Discover Pentheus, the king of Thebes who denied Dionysus, spied on the Maenads and was torn apart on Mount Cithaeron by women led by his own mother Agave. Previous Greek Next > Pentheus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Πενθεύς (Pentheús) Pronunciation PEN-thee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The King Who Denied Dionysus, The Man in the Tree, The Son of Echion, The Torn One, The Victim of the Maenads 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. 13th-12th century BCE (mythical era); 5th century BCE (major literary attestation) Symbol Thrysus & Severed Head Tags greek, pentheus, dionysus, thebes, maenads, agave, cithaeron, sparagmos, bacchae Introduction - Overview Pentheus is the king of Thebes who denied the divinity of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, and paid for his disbelief with his life, torn limb from limb on Mount Cithaeron by the very women of his own city whom the god had driven into divine madness. He is the grandson of Cadmus, the Phoenician prince who founded Thebes by sowing the teeth of a dragon into the earth and raising the armed men who sprang from the soil, and the son of Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, who in her frenzy did not recognise her own child and led the Maenads in his destruction. He is the ruler who imprisoned the god's followers and threatened the god himself, only to be dressed in women's robes and led to the mountainside as a spy, perched in a pine tree to watch the secret rites he had forbidden. He is the man whose severed head was carried back to Thebes by his own mother on the point of a thyrsus, a trophy she believed to be a mountain lion's until the madness lifted and she saw what she had done. And he is the eternal warning that the gods are not to be mocked, that ecstasy denied becomes vengeance, and that the king who thinks himself above the divine will find himself below the earth. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Pentheus Pentheus was born to Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, the war god, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. His father was Echion, one of the Spartoi, the armed men who had sprung from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus in the plain of Thebes. The Spartoi had been born fully armed and had immediately turned upon one another, fighting until only five survived, and Echion was one of those five, a man of violence and war who married into the royal house. Pentheus inherited both the throne and the pride of his lineage. When Cadmus grew old and retired, Pentheus became king of Thebes, a city whose walls were legendary and whose royal family was marked by divine favour and divine curse in equal measure. He was a young man, strong and arrogant, convinced that his authority as king was absolute and that no god could challenge the order he imposed upon his city. The crisis came when Dionysus returned to Thebes. Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, a Theban princess who had been consumed by divine fire when she demanded to see Zeus in his true form, and he had been born from Zeus's thigh after her death. He had grown to manhood in the wild mountains of Nysa and had travelled the world spreading the cultivation of the vine and the ecstatic worship that accompanied it. When he came to Thebes, he found that his mother's sisters, the daughters of Cadmus, had spread the rumour that Semele had lied about her union with Zeus and that Dionysus was not a god at all but the illegitimate child of some mortal man. Pentheus, who was the cousin of Dionysus through their shared Theban ancestry, embraced this denial. He banned the worship of Dionysus in his city, declared that the god was a fraud, and imprisoned the women who had fallen under the god's spell, the Maenads, the frenzied female followers who had abandoned their homes to dance on the mountainside in a state of divine possession. Dionysus came to Thebes in disguise, a beautiful young stranger with long curling hair and wine-dark eyes, and Pentheus had him arrested and brought before the throne. The god allowed himself to be bound and imprisoned, but his chains fell away of their own accord, and the prison doors opened for his followers. Pentheus, now consumed by a mixture of contempt and morbid curiosity, demanded to see the rites of the Maenads for himself. Dionysus, playing upon the king's arrogance, offered to show him the secret worship on Mount Cithaeron, the mountain that rose above Thebes, promising that Pentheus could spy upon the women from the trees without being seen. Pentheus agreed, and Dionysus dressed him in a long woman's robe, arranged his hair beneath a wig, and placed a thyrsus in his hand, the pine-cone staff of the god's worshippers. The king of Thebes, who had forbidden the rites, was now disguised as one of their participants, led by the god he had denied toward the very frenzy he had sought to suppress. On Mount Cithaeron, the Theban women had been driven into a state of ecstatic madness by Dionysus. They had left their looms and their children, cast off their shoes and veils, and run into the forest with their hair unbound and their voices raised in the high-pitched cry of the ololuge. They danced in circles, whirling faster and faster, and they hunted animals with their bare hands, tearing them apart and eating the raw flesh in a ritual called sparagmos. Among them was Agave, Pentheus's own mother, and her sisters Ino and Autonoe, all daughters of Cadmus, all once respectable women of the royal house, now transformed into the most terrifying instruments of the god's vengeance. Dionysus led Pentheus to a tall pine tree and helped him climb into the branches, and from that height the king looked down upon the Maenads, watching their wild dance with a mixture of horror and fascination. But the god called out to the women, and they sensed the intruder in the tree. They surrounded the pine and pulled at its trunk, rocking it back and forth until Pentheus fell among them. In his terror he called out to his mother, begging her to recognise him, but Agave, her eyes fixed and her mind lost in the god's frenzy, saw not her son but a wild beast, a mountain lion or a bull. She was the first to seize him, and with the strength of divine possession she tore his arm from his body. The other Maenads fell upon him, ripping his flesh with their hands and teeth, tearing his body into pieces while he screamed. Ino and Autonoe joined the slaughter, and Pentheus, the king of Thebes, was dismembered on the mountainside where he had come to spy. Agave, still in her frenzy, lifted her son's severed head upon her thyrsus and carried it down the mountain in triumph, her face flushed with the joy of the hunt, believing she had killed a great beast and brought honour to Thebes. She returned to the city and made her way to the palace, where her father Cadmus and the prophet Tiresias, the blind seer who had warned Pentheus to honour the god, were waiting. Cadmus asked where her son was, and Agave held up the head upon the thyrsus and declared that she had hunted the beast herself, a fine trophy for the city. Only when Cadmus gently removed the ivy wreath from her hair did the divine madness lift, and Agave looked upon the face of her son and understood what she had done. The horror of the moment, the mother who had murdered her child at the command of a god she had helped to deny, became one of the most powerful and terrible scenes in all Greek tragedy. The palace fell into mourning, and the royal house of Thebes, already marked by the curse of the dragon's teeth and the violence of the Spartoi, was shattered once more by divine vengeance. Dionysus appeared in his true form and declared that the city had learned its lesson, and that his worship would now be established in Thebes forever. Summary Pentheus stands as the eternal warning against the denial of the divine, the king whose pride and contempt for ecstasy led him to a death so terrible that it still haunts the imagination three thousand years later. From the throne of Thebes to the pine tree on Cithaeron, from the women's robes that disguised him to the thyrsus that bore his head, his story is a meditation on the limits of human authority and the price of mocking the gods. Every tyrant who believes that law can contain the irrational, every mother who has harmed what she loved in a moment of madness, and every tragedy that explores the boundary between civilisation and chaos carries his memory. Pentheus reminds us that the god of wine does not ask for worship, he demands it, and that the king who refuses the dance will find himself its final sacrifice. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Pentheus 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 Agave Person Agave Dionysus Deity Dionysus Cadmus Person Cadmus Maenads Group Maenads Tiresias Person Tiresias 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: - Euripides, Bacchae (c. 405 BCE) - the complete narrative of Pentheus's denial, disguise, dismemberment, and Agave's recognition - Aeschylus, Pentheus (lost, c. 467 BCE) - fragments on the death of Pentheus, the earliest dramatic treatment - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.5.2 (2nd century BCE) - the myth of Pentheus and the Maenads - Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733 (c. 8 CE) - the Latin version of Pentheus's death and Agave's madness - Hyginus, Fabulae 184 (2nd century CE) - the death of Pentheus and the punishment of the daughters of Cadmus - Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.2.6-7 (2nd century CE) - the tomb of Pentheus at Thebes - Dodds, E.R., Euripides: Bacchae (1960) - introduction and commentary on the religious and psychological dimensions of the play - Seaford, Richard, Dionysos (2006) - Chapter 4 on the Bacchae and the politics of Dionysiac worship - Segal, Charles, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae (1982) - the structure of Pentheus's tragedy and the theme of the divided self - Henrichs, Albert, "Male Intruders among the Maenads: The So-Called Male Celebrant" (Maenadism Reconsidered, 1994) Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Joyous Gard, Lancelot's castle renamed from Dolorous Gard, refuge of Guinevere and Tristan, and the great knight's burial place. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Joyous Gard Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Joyeuse Garde (Old French); formerly La Douloureuse Garde, the Dolorous Gard, the Castle of Sorrow Pronunciation JOY-us GARD Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Dolorous Gard, Lancelot's Castle, the Castle of the Knight of the Lake, the Gard of Joy, the Castle of the New Name, Bamburgh or Alnwick (the real castles Malory names as its site) Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details French/English Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Location Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender N/A Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic Arthurian period); literary tradition 13th-15th centuries CE Symbol A white-walled castle on a rocky height, renamed from sorrow to joy by the knight who broke its enchantment Tags arthurian, joyous-gard, place, lancelot, guinevere, castle, malory, tristan Introduction - Overview Joyous Gard is the castle of Sir Lancelot, the greatest knight of the Round Table, and the only stronghold in Arthurian legend that was renamed from grief to gladness by the man who conquered it. It is the fortress once called Dolorous Gard, the Castle of Sorrow, a place of enchantment and terror until the young Lancelot took it single-handed and discovered his own true name written on a tomb within its walls. It is the refuge where Lancelot carried Queen Guinevere after rescuing her from the fire, the act that shattered the Round Table and brought King Arthur's army to its gates. It is the shelter Lancelot lent to the lovers Tristan and Isolde while they fled the wrath of King Mark. It is the castle where Lancelot's body was brought for burial after he died of grief, mourned by the last knights of the broken fellowship. And it is the one Arthurian castle pinned to a real map, for the English romancer Malory wrote that men said it stood at Alnwick or at Bamburgh, on the wild coast of Northumberland. