Greece in the 2nd century CE, described it in his work Description of Greece. He wrote that as the horses ran past the Taraxippus, they were seized by a sudden and terrible fear for no apparent reason, a fear that led to disorder, crashed chariots, and injured charioteers. The drivers, knowing the danger, offered sacrifices and prayed to the Taraxippus to be propitious, to hold back his terror and let them pass safely. But the Greeks disagreed about who or what the Taraxippus actually was. Some said it was the tomb of Olenios, a local hero who had been skilled with horses and whose spirit haunted the place where he died. Others said it was the tomb of Dameon, the son of Phlios, who had accompanied Heracles, the hero forced to complete twelve impossible labors, on his expedition against Augeas and the Eleans, and who had been killed there along with his horse by Cteatus, the son of Aktor. The man and the horse were buried together, and their shared grave became the Taraxippus. Other traditions gave the Taraxippus an even more dramatic origin. Some said it was the tomb of Myrtilus, the charioteer who had betrayed his master King Oenomaus of Pisa, a city in the region of Elis near Olympia, and who had caused the king's death in a chariot race. Oenomaus had challenged every suitor of his daughter Hippodamia to a chariot race from the temple of Zeus at Olympia to the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth, a race the king always won because his horses were divine. But Pelops, the suitor who would eventually win Hippodamia and father the accursed House of Atreus, bribed Myrtilus to sabotage the king's chariot by replacing the bronze pins of the axles with wax. The chariot collapsed, Oenomaus was dragged to death, and Myrtilus was murdered by Pelops to prevent him from revealing the treachery. Myrtilus was buried near the race-course at Olympia, and his angry spirit became the Taraxippus, frightening the horses of every subsequent race as he had once frightened the horses of Oenomaus. Still others said the Taraxippus was the spirit of Oenomaus himself, punishing racers as he had once punished suitors, or the spirit of Alcathus, another suitor killed by Oenomaus, who was spiteful toward all charioteers because he had lost the race that cost him his life. At the Isthmian games, the Taraxippus was identified as Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus, the cunning king of Corinth who was punished in the underworld by being forced to roll a boulder up a hill forever, only to have it roll back down each time he neared the top. Glaucus had been killed by his own horses during the funeral games of Acastus, the king of Iolcus who had held contests in honor of his father Pelias. The horses went mad, possibly drinking from an enchanted spring, and tore their master apart. His ghost haunted the Isthmian race-course, frightening the horses of competitors as he had once been frightened by his own. At Nemea, there was no specific ghost, but a red rock at the turning-post that flashed like fire and terrified the horses as they rounded the curve. The Taraxippus was thus both a supernatural entity and a natural phenomenon, the place where the dangers of the track and the fears of the racers merged into a single terrifying presence. The Roman poet Statius, writing in the 1st century CE, gave the Taraxippus a more monstrous form in his epic Thebaid. He described it as a phantom of terrible visage, endowed with countless terrors, a snake-stressed monstrous effigy that would have frightened even Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, and the Eumenides, the dread goddesses of vengeance who tormented the wicked. When the divine horse Arion, a gift of the gods, saw the Taraxippus, his mane leapt erect, he reared up, and the chariot was overturned, throwing the driver head-over-heels. This literary version made the Taraxippus a creature rather than a place, a demon that could be conjured and sent against enemies. But the practical reality was simpler and more enduring: the Greeks believed that certain places were dangerous not because of physics but because of presence, that the dead did not rest quietly in spots where they had died violently, and that the best defense against such spirits was propitiation, sacrifice, and prayer. The Taraxippus was the ghost of the race-track, the patron demon of the turning-post, and his altars stood at the curves of hippodromes across the Greek world, receiving the offerings of men who knew that skill and courage were not always enough, and that sometimes the horses simply spooked, and the chariot crashed, and the only explanation was the unseen hand of the dead. Summary Taraxippus endures as the most pragmatic ghost in Greek mythology, the supernatural explanation for the real dangers of chariot racing and the invisible terror that lurked at the turning-post. From the tomb of Myrtilus at Olympia to the red rock of Nemea, from the spirit of Glaucus at the Isthmus to the phantom of Statius's epic, his story is a meditation on how the Greeks made sense of sudden disaster, how they honoured the dead who died in competition, and how they sought to control the uncontrollable through sacrifice and prayer. Every race-track that has a dangerous corner, every sport that has an inexplicable accident, every driver who has ever lost control at the worst moment carries the shadow of Taraxippus, the horse-frightener who made the Greeks tremble. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Taraxippus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Myrtilus Person Myrtilus Poseidon Deity Poseidon Oenomaus Person Oenomaus Pelops Person Pelops Sisyphus Person Sisyphus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 6, chapter 20.15-19 (2nd century CE) - description of the Taraxippus at Olympia, Nemea, and the Isthmus - Statius, Thebaid, Book 6, lines 491-497 (1st century CE) - the Taraxippus as a monstrous phantom in the chariot race - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Epitome, Book 2, chapters 4-9 (1st-2nd century CE) - the story of Pelops, Oenomaus, and Myrtilus, the origin of the Olympian Taraxippus - Pindar, Olympian Ode 1, lines 67-88 (476 BCE) - the chariot race of Pelops and its divine context - Hyginus, Fabulae, 84 (2nd century CE) - the death of Glaucus and his horses - Homer, Iliad, Book 23, lines 262-538 (8th century BCE) - funeral games and chariot racing in the heroic age - Humphrey, John H., Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing (University of California Press, 1986) - chapter on the dangers of the turning-post and the religious context of race-courses - Scanlon, Thomas F., "The Vocabulary of Competition: Agon and Aethlos" in Greek Festivals and Athletic Games (Oxford University Press, 2018) - discussion of the supernatural dangers of Greek athletic competition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Creatures with human torso and horse body embodying civilization's struggle with barbarism. Wise Chiron tutored great Greek heroes | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Centaur Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Κένταυρος) Pronunciation SEN-tor Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Kentauroi (plural); Hippocentaurs; The Half-Horse Men Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Archaic through Classical Greek period (first attested in 8th century BCE) Symbol Horse Leg Tags