/lit/ - Literature

>tfw no Hera gf
I want Hera to sit on my face and not get up until I piss myself at least once

As for OP's question: because the Gods acted like humans or some bullshit

the olympian gods are the bulwark against primordial chaos. they are literally the protectors and the champions of a harmonious cosmic order. so when a mortal starts getting gully they gotta ice a nigga. all the really nasty greek myths can be summed up as: know your role, humanity

>>7095394
>Applying modern mortal morality to the immortal and divine

what happened to the hellenismos meme? it died so fast

>>7095394
Sorry buddy, our ancestors, even the ones we admire, had totally incompatible ideas about right and wrong with us.

And the scary part is, they weren't wrong to percieve the world like this.

Greek gods are forces of nature: they're cruel and capricious because so are the things they represent, they give life and take it in the same breath, like the sun, or the sea, or the wind.

The Greeks understood that the natural world was often at odds with man, so it made sense to them that the gods were wrathful and capricious: as likely to curse a man as aid him.

So they explained the adversity of existing in the natural world.

>>7095394
That's kinda the point of the gods. Cruel gods were the only conclusion the enlightened ancient Greeks could have come to after observing the world.

>>7095394
>Athena

She literally makes Arachne commit suicide because she was better at weaving.

Hermes is a little riddling faggot. Hephaestus is bro-tier though, the other gods rip the piss out of him when Ares sleeps with Aphrodite though. Poor bastard.

Ares is often the most misunderstood of all the Gods. He is hated by all the other Olympians, so it is wrongly assumed we should hate him as well.

Yes, Ares is a vicious and brutal God, but he isn't without a heart. There is a myth that in a far ancient time, Ares committed the first murder among the family of the Olympians when he slew the son of Poseidon for raping his daughter, for which he was thrown out of Olympus. As the consort of Aphrodite, Ares had true love in his heart for her and for the women in his life where none of the other Gods did. He should be seen in relation to his rival Adonis, who was worshipped by a following of women. Ares in a similar fashion was a handsome young man known to be a passionate and empowering lover of women, with the Amazons being his loyal war blooded daughters who worshipped him.

Ares was hated because he was a barbarian who opposed the mores of the civilized Olympians, and found his lands in Thrace and with the Scythian nomads

Persephone is a very radiant and empowering Goddess as well as Queen of the Underworld. She became a guide and shepherd for the lost souls of the Underworld, seeking them out and initiating them into the realm of the dead with love

What books should I read to learn about greek mythology

>>7095394
>or because they accidentally saw them naked.
He saw her having sex with her nymphs, but it's all hush hush
Why she had to kill him.

>>7095455
Ovid's Metamorphoses

>>7095440
The Gods are just and righteous just as often as they are cruel

>>7095443
She doesn't become offended at her skill in weaving, but at what she was weaving, which was a blasphemous depiction of Zeus

>>7095456
Yes, "seeing ones nakedness" was a euphemism for either having sex with someone's lover, or for seeing them having sex

>>7095458
How do you make a blasphemous depiction of a being that fucks any and everything and fucks with mortals on a regular basis?

>>7095468
OP here. Is that also what happened with Noah in The Bible?

>>7095458
It was for both reasons. Funny how the gods don't like being called on their bullshit.

Who does /lit/ think is more of an asshole, Zeus for constantly raping human girls or Hera for trying to destroy the women after they've been raped by Zeus?

>>7095476
Hera, if you add all the things she does to Heracles.

>>7095475
Yes, it's a widely considered thought that Ham had sex with his mother, Noah's wife, and for that was cursed. Some even say that he castrated Noah, but that's less considered

>>7095470
you're conflating the popular, pleb depiction of Zeus with the more esoteric, or even just learned, conception of Zeus as the supreme ruler of a just and ordered cosmos.

the stoics had nothing but the utmost reverence for Zeus/God, and even Seneca derides the poets for depicting Zeus as a philanderer since it was implicitly encouraging vice

it'd be like people 2000 yrs from now wondering what we ever saw in God based on episodes of family guy

>>7095476
You're missing the point of it all by viewing them like this anon. They are multifaceted figures that are far more than their cruelty

>>7095428
Seems the one guy who was serious about it (or just most jazzed about finding it) left.
Was there a particular book on the subject?
Do the Greeks put on a touristy impersonation of the mystery cults?

>>7095468
And Zeus was a prick that didn't want her having sex I recall.

>>7095486
Oh? I thought he just caught him masturbating.