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Joyous Gard The castle begins its story as the Dolorous Gard, the Castle of Sorrow. In the great French prose romance of Lancelot, composed in the early thirteenth century, it is a stronghold gripped by evil enchantment, held by a wicked knight named Brandin of the Isles, and so feared that its towers are said to have no equal between England and Ireland. Into this place comes a young knight who does not even know his own name: the White Knight, raised from infancy beneath the waters of a lake by the Lady of the Lake, the enchantress who stole him from his dead father's kingdom. The young man conquers the castle alone, breaks its enchantments, and frees the prisoners rotting in its dungeons. Within its walls he finds a tomb slab on which is written that only he who takes this castle may read what lies beneath, and when he lifts the stone he sees his true name for the first time: Lancelot du Lac, Lancelot of the Lake, son of King Ban of Benwick. He renames the castle Joyous Gard, and it becomes his home, the one place on earth that belongs to the knight who belongs to no one. Joyous Gard earns its fame as a refuge for queens. When Guinevere, Arthur's queen and Lancelot's secret love, is condemned to burn at the stake - accused of poisoning the knight Sir Patrise with an apple meant for Sir Gawain - Lancelot rides to the pyre, cuts down the guards, and carries her away to his castle. Later, when the jealous knights Agravain and Mordred, Arthur's kinsmen hungry to destroy Lancelot, trap the lovers in the queen's chamber, Lancelot fights his way out and again takes Guinevere to Joyous Gard. In that rescue he strikes down many knights of the Round Table, among them the unarmed brothers Gareth and Gaheris, whom he loved and did not see in the press of battle. Arthur and Gawain, Gareth's eldest brother, bring the king's army to besiege Joyous Gard. The castle holds. Lancelot refuses to come out against his king, takes the defenders' blows without answering, and when the Pope commands that the queen be returned, Lancelot himself rides out with her, lifts her onto her horse before the whole host, and accepts banishment to France rather than shed more blood for a wall. The castle gives shelter to other lovers as well. When Sir Tristan, the peerless knight of Cornwall, and Isolde, the Irish princess bound by a love potion to the man she cannot marry, flee the rage of Isolde's husband King Mark, Lancelot lends them Joyous Gard for their hiding place. There the two live a season of strange peace, hunting by day and feasting by night, while the whole of Britain talks of the knight and the lady behind Lancelot's walls. In Malory's telling it is one of the few untroubled chapters either lover ever knows, a borrowed joy inside walls built for exactly that. The castle's last chapter is a funeral. After Arthur falls at Camlann and Guinevere dies a nun at Amesbury, Lancelot, who has become a priest and a hermit, sickens of grief and dies between prayers. His kinsmen and companions, the last faithful knights of the broken Round Table, find his body smiling in death, and they set it in a horse-litter and carry it fifteen days across the country to Joyous Gard. There the Archbishop of Canterbury sings the mass, and Lancelot is laid in the choir of his own castle, in the ground he won as a nameless boy. Malory ends the tale with the note that has kept treasure-hunters busy for five centuries: this castle, he writes, is called Joyous Gard, and some men say it was Alnwick, and some men say it was Bamburgh. Both named castles are real. Bamburgh Castle stands on a basalt crag above the North Sea, once the seat of the kings of Northumbria, and Alnwick Castle, still the home of the Dukes of Northumberland, guards the river below it. Readers and romantics have argued for each ever since Malory wrote, and the argument is itself a kind of monument: of all the castles in Arthurian legend, only Joyous Gard was thought real enough to claim a place on the English coast. In modern retellings the castle keeps its meaning - the one true home of the knight who served a court that was never quite his - a fortress named for joy that finally held nothing but love, loyalty, and loss. Summary Joyous Gard endures as the castle that mirrors its master, renamed from Dolorous Gard by the boy who learned his name inside its walls, and grown into the refuge of every hunted lover in the Arthurian world. Alnwick Castle, one of the two sites Malory names for it, found fame again five centuries later as the filming location of Hogwarts in the first Harry Potter films. From Brandin's dungeons to Guinevere's rescue, from Tristan's borrowed peace to Lancelot's grave in the choir, it remains the proof that even the strongest walls are only ever as joyful as what they shelter. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Joyous Gard 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 Brandin of the Isles Person Brandin of the Isles King Arthur Person King Arthur Guinevere Person Guinevere Sir Lancelot Person Sir Lancelot Sir Gawain Person Sir Gawain 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: - The Vulgate Lancelot (Lancelot-Grail Cycle), c. 1215-1235 - primary source; the conquest of Dolorous Gard, the lifting of the enchantment, and the discovery of Lancelot's name - Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1469-1470 - primary source; the rescue of Guinevere, the siege of Joyous Gard, Tristan and Isolde's stay, and Lancelot's burial - Lacy, Norris J. (ed.), Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation (Garland, 1993-1996) - scholarly English translation of the French prose romances - Norris, Ralph, Malory's Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur (D.S. Brewer, 2008) - scholarly study of Malory's sources, including the Joyous Gard episodes - Archibald, Elizabeth and Putter, Ad (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge University Press, 2009) - scholarly survey of the Arthurian tradition - Cooper, Helen, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2004) - scholarly analysis of romance motifs including castles and refuges - Kennedy, Beverly, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur (D.S. Brewer, 1985) - scholarly study of Malory's knights and the ethics of the Lancelot-Guinevere war Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Eurylochus, Odysseus's kinsman who warned of Circe's magic yet led the mutiny that doomed the crew on Helios's island - Mythopouch. Previous Greek Next > Eurylochus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Εὐρύλοχος (Eurylochos) Pronunciation yoo-RIL-uh-kus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Mutineer, The Second-in-Command, The Man Who Ate the Sun's Cattle, The Survivor of Circe, The Voice of the Crew 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 (Homer's Odyssey) Symbol The roasting spit Tags greek, eurylochus, odyssey, circe, mutiny, helios, thrinacia, odysseus Introduction - Overview Eurylochus is the second-in-command of Odysseus whose cowardice saved the crew from Circe and whose hunger destroyed them on the island of the sun. He is the kinsman of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who spent ten years struggling to return home after the Trojan War, and the most trusted lieutenant among the men who sailed the wine-dark sea. He is the man who refused to enter Circe's palace, staying outside while his companions were transformed into swine by the sorceress's magic. He is the voice that warned Odysseus of the witch's power, the only witness who escaped to tell the tale. He is the mutineer who convinced the starving crew to slaughter the sacred cattle of Helios, the sun god who drove his chariot across the sky each day, bringing divine vengeance upon them all. And he is the man whose body sank beneath the waves when Zeus, the king of the gods who ruled from Olympus, shattered their ship with a thunderbolt for the sacrilege. Every mutiny born of desperation, every warning that proves true, and every feast that becomes a funeral carries the shadow of Eurylochus. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Eurylochus Eurylochus was born on the island of Ithaca, a rocky kingdom in the Ionian Sea off the western coast of Greece. He was a kinsman of Odysseus, the cunning king whose plan of the wooden horse had brought down the walls of Troy, and he held a position of authority among the crew that sailed from Ithaca to the war and back again. When the Trojan War ended after ten years of siege and slaughter, Odysseus and his twelve ships set out for home, but the gods had other plans. Storms, monsters, and divine enmity scattered the fleet, and by the time Eurylochus found himself on the island of Aeaea, the company had been reduced to a single vessel and a handful of exhausted men. Aeaea was the domain of Circe, the sorceress daughter of Helios, the sun god, and the Oceanid Perse, a sea nymph. She was a figure of terrifying beauty who lived in a palace of polished stone in the centre of a forest, surrounded by wolves and lions that were once men. Odysseus sent a party of twenty-three men to investigate the island, led by Eurylochus as his second-in-command. The party found Circe's palace and she welcomed them with food and wine, but the wine was drugged with a potion of forgetfulness and the food was laced with magic. When the men had eaten, she struck them with her wand and transformed them into swine, driving them into pens and feeding them acorns. Eurylochus alone had suspected a trap. He had stayed outside the palace, refusing to enter, and when he heard the screams of his companions he ran back to the ship and told Odysseus what had happened. His caution, which some called cowardice, made him the only witness to the sorceress's power. Odysseus, determined to rescue his men, set out for the palace alone. On the way he met Hermes, the messenger god who moved between worlds, who gave him the herb moly, a plant with a black root and white flower that made its eater immune to Circe's magic. Odysseus entered the palace, resisted her potion, and forced her to restore his men to human form. Eurylochus and the others were freed, and for a year they lived on Aeaea in comfort, feasting and drinking while Circe loved Odysseus and taught him the secrets of the underworld. But Eurylochus never trusted the witch. When the time came to leave, he was the first to urge Odysseus to depart, warning that delay would destroy them all. His voice carried weight, and the crew sailed on. The worst trial came on the island of Thrinacia, the sacred land where Helios kept his cattle, the seven herds of immortal cows and the seven flocks of immortal sheep that grazed on the island's pastures. Before they arrived, the prophet Tiresias, the blind seer of Thebes who had lived as both a woman and a man, had warned Odysseus in the Underworld that these cattle must not be touched. The gods would destroy the crew if they harmed a single beast. But when the ships reached Thrinacia, a storm blew in from the south and pinned them on the island for a month. The winds howled without ceasing, and the stores of food ran out. The men caught fish and birds, but the supply dwindled, and hunger gnawed at their bellies. Eurylochus, seeing his comrades starving, called the crew together and made a speech that would doom them all. He declared that death by hunger was the most miserable of ends, worse than any storm or monster, and that the gods themselves would pity men driven to desperation. He argued that they should slaughter the finest of Helios's cattle, feast upon the meat, and offer the thigh bones to the gods in sacrifice. If they died on the voyage home, he said, at least they would die with full bellies. The crew, ravenous and afraid, agreed. They chose the best of the herd, cut its throat, and roasted the meat on spits. The hides crawled and the meat bellowed on the fire, a sign of divine anger, but they ate it anyway. Odysseus, who had been asleep, woke to the smell of roasting beef and knew instantly that they were doomed. When Helios learned that his cattle had been slaughtered, he demanded vengeance from Zeus. The king of the gods promised to destroy the ship with a thunderbolt. The next day, when the crew set sail from Thrinacia, the storm returned. Zeus hurled a lightning bolt that shattered the mast and split the hull. The ship went down in a whirlwind of fire and water, and every man aboard was drowned. Eurylochus, the man who had warned against Circe and then led the mutiny against Helios, sank beneath the waves with the rest. Only Odysseus survived, clinging to the wreckage and washing ashore on the island of Calypso, the nymph who would keep him prisoner for seven more years. Eurylochus's body was never recovered, and his ghost joined the countless others in the halls of Hades, the kingdom of the dead. Summary Eurylochus stands as the eternal voice of the crew, the man whose caution saved them from a witch and whose hunger condemned them to the sea. From the palace of Circe to the sacred cattle of Thrinacia, from the warning that preserved a ship to the mutiny that destroyed it, his story is one of the most human in the Odyssey. Every leader who hears dissent from a trusted lieutenant, every starving man who chooses a full belly over a sacred law, and every thunderbolt that falls upon the guilty carries the memory of Eurylochus, the kinsman of Odysseus who was both the warning and the ruin. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Eurylochus 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 Helios Deity Helios Zeus Deity Zeus Tiresias Person Tiresias Circe Deity Circe 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 (c. 8th century BCE) - Book 10, lines 203-260, 429-574 - Homer, Odyssey (c. 8th century BCE) - Book 11, lines 100-137 - Homer, Odyssey (c. 8th century BCE) - Book 12, lines 260-402 - Apollodorus, Epitome (c. 100 BCE) - Book 7, sections 14-18 - Hyginus, Fabulae (c. 2nd century CE) - section 125 - Stanford, W. B., The Odyssey of Homer: Books I-XII (1959) - Macmillan, commentary on Books 10-12 - Heubeck, Alfred, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey: Volume II (1989) - Oxford University Press, pp. 89-112, 145-178 - Segal, Charles, "The Menace of the Sirens and the Feast of the Sun" in Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey (1994) - Cornell University Press, pp. 189-210 - Clay, Jenny Strauss, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (1983) - Princeton University Press, pp. 78-95 - Fenik, Bernard, Studies in the Odyssey (1974) - Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 156-172 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Aeëtes, the sun-born king of Colchis who guarded the Golden Fleece, ruled beside the Phasis, and set deadly trials for Jason in ancient Greek mythology. Previous Greek Next > Aeëtes Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Αἰήτης (Aiētēs) Pronunciation ee-EE-teez Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Aeeta, The Son of the Sun, King of Colchis, Guardian of the Golden Fleece, The Fire-Breather's Master 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. 