greek, monster, nature, war Introduction - Overview Centaur is the half-man half-horse creature who gallops through the mountains of Thessaly, a hybrid born from the lust of a king and the deception of a god, embodying the war between civilization and savagery that the Greeks saw in themselves. He is the wild spirit of Mount Pelion, where tribes of horse-men dwelled in caves, armed with rocks and tree branches, hunting what they could not farm. He is the drunken mob who stormed the wedding of King Pirithous and tried to carry off the women, sparking the battle called the Centauromachy that became one of the most sculpted scenes in Greek art. He is the exception that proves the rule: Chiron, the immortal centaur who alone among his kind was wise and just, who taught Achilles the arts of war and medicine, and who died willingly to free the chained Titan Prometheus. And he is the enduring symbol of the beast within, the creature who knows enough to want what civilization offers but lacks the restraint to possess it without violence. Gallery Other centaurs from Greek mythology. Main Article - Who or What was... Centaur The centaurs were born from the sin of Ixion, the king of the Lapiths, a tribe from Thessaly in northern Greece. Ixion had murdered his father-in-law, Deioneus, by pushing him into a pit of burning coals after promising him a bride-price, and though Zeus, the king of the gods, cleansed him of this blood-guilt and welcomed him to Olympus, Ixion repaid this mercy with treachery. He lusted after Hera, the wife of Zeus, and tried to seize her. Zeus, learning of this, crafted a phantom from a cloud and gave it Hera's form. This cloud-nymph was named Nephele, and Ixion, deceived, lay with her. When he boasted that he had slept with the queen of the gods, Zeus bound him to a burning wheel and cast him into Tartarus, the pit beneath the world where the wicked suffer eternal torment. Nephele, pregnant from the union, gave birth to a son named Centaurus, a creature so deformed and savage that neither men nor gods would accept him. He fled to the mountains of Magnesia and there mated with the wild mares of the region, producing the race of centaurs: half human from their father, half horse from their mothers, creatures caught between two natures and at home in neither. The centaurs made their home on Mount Pelion, the forested mountain that rises above the Gulf of Pagasae in eastern Thessaly. They lived in caves, hunted with clubs and rocks, and knew nothing of agriculture, metalwork, or wine until the heroes came among them. For the Greeks, they represented the barbarian other, the wildness that lurked at the edges of the polis, the city-state that defined civilization. They were male, for there were no female centaurs in the early myths, and their hunger for women was as insatiable as their hunger for meat. They were not evil in the cosmic sense, but they were governed by impulse rather than law, by appetite rather than reason. The Greeks saw in them a mirror of what men might become if they abandoned the constraints of society, the city, and the gods. They were the nightmare of the symposium, the drinking party where conversation and music were supposed to elevate the soul: give a centaur wine, and he would revert to beasthood. The defining moment of centaur history came at the wedding of Pirithous, king of the Lapiths, to Hippodamia. Pirithous, who was the son of Ixion and thus kin to the centaurs through his grandfather's sin, invited them to the feast as a gesture of peace. The centaurs came down from Pelion, and at first they behaved with something like civility. But then wine was served, and the centaur Eurytion, drunk and inflamed, seized Hippodamia by the hair and tried to drag her away. The other centaurs, seeing this, rose as one and began grabbing the women of the wedding, the bridesmaids and the guests, intending to carry them off to the mountains. The Lapiths, led by Pirithous and his friend Theseus, the hero of Athens who had slain the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete, fought back with swords and spears. The battle raged through the palace, and the centaurs were defeated. Many were killed, including Eurytion, and the survivors fled south to Mount Pholoe in Arcadia or to the remote fastnesses of the Peloponnese. This battle, the Centauromachy, became one of the most popular subjects in Greek sculpture, carved into the metopes of the Parthenon in Athens and the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where the god Apollo stands in the center bringing order to the chaos. But not all centaurs were savage. Chiron, the son of the Titan Cronus and the Oceanid nymph Philyra, was an immortal of different stock. He was not born from Ixion's sin but from a god's dalliance, and he possessed wisdom, justice, and skill in every art. He dwelled in a cave on Mount Pelion, but his home was a school rather than a den. He taught the young Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War, the arts of music, medicine, hunting, and war. He taught Jason, the leader of the Argonauts who sailed to fetch the Golden Fleece. He taught Asclepius, who would become the god of medicine. He taught Heracles, the hero forced to complete twelve impossible labors, and Peleus, the father of Achilles. Chiron was the bridge between the wild and the civilized, the creature who proved that the centaur form could house a noble soul. Yet even he could not escape the violence of his kind. When Heracles visited the centaur Pholus, another civilized centaur who dwelled in Arcadia, the hero persuaded him to open a jar of wine that belonged to all the centaurs. The smell drew the wild centaurs from the hills, and a battle broke out. Heracles drove them off with his arrows, poisoned with the blood of the Hydra, but one arrow passed through a centaur and struck Chiron in the knee. Because Chiron was immortal, he could not die, but the wound caused him unending agony. In his pain, he chose to trade his immortality for the freedom of Prometheus, the Titan who had stolen fire for mankind and was chained to a rock in the Caucasus. Zeus granted the exchange, and Chiron died, released at last from pain, and was placed among the stars as the constellation Sagittarius or Centaurus. Other centaurs appear in the margins of hero tales. Nessus, a black centaur who survived the battle at Pirithous's wedding, became a ferryman on the River Evenus. When Heracles and his wife Deianira needed to cross, Nessus offered to carry her, but halfway across he tried to rape her. Heracles heard her screams and shot Nessus with a poisoned arrow. Dying, Nessus told Deianira that his blood was a love charm, and she later soaked a shirt in it and gave it to Heracles, not knowing that the Hydra's poison would burn through his skin and drive him to suicide. Pholus, the civilized centaur who had hosted Heracles, died accidentally when he dropped one of the hero's poisoned arrows on his own foot. The centaurs who attacked Heracles were driven to the Peloponnese, where they continued to harass travelers until they were gradually hunted down or faded into the remote mountains. In later ages, the centaur became a symbol of the dual nature of humanity itself, the rational mind atop the animal body, the civilized face above the savage heart. Medieval alchemists used the centaur as an emblem of the union of opposites, and modern fantasy has made him a staple of children's