>>7095476
Athena didn't care about her weaving skills, it was the blasphemy against Zeus that she punished

>>7095415

It's almost like they're Hobbesian Leviathans. Necessary evil. The few immoral ones to guarantee a more righteous order.

>>7095491
>you're conflating the popular, pleb depiction of Zeus
Why would the poets at that time want to depict Zeus in that fashion?

>>7095415
>cute girl minding her own business
>oho she's cute I'm gonna have surprise sex with her
>zeus why
>just reminding you folk of your place lmao
Whatever, they may as well be Gilgamesh.

>>7095428
some things are too retarded even for /lit/

>>7095500
Yes, she did. Read the myth again.

>>7095428
Most of us are staunch Hellenists but unlike Christians and Atheists we don't like to be loud mouthed about it. We believe religious beliefs should be a private matter

>>7095491
>philosophers butthurt about poetic metaphors

Jeez, I remember Heraclitus said that Homer should have been horse-whipped for his blasphemy.

>>7095503
because it was really fucking entertaining, which is why we're talking about it now 2500 years later

>>7095507
lmao

>>7095503
>>7095507
The mythical ages of man described in Greek mythology, beginning with the Golden Age established when Kronus usurped Uranus, to the Silver Age beginning the reign of Zeus, to the Bronze Age of Ares brutality, to the Heroic Age spanning 6 generations from Perseus to the Fall of Troy, and finally to the Iron Age show a consistent moral degradation over time, with the short exception of the demigods of the Heroic Age, to the point where humanity is in its most abhorrent state in the Iron Age and the Gods abandoned us all, with Zeus promising to return one day to destroy us

In the same way that Kronus began as a righteous King of the Gods and slowly degraded into a black melancholy child consuming madness, Zeus degraded as well

>>7095538
>Zeus promising to return one day to destroy us

>zeus comes back in 2050
>finds a lifeless radioactive wasteland
>WHO DARED TO DESTROY THEM FIRST

>>7095543
upboat XD

>>7095507
If you faced down the terror of Typhoeus for the sake of humanity, you'd probably feel entitled to do as you wished with them as well

>>7095394

Artemis just turned people into various animals and things in most versions of the texts. I know she killed some for trying to rape her like Bouphagos.

>>7095562
She turned them into animals and then had them ripped apart by dogs

>>7095569
rude

>>7095573
It was the hunters own dogs too. Can you imagine being a hunter in rural Greece, raising and protecting a pack of young dogs until they are old enough to hunt with you, during this time they become your best friends and greatest supports in life, providing you with your very livelihood and source of food, only to be morphed into a deer after accidentally spying Artemis fornicating with her nymphs, and being viciously torn to pieces by these very dogs you loved so much

>>7095394
Greeks were based enough even back then to know not to turn everyone into goody-goody Mary Sues. That's why you start with them.

My favourite Greco-Roman myth is the rape of Io

>Zeus turning Io into a heifer to avoid being caught by Hera
>Hera pretends like she doesn't know what's up and makes Zeus give her the cow
>Zeus sends Hermes to murder the 100-eyed giant Argus guarding Io the cow by lulling him to sleep and then cutting his head off
>heartbreaking scene in Ovid where Io tries to talk to her father but can only low like a cow
>has to write her name in the sand with her hooves to get her father to recognise her.

>>7095625
What do you take as the allegorical meaning of this myth?

>>7095458

The gods are stingy with their blessings.

Idiot.

>>7095538
>with Zeus promising to return one day to destroy us
Is this similar to the kali yuga stuff where Kalki will come and kill all the decadents? Or is it not part of a cycle?

>>7095641
that women will be women

>>7095892
It's extremely similar. The ancient Greek mystery religions are very interwoven with ancient Indian religion through the Dionysian mysteries.

>>7095394
Hephaestus is a disfigured rapist of other gods. Athena is violent and manipulative. Hermes takes advantage of his position to torment others and subverts the will of the gods at every chance.


The Greek Gods are all totally neutral though.
The reason is that the Olympian Pantheon is intracosmic, they were never meant to be the highest order of divinity. They are forces of nature. Good and Evil in the divine doesn't come until Zoroaster.

>>7095491
Not even this. The Olympian Gods don't copulate in public, and if a normal person looks at or touches Zeus directly, they go insane or die.

>>7095503
The poets are talking about people having a revelatory experience from nature and gaining insight into the order of the cosmos.

>Athena

She wanted to destroy Troy over a small slight

Part of the reson Zeus rapes so many women is because of syncretism reasons. Greeks would come to cities with their own local gods and heros and they'd spin the story by saying, that he is a son of zeus or zeus in disguise in the case of the Egyptians