13th century BCE (legendary); c. 3rd century BCE (literary crystallisation in Apollonius Rhodius) Symbol Fleece on Oak Tags greek, aeetes, colchis, goldenfleece, medea, jason, argonauts, helios, dragon Introduction - Overview Aeëtes is the king of Colchis, the sun-born ruler who received the Golden Fleece from the fugitive prince Phrixus and hung it in a sacred grove where a sleepless dragon stood guard, making it the most famous treasure in the Greek world. He is the son of Helios, the Titan god of the sun who drives his blazing chariot across the sky each day, and the Oceanid nymph Perseis, which makes him brother to the sorceress Circe and to Pasiphae, the queen of Crete whose cursed passion for a bull produced the Minotaur. He is the father of Medea, the witch-princess who betrayed him for love of the stranger Jason, and of Apsyrtus, the boy whose dismembered body was scattered across the waves to slow his father's pursuit. He is the tyrant who set three impossible tasks for any man who would claim the fleece: to yoke fire-breathing bulls with bronze hooves, to sow dragon's teeth that would sprout into armed warriors, and to overcome the sleepless serpent itself. And he is the king who lost everything - his treasure, his daughter, his son, and eventually his throne - because an oracle had warned him that strangers would one day come for the fleece, and he could not bring himself to believe that his own blood would be the instrument of his ruin. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Aeëtes Aeëtes was born from the union of Helios, the sun god whose blazing chariot lights the world each dawn, and Perseis, one of the three thousand daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, the primordial deities of the sea. His sisters were Circe, who would later rule the island of Aeaea and turn Odysseus's men into swine with her magic, and Pasiphae, who would become queen of Crete and mother the Minotaur, the half-man half-bull monster that lurked in the Labyrinth of Knossos. Some say his mother was Asterope instead of Perseis, but all agree that Aeëtes carried the fire of his father in his blood. He ruled Colchis, a rich kingdom at the eastern end of the Black Sea where the River Phasis runs down from the Caucasus Mountains, a land of gold and magic that the Greeks regarded as the edge of the known world. The fleece came to him through the flight of Phrixus, the son of King Athamas of Orchomenus, who had been saved from sacrifice by a golden-fleeced ram sent by the gods. The ram carried Phrixus and his sister Helle across the sea, but Helle fell into the strait that still bears her name, the Hellespont. Phrixus rode on alone to Colchis, where Aeëtes received him with honour and gave him his daughter Chalciope for a wife. In gratitude, Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave its wondrous fleece to the king. Aeëtes hung the golden hide in a grove sacred to Ares, the god of war, where a monstrous serpent - born in some accounts from the blood of the Titan Typhon - coiled around the oak and never closed its eyes. An oracle had spoken: Aeëtes would hold his throne only so long as the fleece remained in the grove. The king, knowing this, grew cruel and suspicious. He sacrificed any foreigners who came to his shores, hoping that tales of his brutality would keep wanderers away. Aeëtes had children by more than one wife. By Idyia, a daughter of Oceanus, he had Medea and Chalciope. By another woman, some say Eurylyte or the Nereid Neaera, he had Apsyrtus. Medea was trained in the arts of sorcery by her aunt Circe and served the goddess Hecate, the queen of ghosts and witchcraft who walks the earth by night with her pack of hounds. Chalciope married Phrixus and bore him sons, who would one day return to Colchis as strangers themselves. Apsyrtus was a young prince, his father's hope for the future. The family was powerful, proud, and bound by prophecy to a treasure they could never safely keep. When the Argo, the fifty-oared ship built by Athena and manned by the greatest heroes of Greece, reached the mouth of the Phasis, Aeëtes knew at once that the oracle's warning had come to pass. Jason, the one-sandalled heir of Iolcos who had been sent by the usurper Pelias on a quest meant to destroy him, came to the palace with Phrixus's sons and asked for the fleece. Aeëtes received them at his table but his heart was full of rage and fear. He suspected a plot to steal his throne, and he was not wrong: the gods themselves, Hera and Athena, had arranged this voyage to punish Pelias and to settle old scores. When Jason asked for the fleece, Aeëtes did not refuse outright. Instead he set three tasks, each one a death sentence dressed as a trial. First, Jason must yoke two bulls that grazed on the plain of Ares, creatures with hooves of bronze and breath of fire, and drive them through a field to plough it. Second, he must sow the field with the teeth of a dragon that had once guarded a spring, teeth that would sprout into armed warriors who would rise up to kill the sower. Third, he must overcome the sleepless dragon that guarded the fleece itself. Aeëtes boasted that he performed these labours himself each day, yoking the bulls in the morning and cutting down the earthborn warriors by evening, though this was more threat than truth. He swore that if Jason succeeded, the fleece would be his, but privately he planned to burn the Argo and kill every man aboard. What Aeëtes did not foresee was the treachery of his own daughter. The goddess Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to send her son Eros, the winged archer of love, to shoot Medea with an arrow of gold, and the princess fell helplessly in love with Jason. She gave him a magical ointment distilled from the blood of Prometheus, the Titan chained in the Caucasus for stealing fire from the gods, which made his body impervious to flame for a single day. With it he yoked the bulls and ploughed the field. When the earthborn warriors sprang from the dragon's teeth, Medea had already told him to throw a stone into their midst, and in the confusion they turned on each other and were destroyed. Finally, in the dark of night, Medea led Jason to the grove of Ares, where she sang the serpent to sleep with charms and herbs, and Jason lifted the Golden Fleece from the oak. Aeëtes discovered the theft at dawn and flew into a fury that shook the palace. He called out his fleet and set off in pursuit of the Argo, determined to burn the ship and hang Jason's corpse from the mast. Medea, knowing her father's speed and cruelty, took her brother Apsyrtus - some say she lured him into a trap, others that she killed him on the ship itself - and cut his body into pieces. She threw the limbs and torso overboard one by one, and Aeëtes, compelled by grief and the need to give his son a proper burial, stopped at each splash to gather the pieces from the water. By the time he had collected what he could, the Argo had vanished into the mist. The Greeks call this the murder of Apsyrtus, and it was the first of the crimes that would stain Medea's name forever. When Aeëtes returned to Colchis, he found that his brother Perses had seized the throne in his absence, for the oracle had spoken true: the loss of the fleece meant the loss of the kingdom. Aeëtes was deposed and driven into exile or imprisonment, his cruelty and suspicion having won him no friends among his own people. Years later, Medea herself returned to Colchis after being cast out by Jason and by Athens, and found her father in chains or in hiding. She killed Perses with poison or witchcraft and restored Aeëtes to his throne, a final act of daughterly devotion that could never undo what had been done. What became of Aeëtes after this restoration, the old stories do not say. He may have died in his bed, or he may have passed into legend as one more king whose doom was written in gold and guarded by a serpent that could not sleep. Summary Aeëtes stands as the tragic guardian of the impossible prize, the sun-born king whose cruelty was born of prophecy and whose ruin came through the love of his own child. From the golden grove of Ares to the bloody wake of the Argo, from the fire-breathing bulls of the plain to the dismembered body of Apsyrtus, his story is one of power that could not protect what mattered most. Every tyrant who trusts no one, every father betrayed by his own blood, and every treasure that draws destruction to its keeper carries some shadow of Aeëtes, the king of Colchis who learned too late that the serpent at the gate was never the true danger. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Aeëtes 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 Apsyrtus Person Apsyrtus Medea Person Medea Helios Deity Helios Golden Fleece Artifact/Object/Weapon Golden Fleece Jason Person Jason 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: - Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Books 3-4 (c. 3rd century BCE) - Aeëtes's tasks, Medea's betrayal, and pursuit of the Argo - Pindar, Pythian Ode 4.230-270 (462 BCE) - earliest account of Aeëtes and the fleece - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.23-28 (c. 1st-2nd century CE) - genealogy, tasks, and aftermath - Euripides, Medea, lines 1-45, 1330-end (431 BCE) - Medea's later return to Colchis and restoration of Aeëtes - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.45-49 (c. 1st century BCE) - Colchian traditions and Aeëtes's rule - Hyginus, Fabulae 22-23 (c. 1st-2nd century CE) - the tasks and the murder of Apsyrtus - Hesiod, Theogony, lines 956-962 (c. 8th-7th century BCE) - parentage of Aeëtes, Circe, and Pasiphae - Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Johns Hopkins University Press, chapters on the Argonauts and Aeëtes - Hunter, Richard. The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies (1993) - Cambridge University Press, scholarly analysis of Aeëtes's characterisation - Braund, David. Georgia in Antiquity: A History of Colchis and Transcaucasian Iberia (1994) - Oxford University Press, historical context of Colchis - Clauss, James J. The Best of the Argonauts: The Redefinition of the Epic Hero in Book 1 of Apollonius's Argonautica (2000) - University of California Press, scholarly study Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover the Heka Crook, Egypt's ancient shepherd's staff of kingship, held with the flail by pharaohs and preserved with Tutankhamun's royal regalia in Cairo. Previous Egyptian Next > Heka Crook Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Heqa Sceptre, Heqa Staff, the Shepherd's Crook Pronunciation HEK-ah KROOK Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Crook of Kingship, the Staff of Rule, the Crook of Osiris, the Sceptre of Andjety, the Hooked Staff, the Royal Crook 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. 3500 BCE - 395 CE (Predynastic to Roman period); literary tradition c. 2400 BCE onward Symbol The hooked shepherd's staff crossed over the chest with the flail, the emblem of the pharaoh as shepherd of his people Tags egyptian, heka-crook, artefact, osiris, andjety, pharaoh, shepherd-crook, tutankhamun, abydos, kingship, crosier Introduction - Overview The Heka Crook is the shepherd's staff that became the most enduring symbol of kingship in ancient Egypt, the hooked sceptre that pharaohs held crossed over their chests with the flail for more than three thousand years as proof that they were shepherds of their people and not merely rulers over them. It is the crook whose very name, heka, is the Egyptian word for ruler itself, the same root that gives us Hyksos, the Greek name for the foreign kings who seized the Delta, literally the heka-khasut, the rulers of foreign lands. It is the staff that predates the pyramids, with the earliest example carved from limestone and found in a tomb at Abydos from the Gerzeh culture around 3500 BCE, centuries before a single stone of Giza was laid. It is the sceptre that began as the attribute of Andjety, an early god of agriculture worshipped at Busiris in the Delta, and was absorbed into Osiris, the murdered and resurrected king of the dead, so that every pharaoh who held the crook claimed kinship with the god who had conquered death itself. It is the staff that only Tutankhamun's tomb has preserved in its original royal form, a heavy bronze rod sheathed in alternating stripes of gold, blue glass, and obsidian, the only royal crook and flail on earth that a living king once gripped. And it is the ancestor of the Christian bishop's crosier, the hooked staff that pastors still carry today, the shepherd's crook outlasting the empire that made it divine. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Heka Crook The Heka Crook began as a real tool. In the Nile Valley, where sheep and goats were herded through reed beds and across floodplains, the shepherd's crook was a practical necessity: a long stick with a hooked end for guiding strays, catching fallen animals, and warding off predators. By the Predynastic period, before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under King Narmer around 3100 BCE, the crook had already crossed the boundary from tool to symbol. The earliest known example comes from tomb U547 at Abydos, in the burial ground of the Gerzeh culture of the Naqada II period, roughly 3500 to 3200 BCE. It is carved from limestone and survives only in fragments, but its shape is unmistakable: the hooked staff that would define Egyptian kingship for three millennia. Another early example, this one complete and carved from ivory, was found in the largest Predynastic tomb in the Abydos cemetery, tomb U-j, the burial place of a ruler whose name is lost but whose power was already expressed through the shepherd's hook. The crook did not begin as a royal symbol. Its first divine owner was Andjety, a local god of agriculture worshipped at Busiris in the Nile Delta, a deity so ancient that his origins lie in the pre-dynastic darkness before written records. Andjety was depicted as a shepherd king, and the crook was his attribute, the sign that he tended the land as a shepherd tends his flock. When the cult of Osiris rose to dominance in the Old Kingdom, Osiris absorbed Andjety's identity and his regalia. Osiris, the mythical first king of Egypt, murdered by his brother Set and resurrected by his sister-wife Isis, became the Lord of the Dead and the model of divine kingship. In his mummiform images, Osiris almost always holds the crook and flail crossed over his chest, the shepherd's staff in one hand and the threshing tool in the other. Every pharaoh was a living Horus, the son of Osiris, and in death would become an Osiris himself. To hold the crook was to claim this lineage, to assert that the king's authority came not from conquest or birth alone but from the god who had died and returned. The word heka itself reveals the depth of this connection. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the crook is the sign for the word heka, which means ruler, rule, or authority. The same root appears in the name Hyksos, the foreign dynasty that ruled the Delta during the Second Intermediate Period, heka-khasut, the rulers of foreign lands. To hold the heka was literally to be the ruler, the staff and the title inseparable. The crook was also used to write the word for nobleman and official, extending its authority beyond the king to the entire administrative class that governed Egypt on his behalf. Viceroys of Nubia, the southern territory that Egypt conquered and colonised, are shown holding the heka in temple reliefs, and viziers, the highest officials beneath the pharaoh, carry it in tomb paintings, including those in the tomb of Tutankhamun himself. For centuries the crook stood alone. The flail, the rod with three beaded strands that would become its inseparable partner, appears separately in the earliest royal ceremonies, notably in depictions of the pharaoh Den at his Sed festival on a label from the First Dynasty. Only around the time of the Second Dynasty, approximately 2890 to 2686 BCE, were the two fused into the iconic crossed pair. From that moment onward, the heka and the nekhakha, the crook and the flail, were never shown apart in royal imagery. The pharaoh holds the crook in one hand and the flail in the other, crossed over his chest, the pose that would become the universal shorthand for legitimate rule. The crook represents guidance and protection, the shepherd's duty to gather the strays and keep the flock from harm. The flail represents provision and authority, the power to thresh grain and to discipline those who stray. Together they express the complete philosophy of Egyptian kingship: care in one hand, command in the other, mercy and might held in balance across the royal breast. The heka appears in the Pyramid Texts, the oldest known religious texts in the world, carved into the walls of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara around 2400 to 2300 BCE. In Utterance 254, the Praise-serpent is said to rest upon its sceptre, and the king is promised dominion through his sacred staff. In other utterances, the king is told to sit upon the throne of Osiris with his Ames sceptre in one hand and his lotus sceptre in the other, giving orders to the living and the dead. The crook is part of this wider language of staffs and sceptres that fills the Pyramid Texts, each weapon a different aspect of the king's power: the Was for cosmic dominion, the Ames for crushing enemies, the lotus for commanding the hidden realm, and the heka for ruling the living as a shepherd rules his flock. The only surviving royal examples of both the crook and flail together were discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter in the tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy king who reigned for only ten years in the 14th century BCE. They were found stored as a kingship kit in a small box, as if the young pharaoh had been given them at his coronation and would need them again at his thirty-year jubilee, the Heb-Sed festival, when a king would ritually renew his authority. The staffs are made of heavy bronze covered with alternating stripes of blue glass, obsidian, and gold, while the flail's beads are gilded wood. They are ceremonial objects, too heavy and ornate for practical use, yet they are the actual objects that a living king once held, the only royal crook and flail left on earth. They are now displayed at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and standing before them is to stand before the physical anchor of three thousand years of belief. The Heka Crook has left descendants in unexpected places. The Christian bishop's crosier, the hooked staff carried by bishops and abbots in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches, descends directly from the Egyptian heka. The word pastor, meaning shepherd, preserves the same metaphor that the ancient Egyptians carved into stone: the religious leader as shepherd of his flock, guiding, gathering, and protecting. The crook that Andjety carried in the Delta marshes, that Osiris held in the realm of the dead, that Tutankhamun gripped at his coronation, survives today in the hands of bishops processing through cathedrals, the shepherd's hook outlasting the pharaohs who made it sacred. Summary The Heka Crook endures as the oldest symbol of legitimate rule in the world, the shepherd's staff that defined Egyptian kingship for three millennia and outlasted every dynasty that wielded it. From the Predynastic tombs of Abydos to the Pyramid Texts of Unas, from the absorption of Andjety into Osiris to the only surviving royal set in Tutankhamun's tomb, the crook tells a story about the nature of authority: that the true ruler tends his people as a shepherd tends his flock, that power is measured by protection rather than punishment, and that the humblest tool can become the most sacred emblem when the right hand holds it long enough. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Heka Crook 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 Horus Deity Horus Tutankhamun Person Tutankhamun 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 - Utterance 254: the Praise-serpent upon its sceptre; the heka as instrument of royal dominion - Gerzeh culture crook, c. 3500-3200 BCE, tomb U547 at Abydos - earliest known example of the heka crook, carved from limestone - Predynastic ivory crook, c. 3200 BCE, tomb U-j at Abydos - complete ivory heka from the largest Predynastic tomb in the Abydos cemetery - Tomb of Tutankhamun, c. 1323 BCE, Valley of the Kings - the only surviving royal crook and flail set; heavy bronze with gold, blue glass, and obsidian stripes - First Dynasty label of Pharaoh Den, c. 3000 BCE - earliest depiction of the flail in royal ceremonial at the Sed festival - Faulkner, Raymond O., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts Translated into English (Clarendon Press, 1969) - standard English translation including references to the heka and royal sceptres - Wilkinson, Richard H., Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture (Thames and Hudson, 1992) - the heka hieroglyph and its use in royal iconography and titulary - Wilkinson, Richard H., The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames and Hudson, 2003) - analysis of Andjety, Osiris, and the absorption of the crook into divine kingship - Wilkinson, Toby A.H., Early Dynastic Egypt (Routledge, 1999) - analysis of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic evidence for the crook as royal insignia - Budge, E.A. Wallis, The Gods of the Egyptians (Methuen, 1904) - foundational study of Osiris, Andjety, and the divine associations of the crook and flail - Newberry, Percy E., "The Shepherd's Crook and the So-Called 'Flail' or 'Scourge' of Osiris," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 15 (1929): 85-87 - scholarly analysis of the crook's origins and the flail's possible function as a labdanum-gathering tool - Te Velde, H., Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion (Brill, 1967) - analysis of the divine transmission of regalia from Andjety to Osiris to Horus and the pharaohs Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Calliope, chief of the nine Muses and goddess of epic poetry, mother of Orpheus and divine voice of eloquence, kings and poets in ancient Greek myth. Previous Greek Next > Calliope Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Καλλιόπη (Kalliopê) Pronunciation kuh-LY-uh-pee Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Chief of All Muses, The Beautiful-Voiced, Muse of Epic Poetry, Mother of Orpheus 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 Female Time Period c. 8th century BCE (literary crystallization in Hesiod's Theogony) Symbol Tablet & Stylus Tags greek, calliope, muse, orpheus, homer, virgil, epicpoetry, olympus, hesiod Introduction - Overview Calliope is the chief of the nine Muses, the goddesses who inspire all the arts, and the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence, the voice that speaks through Homer and Virgil and every poet who has ever tried to tell a story on the grandest scale. She is the eldest daughter of Zeus, the king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory, born on the first of nine consecutive nights when her father lay with her mother. She is the mother of Orpheus, the musician whose songs could charm the beasts and move the stones, and of Linus, the first to teach the Greeks to sing to the harp. She is the goddess who defeated the daughters of Pierus in a singing contest and turned them into magpies for their presumption. And she is the Muse whom Dante invoked at the gates of Purgatory and whom Virgil called upon to sing of war, a goddess whose name has outlasted every empire that ever prayed to her. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Calliope Calliope was born on Mount Olympus, or perhaps on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, the mountainous region of central Greece where her sisters were said to dance around the sacred fountain of Hippocrene. Her father was Zeus, the king of the gods, and her mother was Mnemosyne, one of the elder Titans, the primordial gods who ruled before the Olympians, and the personification of memory itself. Hesiod, the poet who wrote the Theogony in the eighth or seventh century BCE, Zeus lay with Mnemosyne for nine nights in succession, and on each night she conceived a daughter. Calliope was the firstborn, the eldest of the nine Muses, followed by Clio, the Muse of history, Euterpe, the Muse of music, Thalia, the Muse of comedy, Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, Terpsichore, the Muse of dance, Erato, the Muse of love poetry, Polyhymnia, the Muse of sacred song, and Urania, the Muse of astronomy. The sisters were tutored in the arts by their half-brother Apollo, the Olympian god of music and prophecy, and together they formed the chorus that entertained the gods on Olympus with songs of the world. Hesiod called Calliope the chief of all the Muses, and he gave her a special role. She attended upon kings and princes, pouring sweet dew upon their tongues so that they might speak with grace and settle quarrels with gentle words. When a king passed through his assembly, the people looked upon him as a god, and this was the holy gift of Calliope. In the Classical period, when each Muse was assigned a specific art, Calliope became the Muse of epic poetry, the long narrative poems that told the deeds of heroes and the history of the gods. She was portrayed holding a writing tablet and a stylus, or in older art a lyre, the instrument that accompanied the recitation of epic verse. Poets from Homer to Virgil to Dante invoked her at the beginning of their works, asking her to inspire their words with both beauty and truth. Calliope married Oeagrus, the mortal king of Thrace, a region in the north of Greece, in the town of Pimpleia near Mount Olympus. By him, or in some accounts by Apollo, she bore two sons who would