literature, from C. S. Lewis's Narnia to J. K. Rowling's Forbidden Forest, where the centaurs read the stars and guard their secrets with bow and arrow. The centaur endures because he is us: half divine aspiration, half animal instinct, forever at war within a single breast. Summary Centaur stands as the eternal symbol of the divided self, the creature who embodies both the heights of wisdom and the depths of savagery. From the sin of Ixion and the cloud-nymph Nephele to the drunken violence of the Centauromachy, from the tutelage of Chiron to the poisoned death of Nessus, the centaur's story is one of nature versus nurture, of the beast that lurks beneath the skin of every civilized man. The Greeks carved their battle with the Lapiths into the marble of their greatest temples not as a triumph over an alien enemy, but as a warning of what awaits when the wine flows too freely and the restraints of law are cast aside. Every Parthenon metope, every constellation of Sagittarius, every fantasy novel that places a bow in the hands of a horse-man carries something of their legacy. The centaur is the reminder that we are all hybrids, and that the war between our better and worse natures is never truly won. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Centaur From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Ixion Person Ixion Nessus Creature/Monster/Animal Nessus Pirithous Person Pirithous Chiron Person Chiron Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Theogony, lines 1001-1002, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1914), Harvard University Press - Pindar, Pythian Ode 2.21-48, in The Extant Odes of Pindar, translated by Ernest Myers (1874) - Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 12.210-535, translated by Frank Justus Miller (1916), Loeb Classical Library - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 1.9.16, E1.20-21, translated by Sir James George Frazer (1921), Loeb Classical Library - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book 4.12.3-8, translated by C. H. Oldfather (1939), Loeb Classical Library - Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 5.10.8, translated by W. H. S. Jones (1918), Harvard University Press - Homer, Iliad, Book 2.738-744, 11.831-832, translated by A. T. Murray (1924), Loeb Classical Library - Sophocles, Women of Trachis, lines 555-581, translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones (1994), Loeb Classical Library - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1996), Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 1, pp. 143-147 - Kirk, G. S., Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (1970), Cambridge University Press, pp. 152-162 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover the Green Knight, supernatural challenger of Camelot whose beheading game tested Sir Gawain's courage, courtesy and truth | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Green Knight Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s The Green Knight, (Bertilak de Hautdesert) Pronunciation GREEN nyte Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Bercilak, Bernlak, the Green Man (folkloric association), the Knight of the Green Chapel Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Late 14th century (literary); set in the Arthurian period (5th-6th centuries) Symbol Green Leaf Tags arthurian, hero, challenge, honour, test Introduction - Overview The Green Knight is a supernatural challenger who appears in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1375), one of the masterpieces of Middle English literature. Written by an anonymous poet known as the "Pearl Poet" or "Gawain Poet," the poem survives in a single manuscript (Cotton Nero A.x) at the British Library. The Green Knight serves as a tester of virtue rather than a conventional villain - he challenges the knights of Camelot not to combat but to a "beheading game," a test of courage and honour that reveals the true character of Sir Gawain, the youngest knight of the Round Table. The Green Knight's human identity is revealed later in the poem as Bertilak de Hautdesert, a lord who lives in a castle in the wilderness. His true nature remains ambiguous - he may be a shape-shifting supernatural being, an agent of Morgan le Fay (who, in the poem, sent him to test Arthur's court), or an embodiment of the "Green Man" folklore figure associated with vegetation and the cycle of death and rebirth. This ambiguity is central to the poem's enduring fascination. Gallery Images of The Green Knight's axe and horse. Main Article - Who or What was... Green Knight The Green Knight bursts into Arthur's court at Camelot on New Year's Eve, riding a horse that is also entirely green. The poet describes him in extraordinary detail: he is "half-giant" in stature, with green skin, green hair, a green beard, and green clothing trimmed with green fur. He wears no armour, rides barefoot despite the winter season, and carries a holly branch in one hand - symbol of peace - and a massive green axe in the other. His eyes blaze red, and his overall appearance is both terrifying and strangely beautiful. The challenge he proposes is the "beheading game": any knight may strike him one blow with his axe, on the condition that the challenger must seek him out in a year and a day to receive the same blow in return. When no knight immediately accepts, Arthur himself rises to the challenge, but the young Sir Gawain steps forward and asks to take the king's place. Gawain beheads the Green Knight with a single stroke - but the supernatural figure calmly stands, retrieves his severed head, which continues to speak, reminds Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a year, and rides away. The beheading game motif has precedents in earlier Celtic and French literature, including the Middle Irish Bricriu's Feast (c. 1100) and the French Le Livre de Caradoc, but the Pearl Poet's treatment is unique in its depth and moral complexity. The Green Knight's ability to survive decapitation and his green colouration connect him to the "Green Man" figure found carved into churches across Britain - a face made of leaves symbolizing the rebirth of vegetation each spring. When Gawain arrives at Bertilak's castle after a long and perilous journey, the lord proposes an exchange-of-winnings game: Bertilak will give Gawain whatever he catches while hunting, and Gawain must give Bertilak whatever he "catches" in the castle. Over three days, Bertilak's wife attempts to seduce Gawain. On the first two days, Gawain honourably exchanges kisses with Bertilak as agreed. On the third day, however, the lady gives him a green girdle that she claims will protect him from any harm. Fearing for his life in the forthcoming encounter with the Green Knight, Gawain accepts the girdle but does not surrender it to Bertilak that evening, breaking their agreement. At the Green Chapel, the Green Knight prepares to behead Gawain. He strikes twice, stopping short each time - testing Gawain's courage. The third strike nicks Gawain's neck, drawing a small line of blood. The Green Knight then reveals himself as Bertilak and explains the meaning of the three blows: the first two were for the first two days when Gawain faithfully exchanged his winnings, while the nick was punishment for failing to surrender the girdle. Gawain returns to Camelot wearing the green girdle as a mark of his shame - though the other knights adopt it as a symbol of honour, establishing the Order of the Green Garter. The poem was composed during the reign of Richard II (1377-1399), a period of political uncertainty that scholars have connected to the poem's preoccupation with honour and moral testing. The poet's identity remains unknown, though the same manuscript contains three other poems - Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness - which share the poet's distinctive alliterative verse style and sophisticated theological concerns. Summary The Green Knight stands as one of the most original and compelling figures in Arthurian literature, a supernatural being who tests rather than destroys, who teaches rather than conquers. Through the beheading game and the exchange-of-winnings test, he subjects Gawain to a thorough examination of the chivalric virtues of truth, fidelity, and courage, revealing that even the best of knights is human and fallible. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight remains one of the most studied works in medieval literature, and the Green Knight himself has become an enduring archetype of the tester of virtue, transcending his medieval origins to influence literature and art down to the present day. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Green Knight From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Camelot Location Camelot Morgan Le Fay Person Morgan Le Fay Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: 1. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, c. 1375 (Cotton Nero A.x manuscript) 2. Bricriu's Feast (Middle Irish, c. 1100) - beheading game precedent 3. Le Livre de Caradoc (French, 12th century) - beheading game precedent 4. Tolkien, J.R.R., trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (1975) 5. Armitage, Simon, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Faber & Faber, 2007) 6. Brewer, D.S., and J. Gibson, eds., A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (D.S. Brewer, 1997) 7. Cooper, Helen, "The Gawain-Poet," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) 8. Bassett, S., ed., British Archaeological Reports on Green Man carvings in medieval churches Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore the Feather of Maat, the ostrich plume weighed against each heart before Osiris in the Hall of Two Truths to determine eternal life or annihilation. Previous Egyptian Next > Feather of Maat Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s The Ostrich Feather, the Shu-Feather, the Feather of Truth Pronunciation FEH-thur of mah-AHT Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Plume of Justice, the White Feather, the Feather of Balance, the Feather of the Two Truths, the Divine Measure Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Ancient Egypt Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Artifact/Object/Weapon Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period c. 2400 BCE - 395 CE (Old Kingdom to Roman period); literary tradition c. 2400-1550 BCE (Pyramid Texts to Book of the Dead) Symbol The tall white ostrich feather with its tip bent under its own weight, placed on the scales against the heart of the dead Tags egyptian, feather-of-maat, artefact, maat, book-of-the-dead, weighing-of-the-heart, osiris, anubis, thoth, ammit, negative-confession, duat Introduction - Overview The Feather of Maat is the single most famous object in Egyptian afterlife belief, the ostrich plume that every Egyptian hoped would outweigh their heart when they stood before Osiris in the Hall of Two Truths, the place of judgment in the Duat, the underworld through which the sun travelled each night. It is the feather that represents the goddess Maat herself, the daughter of Ra who is truth and justice and the cosmic order that keeps the sun rising and the Nile flooding and the stars turning in their courses. It is the plume that the jackal-headed god Anubis placed on one pan of the scales while the heart of the deceased, still in its body after mummification, stood on the other, the moment that determined whether a soul would live forever in the Field of Reeds or be devoured by Ammit, the monster with the head of a crocodile, the front of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, the three most dangerous animals in Egypt combined into one devourer. It is the feather that the ibis-headed god Thoth, the divine scribe, recorded in his judgment book when the scales balanced, declaring the deceased "True of Voice," the Egyptian phrase for "not guilty." It is the feather that pharaohs offered in small statues to the gods to prove they upheld ma'at on earth, that judges wore as emblems on their clothing, and that priests drew on their tongues before passing sentence in the law courts. And it is the feather that has become the universal symbol of truth in Egyptian art, the white plume that outlasted every temple and every papyrus, the simple ostrich feather that weighed more than every sin in the world. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Feather of Maat The Feather of Maat first appears in the written record in the Pyramid Texts of King Unas at Saqqara, carved into the walls of his burial chamber around 2400 to 2300 BCE. In these oldest known religious texts in the world, Maat is already present as the fundamental principle that governs both the natural world and society, the order that the creator god Ra established at the beginning of time to replace the chaos that existed before. The Pyramid Texts record that the king, in death, joins the company of the gods and lives on ma'at, the divine order that sustains the cosmos. Though the feather itself is not yet described in the detailed weighing scene that would become famous in later periods, the concept is already there: the king must be found true, his heart must be in harmony with the divine order, or he cannot join the gods. The Weighing of the Heart, the ceremony for which the Feather of Maat is most famous, is described in Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead, the great collection of funerary spells compiled between 1550 and 1070 BCE during the New Kingdom. The spell opens with an address to Osiris, the green-faced god of the afterlife who sits enthroned as judge in the Hall of Two Truths, the broad court where the dead are tried. The deceased, standing before the forty-two divine judges who sit in a line above the scene, must first correctly name each judge and then recite the Negative Confession, a list of forty-two sins that he or she did not commit during life. The sins range from the grave - murder, robbery, rape - to the subtle: being deaf to the words of truth, being sullen, being hot-tempered, making anyone weep. The list reveals the Egyptian moral code in its entirety, the behaviour that was considered contrary to ma'at, and the deceased must assert innocence of every item before the weighing can begin. Then comes the moment of truth. The heart of the deceased, the ib, the organ that the Egyptians believed was the seat of intelligence, emotion, memory, and moral character, is placed on one pan of a pair of scales. On the other pan is placed the Feather of Maat, the ostrich plume that is the goddess herself in material form. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification, oversees the weighing, adjusting the balance with his hands to ensure that justice is done. Thoth, the ibis-headed god of writing and wisdom, stands nearby with his scribal palette, ready to record the verdict. And beside the scales crouches Ammit, the Devourer, the composite monster who waits to swallow any heart that proves heavier than the feather. The symbolism of the ostrich feather is precise and deliberate. The ostrich feather, called shut in Egyptian, was also the symbol of Shu, the god of air and the first child of the creator Atum, and the connection between the two is not accidental. The slightest breath of wind animates an ostrich feather, its soft, wispy barbs moving with the air, and this made it the perfect metaphor for the lightness and calm of Shu, the cooling and pacifying influence that holds up the sky. But the ostrich feather has another property that made it ideal for representing ma'at: it is the only bird feather that is of equal width on both sides of its central shaft, a perfect bilateral symmetry that represents equity and balance. A heart that is as light as this feather is a heart in balance, a life lived in harmony with the cosmic order. If the heart balanced with the feather, or was lighter, the deceased was declared justified, "True of Voice," the same phrase used in Egyptian law courts to declare a defendant not guilty. Thoth recorded the verdict, and Horus, the falcon-headed son of Osiris, led the justified soul before Osiris to be welcomed into the afterlife, the Field of Reeds, a lush paradise that was an idealised version of Egypt itself, with boundless fields of wheat and waterways bursting with life. But if the heart was heavier than the feather, weighed down by the sins and misdeeds of a life lived against ma'at, the scales tipped and Ammit lunged. The heart was swallowed whole, and the soul that owned it ceased to exist entirely. The Egyptians did not have a hell of eternal torment; they had something far worse - annihilation, the total erasure of the self from the cosmos. The Feather of Maat was not only a funerary symbol. In life, it permeated every level of Egyptian society. Pharaohs were considered the living embodiment of ma'at, the guarantors of cosmic order on earth, and they are frequently depicted in temple reliefs offering small statues of the goddess Maat to the gods, the feather on her head clearly visible. This was not mere piety; it was a political statement, proof that the king was successfully upholding the universal order that connected the cosmic, divine, natural, and human realms. From the Fifth Dynasty onward, the vizier responsible for justice was called the Priest of Maat, and in later periods judges wore images of Maat on their clothing as badges of office. Priests are said to have drawn the feather on their tongues before passing sentence, a ritual that bound their words to truth. The word ma'at itself, written with the feather hieroglyph, became the foundation of Egyptian law, morality, and social order, the spirit in which justice was applied rather than a detailed legal code. The goddess Maat is depicted in Egyptian art in several forms: as a kneeling woman with outspread wings, as a standing goddess with the feather rising from her head, and sometimes as the feather alone. In the tomb of Nefertari, the great royal wife of Ramesses II, painted around 1255 BCE, Maat appears with magnificent outspread wings, embracing the queen and presenting her to the gods. In the papyrus of Ani, one of the most beautiful surviving Books of the Dead from the 19th Dynasty, the Weighing of the Heart scene fills the papyrus with detail: the green-faced Osiris enthroned, the forty-two judges in their frieze, Anubis adjusting the scales, Thoth recording, Ammit waiting, and in the centre the heart and the feather, the two substances that hold a human soul in the balance. The Feather of Maat also had a cosmic dimension that extended beyond individual judgment. In Egyptian theology, the social order reflected the divine order, and ma'at was the force that prevented the universe from collapsing back into isfet, the chaos that had existed before creation. The sun god Ra was said to live on ma'at, and the pharaoh ruled through her authority. When Akhenaten, the heretic king of the 18th Dynasty, tried to replace the entire Egyptian pantheon with a single sun disk called the Aten, he still invoked ma'at as the principle that sustained his new religion. Even a revolution could not escape the feather. Summary The Feather of Maat endures as the most powerful symbol of moral judgment in ancient Egypt, the ostrich plume that weighed the hearts of the dead for three thousand years and determined whether they would live forever or cease to exist. From the Pyramid Texts of Unas to the papyrus of Ani, from the law courts of Memphis to the throne rooms of pharaohs offering statues to the gods, the feather tells a story about a civilisation that believed truth was not merely a virtue but the foundation of the cosmos itself. It is the reminder that the lightest thing in the world - a breath of air, a single feather - can outweigh the heaviest heart, and that the only sin that cannot be forgiven is the sin that makes a heart too heavy to rise. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Feather of Maat From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Book of the Dead Artifact/Object/Weapon Book of the Dead Anubis Deity Anubis Maat Deity Maat Osiris Deity Osiris Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pyramid Texts of King Unas, c. 2400-2300 BCE, Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara - earliest mention of Maat as the fundamental principle governing the cosmos and the afterlife - Book of the Dead, Spell 125, c. 1550-1070 BCE (New Kingdom) - the Weighing of the Heart; the Negative Confession; the Hall of Two Truths; Anubis, Thoth, and Ammit - Book of the Dead of Ani, c. 1250 BCE, British Museum (EA 10470) - the most famous vignette of the Weighing of the Heart with the feather of Maat - Book of the Dead of Nu, c. 1300 BCE, British Museum (EA 10477) - the Negative Confession recited before the forty-two judges - Coffin Texts, c. 2134-2040 BCE (Middle Kingdom) - earlier development of the judgment and ma'at concepts before the Book of the Dead - Faulkner, Raymond O., The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (British Museum Publications, 1972) - standard English translation of the Book of the Dead including Spell 125 - Allen, James P., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Society of Biblical Literature, 2005) - revised scholarly translation with analysis of Maat in the earliest royal afterlife texts - Lichtheim, Miriam, Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume II: The New Kingdom (University of California Press, 1976) - translation and analysis of the Negative Confession and the Weighing of the Heart - Assmann, Jan, Ma'at: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Agypten (C.H. Beck, 1990) - foundational scholarly study of Maat as the moral and cosmic order of ancient Egypt - Hornung, Erik, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (Cornell University Press, 1982) - analysis of Maat as a divine concept and its role in Egyptian theology - Pinch, Geraldine, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2002) - analysis of the ostrich feather as the symbol of Maat and its connection to Shu - Karenga, Maulana, Maat: The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt (Routledge, 2004) - scholarly study of Maat as the foundation of Egyptian ethics, law, and