shape the musical history of the world. The first was Linus, a musician so skilled that he was said to have been the first to pair singing with the playing of the harp, though he met a violent death at the hands of his own pupil, the hero Heracles, who struck him down in a fit of rage. The second and greater son was Orpheus, the most famous musician in all of Greek mythology. Calliope taught him to sing, and Apollo gave him a golden lyre and taught him to play. His music was so powerful that wild beasts lay down at his feet, trees tore up their roots to follow him, and even the rocks rolled along to hear his song. When his beloved wife Eurydice died of a snakebite, Orpheus descended to the underworld and sang before Hades and Persephone, the king and queen of the dead, until they wept and agreed to let her return. But he looked back too soon, and she was lost forever. The death of Orpheus was one of the most terrible in Greek myth. The women of Thrace, devotees of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, fell upon him in a frenzy and tore him limb from limb, either because he had turned from the worship of Dionysus to the worship of Apollo, or because he had spurned their advances after the loss of Eurydice. His head, still singing, floated down the River Hebrus and across the sea to the island of Lesbos, where it was enshrined in a cave and gave prophecies until the day Apollo silenced it. Calliope, in her grief, recovered her son's head from the waters and had it buried on Lesbos, where the nightingales were said to sing more sweetly than anywhere else in Greece. The poet Aeschylus wrote a lost play, the Bassarides, that told this story, and in it Calliope appeared at the end to mourn her son. Calliope appears in one of the most vivid scenes of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the great Latin poem of transformation. The daughters of Pierus, a king of Thessaly, challenged the Muses to a singing contest, boasting that their own voices surpassed those of the goddesses. Calliope herself stepped forward to answer the challenge. She sang of the rape of Persephone by Hades, of the transformation of the nymph Cyane into a fountain, and of the boy Triptolemus, whom the goddess Demeter taught the arts of agriculture. The nymphs who judged the contest awarded the victory to the Muses, and in their rage the Pierides mocked the judges. Calliope and her sisters turned the presumptuous girls into magpies, birds that chatter and squawk, condemned to repeat the words of others for ever. It was a fitting punishment for those who had challenged the source of all original song. Summary Calliope stands as the most honoured of the Muses, the voice that has spoken through three thousand years of epic poetry from Homer to Dante. From the nine nights of her birth to the magpies of Pierus, from the golden lyre of Orpheus to the writing tablet in her hand, her story is one of inspiration made divine. Every poet who opens a work with an invocation, every writer who seeks the right word for a grand occasion, and every reader who has wept at the Iliad or trembled at the Aeneid owes something to Calliope, the beautiful-voiced goddess who taught the world that the highest art is the art of telling the truth in beautiful words. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Calliope 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 Mnemosyne Titan Mnemosyne Muses Group Muses Apollo Deity Apollo Zeus Deity Zeus Orpheus Person Orpheus 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 75-83 (c. 8th-7th century BCE) - Calliope as chief of the Muses, her gift of eloquence to kings - Homer, Iliad, Book 1, line 1; Odyssey, Book 1, line 1 (c. 8th century BCE) - Invocation of the Muse at the opening of both epics - Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 5, lines 294-340, 662-678 (c. 8 CE) - The singing contest with the Pierides and their transformation into magpies - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 1, chapters 3.2, 3.4, 3.14 (c. 1st-2nd century CE) - Parentage, children Orpheus and Linus, mother of Rhesus by Strymon - Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Book 1, lines 23-34 (c. 3rd century BCE) - Orpheus as son of Calliope and Oeagrus - Pindar, Dirges, Fragment 139 (c. 5th century BCE) - Orpheus as son of Oeagrus and Calliope - Aeschylus, Bassarides (lost play, fragments, c. 5th century BCE) - The death of Orpheus and Calliope's lament - Plato, Phaedrus, 259b-d (c. 4th century BCE) - Calliope and Urania as Muses of philosophy and divine thought - Virgil, Aeneid, Book 9, line 525; Book 10, line 163 (c. 19 BCE) - Invocation of Calliope in the Aeneid - Strabo, Geography, 10.3.19 (c. 20 BCE) - Calliope as mother of the Corybantes by Zeus - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book 4, chapter 7.1 (c. 1st century BCE) - The names and roles of the Muses - Murray, Gilbert, The Classical Tradition in Poetry (1927) - Harvard University Press, chapter on the Muse tradition in epic poetry - Murray, Penelope, Plato on Poetry (1996) - Cambridge University Press, chapter on the Muses in Platonic philosophy Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh who overthrew Egypt's gods to worship the Aten sun disk, built a desert city, and was erased from history. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Akhenaten Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s 3kh-n-itn (Egyptian), Amenophis IV (Greek) Pronunciation ah-kuh-NAH-tuhn Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Amenhotep IV, Amenophis IV, the Heretic Pharaoh, the Heretic King, the Sun King, the First Monotheist, the Criminal of Akhetaten Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details New Kingdom, Eighteenth Dynasty Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender Male Time Period c. 1353-1336 BCE (reign) Symbol The sun disk of the Aten Tags egyptian, akhenaten, aten, amarna, nefertiti, monotheism, tutankhamun, heretic-pharaoh Introduction - Overview Akhenaten is the heretic pharaoh who threw out a thousand years of Egyptian religion and staked his throne on a single god, the Aten, the blazing sun disk whose rays end in tiny hands. He is the king born Amenhotep IV who erased his own name, closed the temples of Amun, the hidden king of the gods whose priests had grown richer than the crown, and had the old god's name chiselled off monuments across the land. He is the husband of Nefertiti, the queen whose painted bust is the most famous face of ancient Egypt, and the father of Tutankhamun, the boy king whose golden tomb outshines every other royal grave on earth. He is the builder of Akhetaten, a shining new capital raised on empty desert at Amarna and abandoned to the sand within a generation, and the poet of the Great Hymn to the Aten, one of the oldest religious poems in existence. He is the pharaoh who was erased from his own history, his image hacked from temple walls, his sanctuaries pulled down stone by stone, his memory cursed as the criminal of Akhetaten. And he is the man some call the world's first monotheist, a visionary three thousand years ahead of his time, whose one-god experiment died with him and has haunted the imagination of the world ever since. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Akhenaten The boy who would become Akhenaten was born as Prince Amenhotep, the younger son of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh so magnificent that his courtiers called him the Dazzling Sun Disk, and Queen Tiye, a common-born wife raised to be the most powerful woman in the land. His father's reign of nearly forty years was the golden afternoon of the Egyptian empire, an age when gold poured in from the mines of Nubia, the African land to the south, and tribute flowed from the vassal kings of Syria and Canaan. Amenhotep III covered Thebes, the southern capital, with temples, raised the two seated giants that travellers call the Colossi of Memnon, and filled the sanctuaries of Amun, the hidden king of the gods, with such wealth that the god's high priests had become a power to rival the throne. The young prince grew up in this glittering court, but he was not the heir. His elder brother Thutmose was groomed for kingship until the boy died young, and the crown fell to a second son who had spent his youth in the shadow of others, drawn already to a god his father had only begun to favour: the Aten, the visible disk of the sun itself. Amenhotep IV took the throne around 1353 BCE, and within three years the court knew that something unprecedented was coming. At Karnak, the vast temple precinct of Amun on the east bank of Thebes, he raised an entire temple to the Aten called the Gempaaten, built not from great stone blocks but from talatat, small standardised stones that one man could carry, so that whole walls rose in months instead of years. There, in his third year, he celebrated a sed festival, the ancient jubilee that renewed a king's strength, but dedicated it not to Amun or any of the old gods, only to the Aten. In his fifth year he abandoned his own name. Amenhotep meant Amun is Satisfied, and the king would no longer carry the name of a god he had come to despise. He became Akhenaten, Effective for the Aten, and proclaimed that there was no other god but the sun disk, whose rays reach down to touch every land and every face. Then he struck at the old order. The temples of Amun were closed, their revenues seized, their priests scattered. Work gangs were sent across Egypt with chisels to hack the name of Amun from obelisks, statues, and coffins, and sometimes even the plural word gods was gouged out, as though the very idea of many gods had become an obscenity. In that same fifth year, Akhenaten announced that the Aten had chosen a home. On an empty stretch of desert on the east bank of the Nile, halfway between Thebes, the southern religious capital, and Memphis, the ancient northern seat of kings, enclosed by a great arc of cliffs, he founded Akhetaten, the Horizon of the Aten, and swore by his god that he would never leave it. On massive stone slabs called stelae, carved into the cliff faces that ringed the plain, he recorded his proclamation: no other god had told him of this place, no king had claimed it before him, and he would build there a city that belonged to the Aten alone. The city rose with astonishing speed, laid out along a Royal Road where the king and queen rode in chariots of gold each morning, mirroring the journey of the sun across the sky. At its heart stood the Great Temple of the Aten, a temple unlike any Egypt had seen: open to the sky, with no dark sanctuary and no hidden statue, for the god was the sunlight itself, and its floor was crowded with hundreds of offering tables heaped with bread and flowers. Beside it stood the palace with its Window of Appearances, a balcony where the royal family leaned out to shower gold collars upon favoured courtiers. Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife, stood beside her husband as a living partner in the cult, her own name lengthened to Neferneferuaten, Perfect is the Perfection of the Aten, and around them gathered their six daughters, the little princesses who appear in the art of the city clinging to their parents' knees. The art of Akhetaten broke every rule that Egyptian artists had kept for fifteen centuries. Where pharaohs had always been carved as flawless, broad-shouldered conquerors, Akhenaten allowed himself to be shown with a long jaw, heavy-lidded eyes, full lips, a swelling belly, wide hips, and spindly limbs, a body so strange that later ages would argue over whether it recorded a disease, a deliberate symbol, or both. Stranger still were the scenes of his family: the king lifting a daughter to his lips for a kiss, the queen with a princess on her lap, the whole household bathed in the rays of the Aten, each ray ending in a little hand that touched their faces and offered the ankh, the looped cross of life. In the cliff tombs of his courtiers the king's faith found its voice in the Great Hymn to the Aten, a poem that praises the sun rising over the Two Lands, the ancient name for Upper and Lower Egypt, waking the sleeping, feeding the fish in the river and the chick breaking its shell, and declares that no one knows the god except the king, his son, whom the Aten has made wise. Yet while the court contemplated the sun, the empire strained. In a storeroom of the palace, later excavators found the Amarna Letters, hundreds of clay tablets written in the cuneiform script of Babylon: letters from the great kings of Assyria, Mitanni, and the Hittites, the rival superpowers of the age, and desperate pleas from the vassal princes of Canaan begging for gold, for troops, for any sign that Egypt still ruled. Rib-Hadda of Byblos, a loyal coastal prince, wrote dozens of times as his enemies closed in. The archive suggests a court that answered slowly, or not at all. The final years of the reign darkened. Around the twelfth year the court celebrated a great durbar, a gathering of tribute from every corner of the empire, but deaths began to hollow out the royal house. Queen Tiye, the king's formidable mother, died, and so did Meketaten, the second daughter, whose burial scene in the royal tomb shows the king and queen bent over her small body while a nurse holds a newborn infant nearby, a detail that has led many to suspect she died in childbirth. Nefertiti