social order Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover the Spear of Longinus, the Christian Holy Lance that pierced Christ's side and later became the bleeding spear of medieval Arthurian Grail legend. Previous Arthurian Next > Spear of Longinus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s The Holy Lance, Lancea Longini (Latin), the Spear of Destiny Pronunciation SPEER of lon-JY-nus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Lance of Christ, the Blood Lance, the Bleeding Lance, the Imperial Lance, the Lance of Saint Maurice, the Spear of Antioch Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Christian / Biblical / European / Arthurian Grail tradition Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Artifact/Object/Weapon Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender N/A Time Period 1st century CE (biblical); relic tradition 6th century CE onward; literary tradition 12th-13th century CE Symbol The iron spearhead from whose point blood and water once flowed, tipped with a nail from the Cross Tags christian, arthurian, spear-of-longinus, holy-lance, artefact, relic, grail-quest, constantine, charlemagne, crusades, perceval, wolfram-von-eschenbach Introduction - Overview The Spear of Longinus is the weapon that pierced the side of Jesus Christ as he hung dead upon the cross, the lance whose thrust released a stream of blood and water that has shaped Christian theology, art, and legend for two thousand years. It is the spear of an unnamed Roman soldier, later called Longinus, who stabbed the crucified Christ to confirm his death when the Jewish authorities asked Pilate to break the legs of the condemned so that their bodies might be removed before the Sabbath began. It is the relic that healed the soldier's own blindness, according to legend, when the blood and water from Christ's wound fell upon his eyes, converting him on the spot to the faith of the man he had just killed. It is the lance that became the most coveted object in medieval Europe, carried by Constantine the Great into battle, inherited by Charlemagne, and made the centrepiece of the Imperial Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, the collection of sacred objects used to crown the rulers of Central Europe for a thousand years. It is the weapon that the Crusaders believed they had discovered buried beneath the floor of a church at Antioch in 1098, a find that turned a starving and surrounded army into a victorious host overnight. And it is the bleeding lance of Arthurian Grail romance, the spear that drips blood in the Grail procession witnessed by Perceval, the knight who failed to ask the question that would have healed the wounded Fisher King, and that Richard Wagner made the instrument of both wound and salvation in his opera Parsifal, where the same spear that pierced Christ is the only thing that can heal the king who guards the Grail. Gallery Depiction of the Siege Perilous the only chair left unseated at the round table. Main Article - Who or What was... Spear of Longinus The spear appears in only one of the four Gospels. The Gospel of John, written in Greek toward the end of the 1st century CE, records that the soldiers who came to break the legs of the crucified men found Jesus already dead and did not break his bones, fulfilling the prophecy that not one bone of the righteous would be broken. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. The Gospel gives no name to this soldier, no rank, and no aftermath. He is simply one of the executioners, and the spear is simply one of the weapons of the Roman army, a lonche, the Greek word for a thrusting spear or lance. But the blood and water that flowed from the wound became one of the most debated passages in Christian theology, interpreted as a sign of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, and the wound itself became one of the Five Holy Wounds of Christ, the injuries that the resurrected Jesus showed to the doubting Thomas when he invited the disciple to place his hand in his side. The soldier acquired his name centuries later. The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, appended to late manuscripts of the 4th-century Acts of Pilate, calls him Longinus, a name probably derived from the Greek word for lance itself. In this tradition, Longinus was a centurion, a Roman officer in command of a hundred men, and he suffered from an eye ailment that was miraculously healed when the blood and water from Christ's side fell upon his face. The earliest visual record of the name appears in the Rabula Gospels of the late 6th century, where the inscription LOGINOS appears above the head of the soldier thrusting his spear into Christ's side. From that moment, Longinus became a saint in the Eastern and Western churches, and his spear became one of the most venerated relics in Christendom. The history of the spear as a physical object is a history of empire. The earliest record of the lance as a relic comes from the late 6th century, when the pilgrim Antoninus of Piacenza wrote that it was displayed in the Basilica of Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem lance was taken by the Persians when they conquered the city around 615 CE, recaptured by the Byzantines, and eventually transferred to Constantinople, the new Christian capital built by Constantine the Great on the shores of the Bosphorus. At some point the point of the lance was broken off, and in the 13th century this fragment was given by the Byzantine ruler Baldwin II to King Louis IX of France, who kept it among the treasures of the French monarchy until it was lost during the French Revolution. The remaining portion of the lance fell to the Ottoman Turks when they conquered Constantinople in 1453, and in 1492 the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II presented it to Pope Innocent VIII in exchange for the Pope's holding the Sultan's brother Djem as a political prisoner. That lance remains in St Peter's Basilica in Rome to this day, though the Catholic Church has never claimed that any of the several lances in its possession is definitively authentic. The most famous of the rival claimants is the Vienna Lance, also called the Lance of Saint Maurice, kept in the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburg Palace. This lance became the coronation weapon of the Holy Roman Emperors, the rulers who claimed to be the successors of Charlemagne and the heirs of the Roman Empire. According to tradition, the lance passed from Longinus to Saint Maurice, the Theban legionary who was martyred with six thousand six hundred of his men in 287 CE for refusing to persecute Christians, and from Maurice to Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity, who carried it into battle and used it to mark the boundaries of his new capital. Three centuries later, Pope Leo III gave the lance to Charlemagne, King of the Franks and founder of the Holy Roman Empire, on Christmas Day 800 CE, and Charlemagne was said to have carried it through forty-seven battles and to have died when he accidentally dropped it. Whether any of this is historically true, the lance became the physical symbol of imperial legitimacy, the weapon that proved heaven's favour rested upon the emperor who bore it. A metallurgical study in 2003 indicated that the body of the Vienna Lance dates from the 7th century CE, suggesting that it may have been part of the regalia of the Lombard