fades from the record, and a shadowy figure named Smenkhkare appears as a brief co-regent, followed by Neferneferuaten, a ruler whose sex and identity are still argued over. In his seventeenth year, around 1336 BCE, Akhenaten died, no older than his late thirties, and was carried up a lonely wadi east of the city to a tomb cut in the cliffs, where his sarcophagus lay beneath carved rays of the sun. He was not left to rest. Within a few years the throne passed to a child, Tutankhaten, the Living Image of the Aten, who changed his name to Tutankhamun, abandoned Akhetaten, and issued a stela declaring that the temples had fallen to ruin and the gods had turned their backs on Egypt. Then came Horemheb, a general who seized the crown and set about annihilating the heresy. His crews dismantled the Aten temples and buried the talatat blocks inside the great pylons of Karnak as hidden fill. The names of Akhenaten and his heirs were cut out of the official king lists, so that later lists step straight from Amenhotep III to Horemheb as if thirty years had never happened. When later scribes needed to mention the heretic at all, they called him only the enemy of Akhetaten. The city he had sworn never to leave crumbled into the sand, its bricks robbed for farms, its name forgotten for three thousand years. Then, in the nineteenth century, European travellers found the boundary stelae in the cliffs and began to copy their strange hymn. In the 1890s the English archaeologist Flinders Petrie excavated the ruined city and uncovered painted palace pavements where wild ducks still flew across plaster marshes under the feet of kings. In 1912 a German expedition under Ludwig Borchardt found the painted limestone bust of Nefertiti in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose, and the face of the queen became, almost overnight, the face of ancient Egypt itself. Five years earlier, a smashed coffin had been lifted from a ransacked tomb in the Valley of the Kings, catalogued as KV55, its golden face hacked away and its royal names cut out. The skeleton inside, tested generations later, proved to be the father of Tutankhamun, and many now believe those lonely bones are Akhenaten himself. The modern world has never stopped arguing about him. The American scholar James Henry Breasted called him the first individual in human history. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, built his last book around the claim that Moses had carried the Aten's single god out of Egypt. Others have seen a tyrant who bankrupted an empire for a private vision. All of them, friend and enemy alike, still speak his forbidden name. Summary Akhenaten endures as the great might-have-been of ancient Egypt, the king who reached for a single god and was broken by the gods he abandoned. Readers have long noticed that his hymn's praise of the sun that wakes every creature runs strikingly close to Psalm 104 in the Hebrew Bible, a bridge between faiths built thirty centuries ago. Every debate about where monotheism began, every novel and opera that revives the city of the sun, every visitor who stops before Nefertiti's face carries the mark of his seventeen-year dream. In the human imagination, Akhenaten remains the eternal revolutionary, the proof that one determined ruler can turn a civilisation upside down, and that a civilisation can turn back. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Akhenaten 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 Amenhotep III Person Amenhotep III Tutankhamun Person Tutankhamun Nefertiti Person Nefertiti Aten Deity Aten Amun-Ra Deity Amun-Ra 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: - Great Hymn to the Aten, tomb of Ay, Amarna Tomb 25 (c. 1345 BCE) - the fullest surviving statement of the Aten cult - Boundary Stelae of Akhetaten, the Earlier Proclamation (Regnal Year 5, c. 1348 BCE) - the king's own account of the founding of his city - The Amarna Letters, cuneiform archive EA 1-382 (c. 1360-1330 BCE) - diplomatic correspondence of the reign, including the pleas of Rib-Hadda of Byblos - Restoration Stela of Tutankhamun (c. 1332 BCE) - the official repudiation of the Atenist revolution - Donald B. Redford, Akhenaten: The Heretic King (Princeton University Press, 1984) - the standard scholarly biography of the reign - Erik Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (Cornell University Press, 1999) - the theology and structure of the Aten cult - Nicholas Reeves, Akhenaten: Egypt's False Prophet (Thames & Hudson, 2001) - a critical reassessment of the king and his revolution - Barry Kemp, The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People (Thames & Hudson, 2012) - the archaeology of the city and its daily life Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Spirits embodying curses. Female daemons of vengeance invoked in oaths, personifying the irreversible power of a sworn curse upon the breaker | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Arae Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Ἄραι) Pronunciation AIR-eye Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Arai, "Curses," "Prayers of Vengeance," identified with the Erinyes (Furies) 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 Archaic to Classical Greece (8th-5th century BCE); prominently in Athenian tragedy Symbol Note & Nail Tags greek, spirit, curse, oath, underworld, vengeance Introduction - Overview The Arae are the female spirits of curses who rise from the underworld to hunt the guilty, the living embodiment of every malediction ever spoken by the dying or the wronged. They are the daughters of Nyx, the primordial goddess of Night, born from darkness itself to ensure that no murderer, oath-breaker, or kin-slayer ever escapes punishment. They are the relentless pursuers who blur the line between the Erinyes and the curses they enforce, often called by the same names and wielding the same terrible power. They are the voices that answer when a daughter calls down ruin upon her father, or when a son prays for vengeance against his mother's killers. And they are the ancient Greek warning that words have weight, that a curse spoken in anger or grief is not empty air but a binding force that will find its target and never let go. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Arae The Arae were born from Nyx, the primordial goddess of Night, who in the earliest Greek cosmogonies emerged from Chaos itself and gave birth to a brood of dark and necessary powers. Among her children were the Moirai, who spin the threads of fate, and the Keres, spirits of violent death. The Arae were her curses made flesh, or perhaps the curses themselves given just enough form to pursue the guilty across the boundary between living and dead. They dwelt in the underworld, in the shadowed halls beneath the earth where the dead walk, and they were summoned forth when the conditions were right: when blood cried out for blood, when an oath sworn upon the River Styx was shattered, when a dying breath carried a final malediction against a killer. Their most famous appearance comes in the tragedies of Aeschylus, where they are woven into the cursed bloodline of the House of Atreus. In the Libation Bearers, the second play of the Oresteia trilogy, Orestes calls upon the "potent Arai" of the underworld to witness and enforce justice as he prepares to avenge his father Agamemnon, the great king who was murdered by his own wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Agamemnon had returned from the Trojan War only to be struck down in his own bath, and his ghost cried out for retribution. Orestes, the son, stands at his father's grave and invokes the Arae alongside the Erinyes, asking these spirits of curses to drive him toward the terrible act of matricide. The Arae do not counsel mercy. They are not interested in circumstance or excuse. They are the curse itself, and once invoked, they ensure that the curse runs its course to the end. In the Eumenides, the final play of the Oresteia, the Erinyes themselves declare, "We are called Curses in our homes beneath the earth," identifying themselves as the Arae in their subterranean domain. This is the highlight of their mythic presence: the moment when the boundary between curse and curser dissolves entirely. The Erinyes, three terrifying female spirits of vengeance with snakes entwined in their hair, pursue Orestes across Greece after he kills his mother, driving him to madness with their relentless haunting. They are the Arae made visible, the curses of the dead given faces and voices and the will to punish. In their confrontation with Athena on the Areopagus, the hill of Ares in Athens, the ancient blood vengeance they represent clashes with the new civic law that Athena champions. The resolution transforms them from vengeful Arae into the Eumenides, the "Kindly Ones," but their power remains unchanged. They are still curses. They still enforce justice. They simply serve the city now rather than the individual dead. The Arae also appear in the Seven Against Thebes, where Eteocles, the king of Thebes defending his city against his own brother Polynices, prays to the "Curse, potent agent of my father's Erinys" to ensure that Polynices falls. The curse here is the malediction of Oedipus, the father who had blinded himself after discovering he had killed his own father and married his own mother, a curse that now drives his two sons to kill each other at the seventh gate of Thebes. The Arae are not merely invoked; they are the engine of the tragedy, the force that makes the curse inevitable. Eteocles knows that he is praying for his own death as well as his brother's, because the curse does not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. It simply executes what was spoken. In a rare glimpse outside the great tragic cycles, a fragment of the lyric poet Bacchylides, preserved on Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1361, shows the Arae answering a more personal call. A daughter, kept indoors by her father and denied marriage, makes supplication to the "nether-world Arai" in her affliction, praying that her father complete a bitter and accursed old age for his cruelty. It is a small, domestic tragedy, but the Arae answer it with the same inevitability they bring to royal bloodlines. The Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine lexicon preserving fragments of lost classical works, records that the Arae were invoked alongside Persephone and Hermes of the Underworld, binding the guilty with the same stones of the black-hearted Styx that hold the gods themselves to their oaths. In Roman times, the Greek Arae were syncretized with the Dirae and Furiae, and Virgil in the Aeneid shows them as winged spirits of madness answering Dido's curse against Aeneas. The curse outlives the curser. The Arae outlast empires. Summary The Arae stand as the eternal proof that in ancient Greek belief, a curse was not mere words but a living force with the power to bind fate itself. From the blood-soaked stage of Athenian tragedy to the quiet despair of a daughter's prayer, they enforced the most primal law: that the dead would be heard, that oaths would be kept, and that kin-slaying would never go unpunished. They are the shadow that follows the murderer, the madness that haunts the oath-breaker, and the ancient warning that every word spoken in anger or grief carries the weight of the underworld behind it. In a world where justice was often uncertain, the Arae guaranteed that some debts would always be collected. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Arae 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 Orestes Person Orestes Athena Deity Athena Clytemnestra Person Clytemnestra Nyx Deity Nyx Agamemnon Person Agamemnon 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: - Aeschylus, Eumenides (458 BCE) - lines 417-419, where the Erinyes identify themselves as Arae - Aeschylus, Libation Bearers (458 BCE) - invocation of "potent Arai" by Orestes - Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes (467 BCE) - Eteocles' prayer to the Curse at line 949 - Bacchylides, Fragment 20a (5th century BCE) - Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1361, daughter's invocation of the Arae - Suda Lexicon, s.v. "Arai kata oikhomenon" (10th century CE) - Byzantine compilation of classical curse references - Sophocles, Electra (c. 410 BCE) - invocation of Ara alongside Erinyes and Hades, preserved in Suda s.v. Persephone - Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (1985) - Chapter III on chthonic cults and curse spirits - Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, The Justice of Zeus (1971) - Chapter 4 on the Erinyes and curse enforcement in Greek tragedy - Virgil, Aeneid (19 BCE) - Book IV, Dido's curse and the Dirae/Furiae as Roman counterparts - Parker, Robert, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (1983) - Chapter 2 on blood-guilt and curse spirits Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Ambrosius, the last Roman of Britain, from Gildas's purple-born hero to the ruler linked with Dinas Emrys, Merlin, Stonehenge and Uther Pendragon. Previous Arthurian Next > Ambrosius Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ambrosius Aurelianus (Gildas), Aurelius Ambrosius (Geoffrey), Emrys Wledig (Welsh), Merlinus Ambrosius (the name Geoffrey gave to Merlin) Pronunciation am-BROH-zee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Ambrosius Aurelianus, Aurelius Ambrosius, Emrys Wledig, the Last of the Romans, brother of Uther Pendragon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British/Historical and legendary Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period c. 450-500 CE (the historical figure); literary tradition c. 540-1485 (Gildas to Malory) Symbol Red Dragon Tags arthurian, ambrosius, aurelius-ambrosius, emrys, gildas, vortigern, merlin, stonehenge, dinas-emrys, hengist, saxons, last-of-the-romans Introduction - Overview Ambrosius is the hinge on which the Arthurian age turns, the last of the Romans and the first hope of the Britons, a man so real that the earliest source knows him and so legendary that no two sources agree on who he was. He is the Ambrosius Aurelianus of Gildas, the gentleman of the purple whose parents were slain in the Saxon storm, under whom the broken Britons found their courage again and began the long fight-back that ended at Mount Badon. He is King Aurelius Ambrosius of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the brother of Uther Pendragon, who burned the usurper Vortigern in his tower, broke Hengist at Maisbeli, set Merlin to raise Stonehenge as the monument of the murdered, and died by poison at Winchester. He is Emrys Wledig in the Welsh tradition. The fatherless boy of the Historia Brittonum, brought to Vortigern to be sacrificed beneath a falling tower, who revealed the red and white dragons fighting in the pool at Dinas Emrys, is a separate figure later fused with him: that boy is the child Emrys who becomes Merlin, not the war-leader Gildas named. And he is the shadowy Roman who may stand behind the very figure of Arthur himself. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Ambrosius The earliest Ambrosius is the man in Gildas. Around 540 the monk wrote De Excidio, the ruin of Britain, and named one leader who had not gone under in the Saxon storm: Ambrosius Aurelianus, a modest man, perhaps the last of the Roman nation, whose parents had worn the purple and were slain in the catastrophe. Under him, Gildas says, the broken Britons found their strength again and the war swung back and forth until the siege of Mount Badon. That is nearly all the fifth-century record gives. Bede copied it. Later ages called him the last of the Romans, and no one has worn the title better. The boy at Dinas Emrys is not that man. The Historia Brittonum, the Welsh history of about 829, tells how Vortigern tried to raise a tower in Snowdonia and how each day’s work sank in the night. His magicians demanded the blood of a fatherless boy. Searchers found the child at Campus Elleti in Glamorgan, brought him to die, and were answered instead. The boy showed them a pool beneath the foundations and two dragons in it, one red and one white, and he read the sight: the red dragon is the Britons, the white is the Saxons, and the red shall drive the white out in the end. Asked his name, he said Ambrosius; asked his father, that he was a Roman consul. Vortigern gave him the fortress, Dinas Emrys, the Fort of Ambrosius. Geoffrey of Monmouth later split the tangle: he kept the name Merlinus Ambrosius for the boy seer, who becomes Merlin, and he gave the war-leader a separate life as King Aurelius Ambrosius. The dragons and the pool belong with Merlin. The command of Britain belongs here. Geoffrey’s king is the second son of Constantine, carried to Brittany as a child when Vortigern destroyed his house, who returns with his brother Uther, burns the usurper in the tower at Ganarew, and takes the crown. He breaks Hengist at Maisbeli, where Eldol of Gloucester takes the Saxon alive and cuts off his head. He buries the British nobles murdered at the Treachery of the Long Knives in the monastery of Amesbury, and he sends Merlin and Uther to Ireland for the Giant’s Dance so that Stonehenge may stand as their monument. His death is the old enemy in a new coat. Sick at Winchester, he drinks from a cup prepared by Eopa, a Saxon hired by Vortigern’s son Pascentius and dressed as a physician. That night a comet climbs the sky with a dragon of fire. Merlin reads it for Uther as the sign of the crown and of the son to come. The Britons carry Aurelius to Stonehenge and lay him inside the circle he raised. Uther Pendragon reigns after him. The Welsh kept him as Emrys Wledig, Ambrosius the Prince, an overlord in the generation before Arthur. Historians still ask the obvious question: a Roman-born commander who rallies the Britons in the decades the legend gives to Arthur’s youth may be Arthur’s uncle, his forerunner, or the root of the king himself. The later romances mention him only as the royal brother whose reign sets Merlin’s great works in motion. Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave makes him the soldier-king who fathers Merlin on a Welsh princess; that is modern fiction, not a medieval source. What the sources do agree on is the hinge. Purple on one side of him, the Pendragon on the other, and Rome passing into Camelot through a single name. Summary Ambrosius endures as the man between Rome and Camelot, the last Roman of Britain and the uncle of its greatest king. From Gildas's modest gentleman of the purple to the prophetic boy of Dinas Emrys to Geoffrey's tower-burning king who commissioned Stonehenge, he has been hero, seer and sovereign by turns. He is the reminder that the Arthurian age began not with a sword in a stone but with a family that refused to surrender, that the greatest monument of Britain was raised for the murdered, and that the dragon under the tower was always the red one, waiting its turn. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Ambrosius 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 Merlin Person Merlin Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon The Red Dragon Creature/Monster/Animal The Red Dragon King Arthur Person King Arthur 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: - Gildas, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, c. 540 - the historical Ambrosius Aurelianus and the rally of the Britons - Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, 731 - Gildas's account retold for the English - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, c. 829 - the fatherless boy and the dragons of Dinas Emrys - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1136 - King Aurelius Ambrosius: the burning of Vortigern, the defeat of Hengist, Stonehenge and the poisoning - Lancelot-Grail (Vulgate Cycle), the Estoire de Merlin, c. 1215-1235 - the royal brother in the romance frame - Stewart, Mary, The Crystal Cave, 1970 - Ambrosius as the father of Merlin - Alcock, Leslie, Arthur's Britain (Allen Lane, 1971) - the archaeology of Dinas Emrys and the period - Ashe, Geoffrey, The Discovery of King Arthur (Guild Publishing, 1985) - Ambrosius and the historical Arthur debate - Snyder, Christopher A., An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons AD 400-600 (Sutton Publishing, 1998) - the sub-Roman context Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Benwig, Welsh piglet-warrior of Twrch Trwyth who fought Arthur's hunters across Britain and was slain beside Banw at Dyffryn Amanw during the hunt. Previous Arthurian Next > Benwig Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Benwig (Welsh) Pronunciation BEN-wig Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Piglet of Amanw, Son of Twrch Trwyth, the Warrior Swine of Dyffryn, the Little Boar, Companion of Banw Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Welsh / British / Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Creature/Monster/Animal Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender N/A Time Period 6th century CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1100 CE Symbol The piglet warrior, the Amman Valley, the bristles of silver and gold Tags arthurian, welsh, benwig, creature, piglet, twrch-trwyth, culhwch-olwen, mabinogion, dyffryn-amanw Introduction - Overview Benwig is one of the seven piglet-warriors of Twrch Trwyth, the transformed Irish king who became the most famous boar in Arthurian legend, and it is the little swine who fought and fell beside its brother Banw in the Amman Valley. It is the son of Twrch Trwyth, born not from a sow but from the same divine curse that turned its father from a human king into a venom-bristled monster. It is the warrior who defended its father across Ireland and Wales, buying time with tusk and fury as Arthur's host closed in. It is the beast that died at Dyffryn Amanw, slain alongside Banw when the hunters finally cornered two of the brood together. It is one of the five named piglets who perished so that their father might keep running toward the western sea. And it is the reminder that in the oldest Arthurian tales, even the nameless little boars fought like kings, and that the valley where two piglets fell remembers both their names. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Benwig Benwig appears only in the Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest extended Arthurian story, preserved in the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch. In this tale, Twrch Trwyth is an Irish king named Taredd, transformed by God's punishment into a monstrous boar with venom-dripping bristles and a comb, scissors, and razor lodged between his ears. He is accompanied by seven offspring, themselves transformed men who act as his warriors and bodyguard. Six of these piglets are named in the text: Grugyn Silver Bristle, Llwydawg the Killer, Twrch Llawin, Gwys, Banw, and Benwig. The seventh remains unnamed, a shadow among shadows. The hunt for Twrch Trwyth dominates the latter half of Culhwch and Olwen and ranks as the most elaborate chase in medieval Welsh literature. Arthur and his host sail to Ireland and find the boar and his seven sons in their lair. Menw son of Teirgwaedd takes bird-form to spy on them, but when he tries to snatch one of the implements from Twrch Trwyth's head, the boar shakes himself and scatters venom, wounding the scout. The chase then begins in earnest, sweeping across Britain like a storm. The boar and his brood are driven from Ireland to Porth Clais in Dyfed, through Carmarthenshire and the Llwchwr valley, across the Preseli Mountains and down toward the Severn estuary. At every turn the piglets defend their father with a fury that matches any knight's. They turn on Arthur's men and slaughter hounds and warriors alike, buying time for Twrch Trwyth to bolt away. The casualties mount with each stand: knights fall, dogs are torn apart, and the ground is littered with the dead before the boar moves on. The piglets are not mere animals but transformed warriors, retaining the cunning and courage of the kings and champions they had once been. They fight as a unit, Grugyn and Llwydawg leading the charge while the smaller piglets harry the flanks. The first named piglet to fall is Twrch Llawin, slain early in the chase. Then Gwys is killed at Mynydd Amanw. The pursuit continues to Dyffryn Amanw, the Amman Valley, where Arthur's men finally close the net. It is here that Benwig and its brother Banw are slain together, the two little boars falling side by side in the valley that still bears their father's name. The text records their deaths in a single line, spare and final: there were slain Banw and Benwig. None of the pigs went with Twrch Trwyth from that place alive except Grugyn Silver Bristle and Llwydawg the Killer, who would follow their father to Cornwall and to the sea beyond. Benwig's legacy is inseparable from that of Banw, its fellow victim at Dyffryn Amanw. The name Dyffryn Amanw, the Amman Valley, carries an onomastic link with banw, the Welsh word for pigling, and both little boars are remembered in the landscape where they fell. Modern Ammanford marks the place with sculptures of a boar and his piglets, built from stainless steel and bronze. Benwig may have been the least famous of the seven, the piglet whose name appears second in the death notice and nowhere else, but its death at Dyffryn Amanw is one of the fixed points in the geography of the greatest hunt in Welsh literature. The companion who is never named alone is sometimes the one who makes the story possible. Summary Benwig endures as the piglet-warrior of the oldest Arthurian hunt, the little boar who fell beside Banw at Dyffryn Amanw and whose death is recorded in a single spare line. From the Irish lair of Twrch Trwyth to the Amman Valley where it died at its brother's side, its story is the story of a transformed king who fought like a knight and perished like a soldier. It is the reminder that in Welsh mythology, even the smallest monsters were once men, and that the piglet who dies second is still remembered a thousand years later. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Benwig 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 Banw Creature/Monster/Animal Banw 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 (Culhwch ac Olwen), c. 11th century, preserved in Red Book of Hergest c. 1400 and White Book of Rhydderch c. 1325 - primary source; the hunt for Twrch Trwyth and the slaying of Banw and Benwig at Dyffryn Amanw - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, c. 829 CE, De Mirabilibus Britanniae section - primary source; earliest reference to Arthur hunting the boar Troynt - Bromwich, Rachel and D. Simon Evans (eds.), Culhwch and Olwen: An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale (University of Wales Press, 1992) - scholarly edition with textual analysis of the hunt route and the onomastic link between banw and the Amman Valley - Ford, Patrick K. (trans.), The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (University of California Press, 1977) - scholarly translation with notes on the Twrch Trwyth episode and the named piglets - Guest, Lady Charlotte (trans.), The Mabinogion (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1838-49) - early scholarly translation; records the death of Banw and Benwig at Dyffryn Amanw - Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Development of Arthurian Romance (Hutchinson, 1963) - scholarly analysis of Welsh Arthurian traditions and the hunt narrative - Roberts, Brynley F., "Culhwch ac Olwen, the Triads, Saints' Lives," in Rachel Bromwich et al. (eds.), The Arthur of the Welsh (University of Wales Press, 1991) - scholarly analysis of the tale's structure and Arthurian context - Charles-Edwards, T.M., Wales and the Britons 350-1064 (Oxford University Press, 2013) - scholarly historical analysis of Welsh mythological geography and the Amman Valley Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Igraine, mother of King Arthur, the Duchess of Cornwall deceived at Tintagel by Merlin's craft, whose one night begot the golden age. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Igraine Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ygraine, Igrayne, Ygerne (Old French), Igerna (Latin), Eigr (Welsh) Pronunciation ih-GRAYN Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Duchess of Cornwall, the Lady of Tintagel, the Queen of Uther Pendragon, the Mother of Arthur, the Mother of Morgan le Fay, the Deceived Wife 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 Female Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic Arthurian period); literary tradition c. 1136-present, with earlier Welsh roots Symbol The sea-girt tower of Tintagel, the borrowed likeness of Gorlois, the crown of Britain Tags arthurian, igraine, queen, ygraine, tintagel, uther-pendragon, gorlois, merlin, arthur, morgan-le-fay, morgause, cornwall Introduction - Overview Igraine is the mother of King Arthur and the still centre of the storm that made him, the Duchess of Cornwall whose beauty drew the eye of Uther Pendragon and set a war, a death and an enchantment in motion. She is the wife of Gorlois, the proud duke who locked her in the sea-girt fortress of Tintagel to keep her from the king, and the widow of one night who woke to find her husband dead and herself already bound to the crown. She is the woman deceived by Merlin's craft, who received a king in her husband's likeness and conceived the greatest king in legend without knowing it, and who learned the truth from Uther's own lips and made great joy of it. She is the mother who gave up her son to Merlin's keeping, who lost him for years, and who was brought at last to her son's court to stand witness to his birth and be known. And she is the mother of the other line as well, of Morgause and Elaine and Morgan le Fay, the daughters through whom both Gawain and the shadow of Mordred entered the house of Arthur. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Igraine Arthur's mother has a name older than the romances. The Welsh genealogies of the heroes call her Eigr, the daughter of Amlawdd Wledig, a British prince, which makes Arthur the cousin of Culhwch and kin to half the saints and warriors of Wales. The French romances softened Eigr into Ygerne and Igraine, and Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised her as Igerna. Beyond her name and her marriage the Welsh tradition is silent; everything we know of her character, her choices and her fate belongs to the storytellers, and almost all of it hangs on a single night. Geoffrey of Monmouth introduces her around 1136 as Igerna, wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, a woman whose beauty surpassed all the ladies of Britain. Uther sees her at the high feast he holds in London after his victories, and his desire is instant and public: he loads her with gifts, singles her out, and cannot take his eyes from her. Gorlois reads the danger and leaves court without the king's leave, which in that world is rebellion. Uther makes war on Cornwall, ravaging the land, and Gorlois, outmatched, places Igraine for safety in Tintagel, the fortress on its sea-girt rock that no assault can take, and holds himself at the castle of Dimilioc. The siege that follows is fought less for a dukedom than for a woman, and Igraine, locked above the sea, is its helpless prize. What follows is the hinge of the whole legend. Uther, wasting with longing, confesses his desire to Merlin, and Merlin, who has seen what that longing will produce, consents to help him. By his craft he gives Uther the face and form of Gorlois, and disguises himself and the king's chamberlain Ulfin as the duke's knights. That night the false Gorlois rides to Tintagel, the guards open to their lord, and Igraine receives her husband home. In the likeness of Gorlois, Uther lies with her, and Arthur is conceived. In the small hours a messenger comes with terrible news: the real Gorlois, sallying from Dimilioc, has been killed. Igraine finds herself in a single night a wife, a widow and the mother of the future, and only later does she learn that the man in her bed was the king. Geoffrey records the facts with a chronicler's calm; the romances and the moderns have been arguing about them ever since. Malory tells it with more intimacy and more consequence. His Igraine, widowed and wedded with speed to the victorious Uther, grows great with child, and when the king asks her by the faith she owes him whose the child is, she answers honestly that a man came to her in her husband's likeness on the very night of his death. Uther tells her the truth, that it was himself, by Merlin's counsel, and Malory says the queen made great joy when she knew who was the father of her child. Her daughters by Gorlois are married into the great houses of the north: Margawse to King Lot of Orkney, Elaine to King Nentres of Garlot, and the youngest, Morgan, placed in a nunnery and then given to King Uriens, learning necromancy on the way. The son is given up: by the oath Uther swore, Merlin takes the infant Arthur and hides him with Sir Ector. Igraine's reward is a long absence. She re-enters the story years later, when the realm doubts the unknown youth who drew the sword from the stone, and Merlin fetches Igraine herself to court. Before the barons she declares openly how Uther, in the likeness of the duke, begot him, and Sir Ector bears witness how he nursed the child, and Arthur embraces the mother he has never known. Nor is her part in the tragedy finished. When Margawse, her eldest daughter, comes to Arthur's court as King Lot's wife, Arthur, not knowing she is his half-sister, lies with her, and begets Mordred. The deception at Tintagel thus answers itself a generation later: the son begotten in ignorance on a deceived wife begets in turn, in ignorance, upon his own sister, the knight who will destroy the Round Table. Igraine stands at the head of both lines, the line of Arthur and the line of Mordred, the bright crown and the black. The later tradition has treated her variously. Tennyson lets her daughter Bellicent tell the tale, of the mother courted in Gorlois's shape and the birth no man could prove, and makes the mystery of Arthur's parentage the doubt that haunts his reign. Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon gives Igraine her own voice at last: raised in the old religion, bound to a duke she respects and then to a king she did not choose, mother of Arthur and of Morgaine, she becomes the pivot between the dying pagan world and the Christian one. The film Excalibur stages the deception at Tintagel with stark power, and the BBC's Merlin inverts the ending altogether, killing its Ygraine in childbirth as the price of the magic that conceived Arthur, so that Uther's grief becomes the reason he bans sorcery from Camelot. Across eight centuries the versions disagree about everything except the essential: there is no Arthur without Igraine, and the golden age is born out of her deception. Summary Igraine endures as the quiet hinge of the Arthurian legend, the Duchess of Cornwall whose one deceived night at Tintagel conceived the once and future king. From the Welsh genealogies' Eigr to Geoffrey's Igerna, from Malory's honest widow who made great joy to Bradley's priestess and the BBC's sacrificed queen, she has been remade by every age that told her story. She is the reminder that the greatest kings enter the world through their mothers, that the golden age began with a lie told in a borrowed face, and that the mother of Arthur was also the mother of the line that destroyed him. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Igraine 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 Gorlois Person Gorlois Merlin Person Merlin Tintagel Location Tintagel Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon King Arthur Person King Arthur 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: - Bonedd yr Arwyr (Welsh genealogies) - Eigr ferch Amlawdd Wledig, Arthur's mother in Welsh tradition - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1136 - Igerna, the war for Igraine and the deception of Tintagel - Wace, Roman de Brut, 1155 - the Norman-French retelling - Layamon, Brut, c. 1190-1215 - the English version of the story - Lancelot-Grail (Vulgate Cycle), the Estoire de Merlin, c. 1215-1235 - Ygerne and the daughters of Gorlois - Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, c. 1470 (Caxton edition 1485) - the fullest medieval account; the truth, the marriages and the witness at court - Tennyson, Alfred Lord, Idylls of the King, "The Coming of Arthur", 1859-1885 - Bellicent's tale of her mother - Bradley, Marion Zimmer, The Mists of Avalon, 1983 - Igraine as narrator and priestess of the old religion - Stewart, Mary, The Crystal Cave, 1970 - Ygraine in the Merlin trilogy - Padel, O.J., Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature (University of Wales Press, 2000) - the Welsh evidence for Arthur's kin Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover mythology-inspired instrumental music from Mythopouch. Soundtracks for adventure, storytelling and imagination. Enter a world of LEARN-EARN-PLAY. Mythopouch Music Welcome to the music of Mythopouch, we invested a lot of time, effort (and money) into creating beautiful musical tracks that we think are the perfect embodiments of regional Mythopouch mythology. We will continue releasing these tracks periodically, so please feel free to pre-save, then listen to them whenever! Pre-Save the Mythopouch Theme Song Now! 1st Track Release: The Mythopouch Pithos is Open Pre-save our first release track "The Mythopouch Pithos Is Open" on Spotify now! This track will also be released on YouTube Music, Apple Music and other popular music streaming services. Pithos Why and what is a "pithos" I hear you say? In the Pandora's Box story from ancient Greek mythology we hear about, it was never a "box". In English, it is actually a clay jar but in Greek it is a "pithos". A pithos is a towering ancient Greek clay jar built to safeguard a civilisation's survival. Usually large, these vessels held the lifeblood of daily life, such as rich olive oils, wines, and grains. Clay kept the goods cool and also prevented bugs and rodents from contaminating or eating the contents. Pandora's Box | Pandora's Jar | Pandora's Pithos Why did Mythopouch choose Pandora's Pithos in its title when the track sounds more magical fantasy, medieval and Arthurian? The Pandora story people generally know is that Pandora opened all the evil and troubles into the world due to curiosity. Research deeper and you will find that it was set up by Zeus, Pandora was not actually a born human and much more! Once she opened the pithos due to curiosity (who wouldn't to a magically humming pithos) all the evils/troubles escaped into the world - but what people do not tell you is that Zeus ordered the other gods to give her cursed powers but some gods gave her special positive powers, and the most important is that something remained in the pithos - HOPE! This is a fundamental Mythopouch lesson - hope always remains no matter what - no one can ever take that away from us as humans! Pre-Save the track now! Tro the Boar - Twrch Trwyth Why is Tro the Boar (Twrch Trwyth) featured on the cover artwork? Tro the Boar (Twrch Trwyth) represents the untamed nature and forest of old Britain in Arthurian times. For Mythopouch it represents the wildness of ancient times. We live in fairly comfortable and safe times but for ancient peoples this was not the case. The woods were spooky and people had tales to keep inquisitive children and people safe. Wild boars, bears, snakes, poisonous plants and other things were common. There was no hospital, clean water or towns for many miles often when you left the comfort of a small village or township. Tro was not and is not evil, he is simply wild and untamed nature - running on primal instincts, making split second decisions about life and death. Pre-Save the track now! Explore Pandora Explore Pandora's Jar Explore Tro the Boar