kings of southern Italy before Charlemagne captured it in his conquest of the Lombard kingdom in the late 8th century, and that a Roman nail from the Crucifixion was later inserted into it to Christianise an already sacred weapon. The most dramatic chapter in the lance's earthly history came during the First Crusade. In June 1098, the Crusader army was besieged inside the city of Antioch by a vastly superior Muslim force led by Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul. The Crusaders were starving, diseased, and outnumbered, and many were preparing to abandon the holy war. A peasant named Peter Bartholomew, serving in the army of Raymond of Toulouse, began to have visions of St Andrew the Apostle, who revealed to him that the Holy Lance was buried beneath the floor of the Church of St Peter in Antioch. Peter led a group of diggers to the spot, and they unearthed a rusty iron spearhead. The discovery electrified the army. The Crusaders believed that the lance that had pierced Christ would guarantee them victory, and the next morning they sallied out from the city and routed Kerbogha's army in one of the most improbable victories of the Middle Ages. Doubts about the relic's authenticity soon surfaced, and Peter Bartholomew was forced to undergo an ordeal by fire to prove his visions true. He walked through the flames and emerged apparently unharmed, but died twelve days later of his burns, and the lance he had found was gradually discredited. Yet the power of the belief had already changed history, and the Lance of Antioch remains one of the most vivid examples of how a relic could turn despair into triumph. The Spear of Longinus crossed from Christian relic tradition into Arthurian mythology through the Grail romances of the 12th and 13th centuries. In the unfinished Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chretien de Troyes, written around 1180, the hero witnesses a mysterious procession in the castle of the Fisher King, the wounded lord who cannot rise from his bed and whose lands have become a wasteland. In that procession, a squire carries a lance from whose tip a single drop of blood falls, running down the shaft to the hand of the bearer. Chretien does not identify this lance with the spear of Longinus, and the blood he describes has supernaturally destructive powers that do not match any Christian tradition. But the continuators of Chretien's poem, writing in the decades after his death, made the connection explicit: the bleeding lance was the Lance of Longinus, and its blood was the blood of Christ. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's German epic Parzival, composed in the early 13th century, the lance that appears in the Grail procession is described as streaming blood, and the wounded king Anfortas has been struck in the testicles by a poisoned weapon in a combat fought for the love of a woman not destined for him by the Grail. Only the lance that caused the wound can heal it, an echo of the Greek myth of Telephus, the king wounded by Achilles' spear and cured by the rust scraped from its blade. Wagner, in his 1882 opera Parsifal, fused these traditions into a single image: the same spear that pierced Christ on the cross is the weapon that wounded the Fisher King, and only the pure fool who understands through compassion can touch the spear and heal the wound it made. Summary The Spear of Longinus endures as the most powerful relic in Christian legend, the weapon that touched the body of Christ and became the guarantee of empire, the instrument of miracle, and the bridge between biblical history and Arthurian myth. From the unnamed soldier of John's Gospel to the saint who was healed by the blood he shed, from the coronation regalia of Charlemagne to the bleeding lance of the Grail Castle, the spear carries the weight of every claim that physical objects can channel divine power. It is the reminder that the same weapon can wound and heal, kill and convert, and that the lance that pierced the side of God has outlasted every empire that tried to own it. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Spear of Longinus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Fisher King Person Fisher King Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Gospel of John, 19:31-37 - the piercing of Christ's side by an unnamed Roman soldier; blood and water flowing from the wound - Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate), 4th century CE - first identification of the soldier as Longinus; the healing of his eye ailment - Rabula Gospels, late 6th century - earliest visual record of the name LOGINOS above the soldier piercing Christ's side - Chretien de Troyes, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, c. 1180 - the bleeding lance in the Grail procession witnessed by Perceval - Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, c. 1200-1210 - the lance streaming blood in the Grail procession; Anfortas wounded by a poisoned weapon - Raymond d'Aguilers, Historia Francorum Qui Ceperunt Iherusalem, c. 1099-1105 - eyewitness account of the discovery of the Holy Lance at Antioch during the First Crusade - Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, c. 1100-1101 - anonymous chronicle of the First Crusade including the Lance discovery and the ordeal of Peter Bartholomew - Peebles, Rose Jeffries, The Legend of Longinus in Ecclesiastical Tradition and in English Literature, and its connection with the Grail (J.H. Furst, 1911) - foundational scholarly study of the Longinus legend and its Grail connections - Lacy, Norris J., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (Garland Publishing, 1991) - analysis of the bleeding lance in Grail romance and its identification with the Lance of Longinus - Brown, Arthur C.L., "The Bleeding Lance," PMLA 25.1 (1910) - scholarly analysis of the pagan and Christian origins of the bleeding lance motif in Arthurian literature - Gastgeber, Christian, "Die Heilige Lanze im byzantinischen Osten," in Die Heilige Lanze in Wien (Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2005) - scholarly study of the Holy Lance in the Byzantine East and its transfer to the West - Kjormo, Marius, The Holy Lance of Antioch: A Study on the Impact of a Perceived Relic during the First Crusade (University of Bergen, 2009) - detailed scholarly analysis of the Lance discovery at Antioch and its political and military consequences Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Gyfre, the invisible fairy servant of Arthurian legend who saved Sir Launfal in combat and vanished when his oath was broken. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Gyfre Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Gyffre (variant spelling in some manuscripts) Pronunciation JIF-ree Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Invisible Servant, Tryamour's Retainer, the Unseen Squire, the Fairy Attendant, the Shadow of Blaunchard Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British/Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Spirit Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. late 14th century Symbol Serving hands Tags arthurian, gyfre, spirit, launfal, tryamour, invisible-servant, blaunchard, breton-lay, olyroun Introduction - Overview Gyfre is the invisible servant given to Sir Launfal by Tryamour, the fairy queen of Olyroun, as one of three magical gifts that transformed a poor knight into the most celebrated champion in Britain. He is the unseen squire who restored Launfal's helmet in the midst of combat when the giant Sir Valentyne struck it from his head, leaping onto Blaunchard's back to set it fair and well-fitted before the knights met again. He is the shadow who caught Launfal's shield before it touched the ground, returning it to his master's arm in the same breath. He is the retainer who calculated Launfal's debts and paid them in full, who rode behind the pack horses bearing gifts through the streets of Caerleon, and who served as the only witness to Tryamour's nightly visits besides Launfal himself. He is the servant who vanished the instant Launfal broke his vow of secrecy, melting away like snow before the sun, and who reappeared from the forest at the hour of vindication to bring Blaunchard to his master one final time. And he is the only named invisible servant in the Breton lay tradition, a creature whose presence meant that the fairy queen's favour was absolute and whose absence meant that it was withdrawn. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Gyfre Sir Launfal was the steward of King Arthur's court at Caerleon, a knight of such extravagant generosity that he had given away all his own wealth and fallen into poverty and debt. King Arthur, the legendary king of Britain whose Round Table was the centre of chivalry in the realm, had married Guinevere, a queen whose promiscuity was known to every knight at court. Launfal alone spoke against the match, and Guinevere punished him by withholding the customary wedding gift. Humiliated and stripped of his position, Launfal retreated to his home town, where he borrowed a horse from the mayor's daughter and rode into the forest to escape the mockery of his neighbours. There, in the shade of a tree, he was approached by two maidens who served Tryamour, the daughter of the King of Olyroun and the fairy realm. Tryamour offered Launfal her love and three gifts: an invisible servant named Gyfre, a purse that produced gold coins without end, and a horse called Blaunchard, whose coat was as white as flowers and whose trappings were finer than any mortal smith could forge. Gyfre's first service was to calculate the sum of Launfal's former debts and pay them in full from the ever-filling purse. Then he rode behind ten well-dressed men on ten pack horses, bearing silver, gold, splendid garments and bright armour through the streets of Caerleon as gifts to the restored knight. When the townsfolk asked where all these riches were going, Gyfre answered that they were sent to Sir Launfal, who had been living in great poverty. From that day, no one doubted that Launfal enjoyed supernatural favour, and every night Tryamour came to his chamber, visible to no one except Gyfre and his lord. The most famous episode of Gyfre's service was the tournament in Lombardy. A giant knight named Sir Valentyne, fifteen feet tall and exceedingly envious of Launfal's fame, challenged the British knight to single combat in the city of Atalye. Launfal sailed to Lombardy with no retinue but Gyfre and no mount but Blaunchard. In the tournament field, their spears shattered and Valentyne knocked Launfal's helmet from his head. Sir Valentyne laughed and made good sport, but Gyfre showed that he was good at need, for unseen by any man, he leaped onto Blaunchard's back and before the two knights met again, he had set his lord's helmet on, fair and well-fitted. At this Launfal was glad and blithe, and thanked Gyfre heartily for his brave deed. Then Sir Valentyne smote Launfal so that his shield fell from him, but before it touched the ground, Gyfre caught it up again and returned it to his lord. On the third charge, Launfal struck with such force that both Valentyne and his horse fell dead, and the Lombard knights fled the field. Gyfre had saved his master from shame and defeat without ever being seen. The vanishing of Gyfre was as sudden as his service had been faithful. When Queen Guinevere propositioned Launfal and he refused her, she accused him of insulting her before the court. In his defence, Launfal boasted that his fairy lady's ugliest handmaiden was more beautiful than the queen, thereby breaking his vow of secrecy. In that instant, Tryamour's gifts were revoked. The ever-full purse emptied, the flower-white horse Blaunchard vanished from the stable, and Gyfre melted away like snow before the sun. Launfal was left in rags, alone, and the invisible servant who had caught his shield and set his helmet was gone. At Launfal's trial, when he was given a year and a fortnight to produce his lady as proof of his boast, the court gathered to watch his humiliation. But Tryamour arrived in a procession of maidens more beautiful than mortal women, and she vindicated Launfal before the assembled knights. As punishment for her false accusation, Tryamour breathed upon Guinevere and struck her blind. Then Gyfre, now visible at last, appeared from out of the forest and stood beside Launfal with Blaunchard. Without further delay, Launfal sprang into the saddle and rode after his beloved. Together with Tryamour and her ladies, they departed for the Isle of Olyroun, the fairy kingdom from which Gyfre had come. Once every year, on a certain day, Launfal is said to return to Britain to joust in tournament, and those who listen on the right night may hear Blaunchard's neighing upon the wind, though whether Gyfre still rides unseen beside his master, none can say. Summary Gyfre endures as the invisible servant of the Launfal legend, the unseen squire who restored honour in combat and vanished when his master's word was broken. From the tournament fields of Lombardy to the streets of Caerleon, from the nightly visits of Tryamour to the final ride to Olyroun, his story is the story of fairy service made perfect and conditional. He is the reminder that the gifts of the Otherworld come with attendants as faithful as they are fragile, and that the shadow who catches a falling shield may melt away the moment a promise is shattered. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Gyfre From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Olyroun Location Olyroun Blaunchard Creature/Monster/Animal Blaunchard Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Thomas Chestre, Sir Launfal, c. 1380-1400 (British Library MS Cotton Caligula A.ii) - primary source; the gift of Gyfre, the tournament with Valentyne, the disappearance and return of the servant - Marie de France, Lanval, c. 1160-1180 - primary source; the earliest version of the Launfal story, though the invisible servant is not named Gyfre - Sir Landevale, Middle English adaptation of Lanval, c. 1300 - primary source; intermediate version between Marie and Chestre - Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve (eds.), The Middle English Breton Lays (TEAMS, 1995) - scholarly edition of Sir Launfal with critical apparatus - Bliss, A.J., Sir Launfal (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1966) - scholarly edition and linguistic analysis of Chestre's text - Spearing, A.C., "Sir Launfal and the Bourgeois Mentality" in Readings in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1987) - scholarly analysis of Chestre's adaptation and popular romance elements - Donovan, Mortimer J., "Sir Launfal" in The Middle English Breton Lays (Western Michigan University, 1967) - scholarly study of the tail-rhyme romance tradition Previous --- End of Record --- Next >